Milton Babbitt

Milton Byron Babbitt ( born May 10, 1916 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, † January 29, 2011 in Princeton (New Jersey) ) was an American mathematician, music theorist and composer. He was a pioneer of serial and electronic music and was considered one of the most influential composers and composition teachers of the United States.

Life and work

Babbitt was born in 1916 as the son of an actuary in Philadelphia. He grew up in Jackson ( Mississippi) and learned violin as a child. As a clarinetist and saxophonist, he played after high school in jazz ensembles. In 1931 he began to study mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania and switched to music at New York University, where he studied with Philip James and Marion Bauer later. In New York he met philosophers such as Sidney Hook and James WheelRight and the composer Arnold Schoenberg know who influenced him with his twelve-tone technique. After the Bachelor of Arts (1935 ), he took private lessons in composition with Roger Sessions, he continued with him starting in 1938 at Princeton University. In 1942, he earned a Master of Fine Arts. During the Second World War he worked as a professor of mathematics at Princeton University.

He defined the first serial music and was instrumental in the creation of the academic subject Music Theory. Since 1950, he helped develop one of the first synthesizer ( Mark II, 1958) and in 1959 was one of the founders and the director of the Columbia - Princeton Electronic Music Studio. Babbitt wrote chamber music and complex orchestral compositions and also contributed to the Third Stream at ( All Set, 1957). From 1951 to 1952 he was President of the American Section of the ISCM. Babbitt taught at various universities, starting from 1960 when William Shubael Conant Professor of Music at Princeton University, and from 1973 at the Juilliard School of Music as a composition professor. His students included Mario Davidovsky, John Eaton, Stanley Jordan, Laura Karpman, Donald Martino, Tobias Picker, Anton Rovner and Stephen Sondheim.

He received his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1992, after there in 1946 his thesis was rejected on the twelve-tone system of modern composers.

Honors and Awards

Babbitt was in 1959 awarded the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award. From 1960 to 1961 he was a Guggenheim fellow. He was since 1965 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1974 a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For his achievements in the field of electronic music, he received the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for composition. In 1991, the Princeton University awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 1995 he was awarded the SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1986 he was MacArthur Fellow. In 1988 he was awarded a composition prize of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.

Works (selection)

  • Three Compositions for Piano, 1947
  • Composition for Four Instruments, 1949
  • Vision and Prayer for soprano and synthesizer, 1961
  • Philomel for soprano, tape and synthesizer, 1964
  • Phonemena, 1975
  • A Solo Requiem for soprano and piano
  • Dual for cello and piano, 1980
573461
de