Analysis Of Milton Babbitt's Article Who Cares If You Listen '

Milton Babbitt in his article “Who Cares If You Listen” famously argued that “serious”, “advanced” contemporary music has little commodity value because the general public is not able to decipher and appreciate it. He suggests that it is potentially advantageous for a contemporary composer and his music to withdraw into the isolated walls of academia so that, under institutional support, the musicians will be able to focus on their own creative art, pushing forward the evolution of music. While I agree with Babbitt on what he identified as some of the properties of twentieth-century music that make it a uniquely “advanced” art (also, difficult to understand), I do not think it is a good idea to exclude laymen from new compositions simply because they were not able to appreciate it at first sight. Just like my reaction to John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra differs before and after I researched the composer’s background and his purpose of writing the piece, other audiences are equally likely to change their perceptions about certain piece if provided with more background information and listen to the music accordingly.
I was not able to identify its main theme --- the material upon which all of a musical composition is based --- from the wide array of sound produced by the bridge of the violin, the singing through the flute, the wood of the bow and many other non-conventional practices of conventional instruments. Completely baffled by what Cage wanted to deliver to us through these random and even jarring notes, I researched him as a composer and the compositional tradition he was closely associated with ---