Babbitt with the RCA Mark II synthesizer

Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He was a Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, recognized for his serial and electronic music.

Biography

Babbitt was born in Philadelphia^[1] to Albert E. Babbitt and Sarah Potamkin, who were Jewish.^[2] He was raised in Jackson, Mississippi, and began studying the violin when he was four but soon switched to clarinet and saxophone. Early in his life he was attracted to jazz and theater music, and "played in every pit-orchestra that came to town".^[3] Babbitt was making his own arrangements of popular songs by age 7, "wrote a lot of pop tunes for school productions",^[4] and won a local songwriting contest when he was 13.^[5] A Jackson newspaper called Babbitt a "whiz kid" and noted "that he had perfect pitch and could add up his family's grocery bills in his head. In his teens he became a great fan of jazz cornet player Bix Beiderbecke."^[6]

Babbitt's father was a mathematician, and Babbitt intended to study mathematics when he entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1931. But he soon transferred to New York University, where he studied music with Philip James and Marion Bauer. There he became interested in the music of the composers of the Second Viennese School and wrote articles on twelve-tone music, including the first description of combinatoriality and a serial "time-point" technique. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University College of Arts & Science in 1935 with Phi Beta Kappa honors, he studied under Roger Sessions, first privately and then at Princeton University. He joined Princeton's music faculty in 1938 and received one of Princeton's first Master of Fine Arts degrees in 1942.^[1] During the Second World War, Babbitt divided his time between mathematical research in Washington, D.C., and Princeton, where he was a member of the mathematics faculty from 1943 to 1945.^[1]

In 1948, Babbitt returned to Princeton's music faculty and in 1973 he joined the faculty of the Juilliard School. Among his more notable students are music theorists David Lewin and John Rahn, composers Bruce Adolphe, Michael Dellaira, Kenneth Fuchs, Laura Karpman, Paul Lansky, Donald Martino, John Melby, Kenneth Lampl, Tobias Picker, and J. K. Randall, the theater composer Stephen Sondheim, composers and pianists Frederic Rzewski and Richard Aaker Trythall, and the jazz guitarist and composer Stanley Jordan.

In 1958, Babbitt achieved unsought notoriety through an article in the popular magazine High Fidelity.^[7] His title for the article was "The Composer as Specialist" (as it was later published several times^[8]) but, he said, "The editor, without my knowledge and—therefore—my consent or assent, replaced my title by the more 'provocative' one: 'Who Cares if You Listen?', a title which reflects little of the letter and nothing of the spirit of the article".^[9]

More than 30 years later, he said, "For all that the true source of that offensively vulgar title has been revealed many times, in many ways, even—eventually—by the offending journal itself, I still am far more likely to be known as the author of 'Who Cares if You Listen?' than as the composer of music to which you may or may not care to listen".^[9]

Around 1960, Babbitt became interested in electronic music. RCA hired him as consultant composer to work with its RCA Mark II Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (known since 1996 as the Columbia University Computer Music Center). In 1961 he produced his Composition for Synthesizer, marking the beginning of a second period in his output. Babbitt was less interested in producing new timbres than in the rhythmic precision he could achieve with the synthesizer, a degree of precision previously unobtainable in performance.^[1]

Through the 1960s and 1970s Babbitt wrote both electronic music and music for conventional musical instruments, often combining the two. Philomel (1964), for example, is for soprano and a synthesized accompaniment (including the recorded and manipulated voice of Bethany Beardslee, for whom the piece was composed) stored on magnetic tape.

By the end of the 1970s Babbitt was beginning his third creative period by shifting his focus away from electronic music, the genre that first gained for him public notice.^[10] Like most dodecaphonic music, Babbitt's compositions are typically considered atonal, but it has also been shown that, especially in his third-period music, notes from his serial structures (all-partition arrays and superarrays) are sometimes arranged and coordinated to forge tonal chords, cadential phrases, simulated tonal voice-leading, and other tonal allusions, allowing for double meaning (serial and tonal), like many of his composition titles. This phenomenon of "double meaning" of notes (pitches) in the context of his double-meaning titles has been called portmantonality.

From 1985 until his death Babbitt served as the Chairman of the BMI Student Composer Awards, the international competition for young classical composers. A resident of Princeton, New Jersey, he died there on January 29, 2011, at age 94.^[5][11]

Filmmaker Robert Hilferty's Babbitt: Portrait of a Serial Composer broadly depicts Babbitt's thinking, attitudes about his past and then-current work in footage largely from 1991–1992. The film was not completed and fully edited until 2010, and was presented on NPR online upon Babbitt's death.^[12][13]

Honors and awards

• 1965 – Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 1974 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences^[14]
• 1982 – Pulitzer Prize, Special Citation, "for his life's work as a distinguished and seminal American composer"^[15][16]
• 1986 – MacArthur Fellow
• 1988 – Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for music composition
• 2000 – National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international, professional music fraternity^[17][18]
• 2010 – The Max Reger Foundation of America – Extraordinary Life Time Musical Achievement Award

Articles

• (1955). "Some Aspects of Twelve-Tone Composition". The Score and I.M.A. Magazine 12:53–61.
• (1958). "Who Cares if You Listen?". High Fidelity (February). [Babbitt called this article "The Composer as Specialist". The original title was changed without his knowledge or permission by an editor at High Fidelity.]
• (1960). "Twelve-Tone Invariants as Compositional Determinants," The Musical Quarterly 46/2.
• (1961). "Set Structure as Compositional Determinant," Journal of Music Theory 5/1.
• (1965). "The Structure and Function of Musical Theory," College Music Symposium 5.
• (1972). "Contemporary Music Composition and Music Theory as Contemporary Intellectual History", Perspectives in Musicology: The Inaugural Lectures of the Ph. D. Program in Music at the City University of New York, edited by Barry S. Brook, Edward Downes, and Sherman Van Solkema, 270–307. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-02142-4. Reprinted, New York: Pendragon Press, 1985. ISBN 0-918728-50-9.
• (1987) Words About Music: The Madison Lectures, edited by Stephen Dembski and Joseph Straus. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.^[19]
• (1992) "The Function of Set Structure in the Twelve-Tone System." PhD Dissertation. Princeton: Princeton University.
• (2003). The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, edited by Stephen Peles, Stephen Dembski, Andrew Mead, Joseph Straus. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

List of compositions

Selected discography

• Clarinet Quintets. Phoenix Ensemble (Mark Lieb, clarinet; Aaron Boyd, Kristi Helberg, and Alicia Edelberg, violins; Cyrus Beroukhim, viola; Alberto Parinni and Bruce Wang, cellos). (Morton Feldman, Clarinet and String Quartet; Milton Babbitt, Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet). Innova 746. St. Paul, Minnesota: American Composers Forum, 2009.
• Concerto for Piano And Orchestra/The Head Of The Bed. Alan Feinberg, piano; American Composers Orchestra, Charles Wuorinen, conductor; Judith Bettina, soprano, Parnassus, Anthony Korf. New World Records 80346.
• The Juilliard Orchestra. Vincent Persichetti: Night Dances (cond. James DePreist); Milton Babbitt: Relata I (cond. Paul Zukofsky); David Diamond: Symphony No. 5 (cond. Christopher Keene). New World Records 80396–2. New York: Recorded Anthology od Music, 1990.
• The Juilliard String Quartet: Sessions, Wolpe, Babbitt. Roger Sessions, String Quartet No. 2 (1951); Stefan Wolpe, String Quartet (1969); Milton Babbitt, String Quartet No. 4 (1970). The Juilliard Quartet (Robert Mann, Joel Smirnoff, violins; Samuel Rhodes, viola; Joel Krosnick, cello). CRI CD 587. New York: Composers Recordings, Inc., 1990.
• Occasional Variations (String Quartets no. 2 and No. 6, Occasional Variations, Composition for Guitar). William Anderson, guitar; Fred Sherry Quartet, Composers String Quartet. Tzadik 7088. New York: Tzadik, 2003.
• Philomel (Philomel, Phonemena for soprano and piano, Phonemena for soprano and tape, Post-Partitions, Reflections). Bethany Beardslee and Lynne Webber, sopranos; Jerry Kuderna and Robert Miller, pianos. New World Records 80466-2 / DIDX 022920. New York: Recorded Anthology of American Music, 1995. The material on this CD was issued on New World LPs NW 209 and NW 307, in 1977 and 1980, respectively.
• Quartet No. 3 for Strings. (With Charles Wuorinen, Quartet for Strings.) The Fine Arts Quartet. Turnabout TV-S 34515.
• Sextets; The Joy of More Sextets. Rolf Schulte, violin; Alan Feinberg, piano. New World Records NW 364–2. New York: Recorded Anthology of American Music, 1988.
• Soli e Duettini (Around the Horn, Whirled Series, None but the Lonely Flute, Homily, Beaten Paths, Play it Again Sam, Soli e Duettini, Melismata). The Group for Contemporary Music. Naxos 8559259.
• Three American String Quartets. Mel Powell, String Quartet (1982); Elliott Carter, Quartet for Strings No. 4 (1986); Milton Babbitt, Quartet No. 5 (1982). Composers Quartet (Matthew Raimondi, Anahid Ajemian, violins; Maureen Gallagher, Karl Bargen, violas; Mark Shuman, cello). Music & Arts CD-606. Berkeley: Music and Arts Program of America, Inc., 1990.
• An Elizabethan Sextette (An Elizabethan Sextette, Minute Waltz, Partitions, It Takes Twelve to Tango, Playing for Time, About Time, Groupwise, Vision And Prayer). Alan Feinberg, piano; Bethany Beardslee, soprano; The Group for Contemporary Music, Harvey Sollberger, conducting. CRI CD 521. New York: Composers Recordings, Inc., 1988. Reissued on CRI/New World NWCR521.

References

Sources

• Anon. (n.d.(a)). "Milton Babbitt: All Set (1957)". www.hunsmire.net website (accessed 30 October 2012).
• Anon. (n.d.(b)). "Jewish Entertainers". Jewish Virtual Library (accessed 4 September 2013).
• Anon. (n.d.(c)). "Special Awards and Citations. The Pulitzer Prizes, website (accessed 3 December 2013).
• Anon. (2000). "Delta Omicron Announcements: Two Distinguished Musicians Inducted Into Delta Omicron". www.delta-omicron.org archives (accessed April 4, 2010; archive from 5 March 2012, accessed 12 June 2017)
• Anon. (2011a). "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
• Anon. (2011b). "Obituaries: Milton Babbitt". Opera News. 75, no. 10 (April).
• Babbitt, Milton (1958). "Who Cares if You Listen?". High Fidelity (February).
• Babbitt, Milton (1991). "A Life of Learning: Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 1991". ACLS Occasional Paper 17. New York: American Council of Learned Societies.
• Babbitt, Milton (2003). The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, edited by Stephen Peles, Stephen Dembski, Andrew Mead, Joseph Straus. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08966-3.
• Barkin, Elaine, and Martin Brody (2001). "Babbitt, Milton (Byron)". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers; New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music.
• Columbia University (1991). The Pulitzer Prizes, 1917–1991. New York: Columbia University.
• Cook, Amanda (June 8, 2013). "Milton Babbitt: Synthesized Music Pioneer". BetweenTheLedgerLines. Retrieved July 24, 2019.
• Dembski, Stephen, and Joseph N. Straus, eds. (1987). Milton Babbitt: Words about Music. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-10790-6.
• Duckworth, William (1995). Talking Music. Schirmer Books. ISBN 978-0-306-80893-7.
• Klafeta, Jennifer A., and Debbie Beckner (2009). Delta Omicron International Music Fraternity, National Website. Front page. (Accessed April 2010)
• Kozinn, Allan (2011). "Milton Babbitt, a Composer Who Gloried in Complexity, Dies at 94". The New York Times. (January 29). Retrieved January 30, 2011.

Further reading

• Crawford, Richard, and Larry Hamberlin (2013). An Introduction to America's Music, second edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-90475-8.
• Fisk, Josiah, and Jeff Nichols (1997). Composers on Music: Eight Centuries of Writings, second edition. Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1-55553-278-0 (cloth); ISBN 1-55553-279-9 (pbk).
• Mead, Andrew (1994). An Introduction to the Music of Milton Babbitt. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03314-5.
• Westergaard, Peter (1965). "Some Problems Raised by the Rhythmic Procedures in Milton Babbitt's Composition for Twelve Instruments". Perspectives of New Music 4, no. 1 (Autumn–Winter): 109–18.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Milton Babbitt.

• Avant Garde Project AGP72: Piano music of Milton Babbitt as played by Robert Taub
• Schirmer.com: Milton Babbitt
• Milton Babbitt (October 16, 2001). "Milton Babbitt: A Discussion in 12 Parts". NewMusicBox (Interview). Interviewed by Frank J. Oteri (published December 1, 2001).
• Furious.com Milton Babbitt talks about Philomel
• Two Discussions With Milton Babbitt. Interviewed by James Romig at the Dickinson College Arts Awards on April 11, 2002.
• An interview with Milton Babbitt. Interviewed by Gabrielle Zuckerman, American Public Media, July 2002
• Interview with Milton Babbitt, November 6, 1987
• Milton Babbitt Collection, 1970-2005 at the Library of Congress