Composition for Four Instruments

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Composition for Four Instruments (1948) is an early serial music composition written by American composer Milton Babbitt. It is Babbitt’s first published ensemble work, following shortly after his Three Compositions for Piano (1947). In both these pieces, Babbitt expands upon the methods of twelve-tone composition developed by Arnold Schoenberg. He is notably innovative for his application of serialism to domains other than pitch, such as rhythm and dynamics. Composition for Four Instruments is considered one the early examples of this type of “totally serialized” music, and foreshadows the style and complexity of Babbitt’s later work.

[edit] Structure and Analysis

Composition for Four Instruments is scored for flute, clarinet, violin and cello. An immediate division is apparent between the two wind instruments and the two strings. In addition to this, Babbitt makes use of every possible subset of the ensemble group within the different sections of the piece. He uses every combination of instruments only once, saving the full ensemble for the conclusion. The piece can be broken up into fifteen sections according to the subset of instruments playing, with each instrument playing only once every two sections.

The first section of the piece begins with a solo in the clarinet. The notes of this solo can be separated by register into four distinct voices. Babbitt presents several instances of tone rows in the opening bars of the piece. A note-by-note analysis of the first nine measures reveals two such tone rows, the first beginning at measure one and the second at measure seven. A closer look at the separation of the opening into the four registers reveals two additional tone rows. The set of notes contained in the two high registers form a tone row, as do the notes in the lower two registers. The presence of serial constraints in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions, though not necessarily discernible by the audience, adds a level of complexity to the piece that is characteristic of Babbitt’s work.

The piece begins with a three-note motive, or trichord. A trichord is a collection of three distinct pitch classes. In the first five measures, each of the four register voices contains a transformation of the opening trichord. The first three notes all belong to the lower-middle register, and are separated by +4 then -3 semitone intervals. Each of the three other registers contains a similar three-note motive, spread out over the five measures, with the interval patterns –4 +3, +3 –4, and –3 +4. The entire opening clarinet solo can be analyzed as an array of these trichords, and their various inversions and retrogrades. The trichordal relationships between the notes in the four registers of the clarinet foreshadow the interaction between the four instrument voices in the conclusion of the piece. Also, the way in which the instruments unfold throughout the piece directly corresponds to the progression of the trichords in the clarinet solo. The organization of the pitch classes throughout the piece is consistently and undeniably self-referential.

In addition to his use of multi-dimensional tone rows, Babbitt also experimented with serialized rhythmic patterns. He uses the duration row as his primary rhythmic structure in Composition for Four Instruments, each of which consist of four different durations. The durations occur in the pattern sixteenth--quarter--dotted-eighth--eighth, which can be represented by the sequence of numbers 1 4 3 2. For example, the first four notes of the opening clarinet solo follow the 1 4 3 2 duration pattern. This rhythmic pattern is then manipulated under the same transformations as the pitches in a tone row. These transformations include the retrograde (2 3 4 1), the inversion (4 1 2 3) and the retrograde inversion (3 2 1 4). Babbitt expands this idea in later pieces, working instead with a set of twelve unique durational units.

As he does in the pitch domain, Babbitt achieves additional variety in the rhythmic patterns of Composition for Four Instruments by manipulating the duration row and its three variations in different ways. At times, he expands the row by multiplying each duration in the pattern by the four other members. Applying this transformation to the original row 1 4 3 2 results in the duration rows 1 4 3 2, 4 16 12 8, 3 12 9 6, and 2 8 6 4. In the final three bars of the piece, the clarinet plays the retrograde of the opening duration row with each element multiplied by 4, giving the pattern 8 12 16 4.

A third domain in which Babbitt applies the twelve-tone technique is that of dynamic changes. He uses dynamic contours as another type of row, which can be manipulated as effectively as pitch and rhythm. For example, starting in measure 22, the dynamic marking read ff > mf p > ppp ff mf. The following pattern is then found at measure 24: ppp p < ff mf ppp p. A graphical representation of the contour of these two dynamic patterns reveals that the second is a transposed inversion of the first. Babbitt’s manipulation of dynamic contours adds yet another layer of complexity to an already analytically rich composition.

Composition for Four Instruments holds a significant position as one of the early serial compositions, which draws from and reinvents techniques introduced in the work of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. The pieces demonstrates Babbitt’s remarkable development of musical relationships and technical complexity which he continued to explore throughout his career.

[edit] References

Andrew Mead. An Introduction to the Music of Milton Babbitt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Robert Morgan. Twentieth Century Music. New York, NY: W.W.Norton, 1991.