{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.018867924528301886, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.632352941176471, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Completeness and Temporality

Babbitt’s music is constructed from a hierarchy of exhaustive lists, so one can understand completeness in his pieces to be a result of the completion of these lists. In many cases, however, the endings of his pieces are not coordinated with the completion of exhaustive lists. This challenges the significance of the concepts, drawn from cognitive psychology and Schenkerian organicism, that Babbitt uses to justify his hierarchical compositional techniques. A new model of interpreting completeness in Babbitt’s music—drawing inspiration from Jonathan D. Kramer and Jerrold Levinson—is suggested as an alternative approach. Rather than envisioning Babbitt’s music as a processual unfolding of exhaustive lists, this chapter encourages listeners to comprehend his music as made up of interconnected moments cut off by a conventional rhetorical signal indicating closure.