Milton Babbitt - Partitions

Alan Feinberg, piano
Partitions, for piano, was composed in 1957 at the instigation of Joseph Prostakoff, for his collection "New Music for the Piano", for which the participants were urged to display, in a short piano composition, the present state of their art. Even the title of the work was induced by such an invitation, for the partitioning of the constituent, registrally defined contrapuntal lines into spatially and temporally delineated aggregates is a central determinant of all of the compositional dimensions. The work is probably most immediately perceived in seven 'sections', one of which is [an] introductory hexachordally harmonic area, generated and manifested in each case differently, by different constituents of the basic, initially presented material. The rhythmic aspects of the piece appear graphemically so complex (and only graphemically, not aurally or conceptually, I would insist) that the editor imposed a simple 'explicative' rhythmic line on the score, which I hope does not obscure the fact that the rhythmical 'complexities' are merely tempo changes in the small, altering thereby a few inceptually simple rhythmic 'motives'. The piece is dedicated to and was first performed by Robert Helps.
- Milton Babbitt, 1985