'The issue of 'science' does not intrude itself directly upon the occasion of the performance of a musical work, at least a non-electronically produced work, since-as has been said-there is at least a question as to whether the question as to whether musical composition is to be regarded as a science or not is indeed really a question; but there is no doubt that the question as to whether musical discourse or-more precisely-the theory of music should be subject to the methodological criteria of scientific method and the attendant scientific language is a question, except that the question is really not the normative one of whether it 'should be' or 'must be,' but the factual one that it is, not because of the nature of musical theory, but because of the nature and scope of scientific method and language, whose domain of application is such that if it is not extensible to musical theory, then musical theory is not a theory in any sense in which the term ever has been employed. This should sound neither contentious nor portentous, rather it should be obvious to the point of virtual tautology.' From Milton Babbitt, 'The Structure and Function of Musical Theory', College Music Symposium, Vol. 5 (Fall 1965), pp. 49-60; reprinted in Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (New York: Norton, 1972), pp. 10-21, ISBN 0393005488, and in Milton Babbitt, The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, ed. Stephen Peles, with Stephen Dembski, Andrew Mead, and Joseph N. Straus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 191-201, ISBN 0691089663.
MusicDiscourseLanguageMethodologyScienceScientific methodTheory