"Who Cares if You Listen?" is an article written by the American composer Milton Babbitt (1916–2011) and published in the February 1958 issue of High Fidelity. Originally titled by Babbitt as "The Composer as Specialist", the article was subsequently retitled by the magazine's editors against his wishes. It is among the best known of Babbit's works and epitomized the distance that had grown between many composers and their listeners. In the words of Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times, "To this day, it is seized as evidence that he and his ilk are contemptuous of audiences." Babbitt was a practitioner of integral serialism, which in his hands could be a highly technical mode of musical composition. The article does not refer to serialism at all, but rather takes the position that "serious", "advanced" music, like advanced mathematics, philosophy, and physics, is too complex for a "normally well-educated man without special preparation" to "understand".
The article In this article and throughout his writings, Babbitt's subject is "American culture, which he finds threatened by populism. It has produced little meaningful understanding of or dialogue about music, he argues, and it has forced the 'serious' and 'advanced' composer into a state of isolation". Babbitt describes "serious", "advanced music" as "a commodity which has little, no, or negative commodity value", and the composer of such music as, "in essence, a 'vanity' composer". It is music of which the general public is largely unaware, and in which it takes no interest. "After all, the public does have its own music, its ubiquitous music: music to eat by, to read by, to dance by..." Performers, too, are seldom interested in "advanced" music, so that it is rarely performed at all and the exceptional occasions are mainly "poorly attended concerts before an audience consisting in the main of fellow 'professionals'. At best, the music would appear to be for, of, and by specialists". Babbitt continues to maintain, however, that music cannot "evolve" if it only attempts to appeal to "the public". "And so, I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition." He recognizes the practical problems for the composer of "advanced" music not patronized by the concert-going public: "But how, it may be asked, will this serve to secure the means of survival for the composer and his music? One answer is that after all such a private life is what the university provides the scholar and the scientist." He concludes: "if this [advanced] music is not supported, the whistling repertory of the man in the street will be little affected... But music will cease to evolve, and, in that important sense, will cease to live."
Controversy over title In an interview with Gabrielle Zuckerman for "American Mavericks" on American Public Media in 2002, Babbitt admits that the "story" of "Who Cares if You Listen" had "pursued" and "angered" him. He goes on to state that the article was originally a lecture entitled "Off the Cuff", and that the title "Who Cares if You Listen" was not authorized by him. In fact, some years earlier, he stated that the title he sent to High Fidelity was "The Composer as Specialist", notwithstanding the article's opening line. However, "the article was injudiciously cut and given its inflammatory title by an editor". In the interview, Babbitt suggests that the published title "had little of the letter and nothing of the spirit of the article", and protests, "Of course, I do care if you listen." Yet, Babbitt's suggestion in the article for the composer of "advanced music" is "total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance". Tommasini was not the only one to have pointed out that Babbitt's protests about the title "may sound like revisionist spin control". Whether the article's contents were reflected in the title is a matter of controversy. On the one hand, one commentator stated that "Mr. Babbitt will go to his grave famous for, among other things, a piece of prose whose published title—Who Cares If You Listen?—he insists was appended by an unfeeling editor. Yet the title accurately echoes the essay's ideas..." On the other, it has been written that "Although the essay does not actually express the sentiment of its false title, one could, on a cursory reading, perhaps, get that out of it."
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