Milton Babbitt

Major Works

• 1935- Generatrix for orchestra
• 1940- Composition for String Orchestra
• 1940- Music for the Mass I for mixed chorus
• 1941- Music for the Mass II
• 1941- Symphony
• 1941- String Trio
• 1946- Three Theatrical Songs for voice and piano
• 1947-Three Compositions for Piano
• 1948- Composition for Four Instruments
• 1948- String Quartet No. 1
• 1948; 54- Composition for Twelve Instruments
• 1949 -Film Music for Into the Good Ground
• 1950- Composition for Viola and Piano
• 1951- The Widow’s Lament in Springtime for soprano and piano
• 1953- Woodwind Quartet
• 1954- String Quartet No. 2
• 1954- Vision and Prayer for soprano and piano
• 1955- Two Sonnets for baritone, clarinet, viola, and ‘cello
• 1956- Duet for piano
• 1956- Semi-Simple Variations for piano
• 1957- All Set for alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone, contrabass, piano, vibraphone, and percussion
• 1957- Partitions for piano
• 1960- Sounds and Words for soprano and piano
• 1960- Composition for Tenor and Six Instruments
• 1961- Composition for Synthesizer
• 1961- Vision and Prayer for soprano and synthesized tape
• 1964- Philomel for soprano, recorded soprano, synthesized tape
• 1964- Ensembles for Synthesizer
• 1965- Relata I for orchestra
• 1966- Post-Partitions for piano
• 1966- Sextets for violin and piano
• 1967- Correspondences for string orchestra, synthesized tape
• 1968- Relata II for orchestra
• 1968- Four Canons for SA
• 1969- Phonemena for soprano and piano
• 1970- String Quartet No. 3
• 1970- String Quartet No. 4
• 1971- Occasional Variations for synthesized tape
• 1972- Tableaux for piano
• 1974- Arie Da Capo for five instrumentalists
• 1975- Reflections for piano and synthesized tape
• 1975- Phonemena for soprano and synthesized tape
• 1976- Concerti for violin, small orchestra, synthesized tape
• 1977- A Solo Requiem for soprano and two pianos
• 1977- Minute Waltz (or 3/4 – 1/8) for piano
• 1977- Playing for Time for piano
• 1978- My Ends Are My Beginnings for solo clarinetist
• 1978- My Complements to Roger for piano
• 1978- More Phonemena for twelve-part chorus
• 1979- An Elizabethan Sextette for six-part women’s chorus
• 1979- Images for saxophonist and synthesized tape
• 1979- Paraphrases for ten instrumentalists
• 1980- Dual for ‘cello and piano
• 1981- Ars Combinatoria for small orchestra
• 1981- Don for four-hand piano
• 1982- The Head of the Bed for soprano and four instruments
• 1982- Fifth String Quartet
• 1982- Melismata for solo violin
• 1982- About Time for piano
• 1983- Canonical Form for piano
• 1983- Groupwise for flautist and four instruments
• 1984- Four Play for four players
• 1984- It Takes Twelve to Tango for piano
• 1984- Sheer Pluck (composition for guitar)
• 1985- Concerto for piano and orchestra
• 1985- Lagniappe, for piano
• 1986- Transfigured Notes, for string orchestra
• 1986- The Joy of More Sextets, for piano and violin
• 1987- Three Cultivated Choruses for four-part chorus
• 1987- Fanfare for double brass sextet
• 1987- Overtime for piano
• 1987- Souper for speaker and ensemble
• 1987- Homily for snare drum
• 1987- Whirled Series for saxophone and piano
• 1988- In His Own Words for speaker and piano
• 1988-The Virginal Book, for contralto and piano
• 1988- Beaten Paths, for solo marimba
• 1988- Glosses, for Boys’ Choir
• 1988- The Crowded Air, for eleven instruments
• 1989- Consortini, for five players
• 1989- Play It Again, Sam for solo viola
• 1989- Emblems (Ars Emblematica), for piano
• 1989- Soli e Duettini, for two guitars
• 1989- Soli e Duettini, for flute and guitar
• 1990- Soli e Duettini, for violin and viola
• 1990- Envoi, for four hands, piano
• 1991- Preludes, Interludes, and Postlude, for piano
• 1991- Four Cavalier Settings, for tenor and guitar
• 1991- Mehr “Du”, for soprano, viola and piano
• 1991- None But The Lonely Flute, for solo flute
• 1992- Septet, But Equal
• 1992- Counterparts, for brass quintet
• 1993- Around the Horn, for solo horn
• 1993- Quatrains, for soprano and two clarinets
• 1993- Fanfare For All, for brass quintet
• 1993- String Quartet No.  6
• 1994- Triad, for viola, clarinet, and piano
• 1994- No Longer Very Clear, for soprano and four instruments
• 1994- Tutte Le Corde, for piano
• 1994- Arrivals and Departures, for two violins
• 1994- Accompanied Recitative, for soprano sax and piano
• 1995- Manifold Music, for organ
• 1995- Bicenguinguagenary Fanfare, for brass quintet
• 1995- Quartet, for piano and strings
• 1996- Quintet, for clarinet and string quartet
• 1996- When Shall We Three Meet Again? for flute, clarinet and vibraphone
• 1998- Piano Concerto, No. 2
• 1998- The Old Order Changeth
• 1999- Composition For One Instrument (Celesta)
• 1999- Allegro Penseroso, for piano
• 1999- Concerto Piccolino, for vibraphone
• 2000- A Little For Little, for violin and piano and Pantuns for soprano and piano
• 2003–Occasional Variations

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Milton Babbitt: A Biography

by Lisa Hill (SHS)

Milton Byron Babbitt was born on May 10, 1916, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  His father was a mathematician.  Milton Babbitt grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, learning to play the violin at age four and later he learned to play the clarinet and saxophone. When he was just fifteen years old, he graduated high school, and he became a jazz musician and pop music composer.

In 1931, Babbitt enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania with the intention of studying mathematics as his father did.  However, music interested him more, so he transferred to New York University where he studied composition. Babbitt earned his degree from New York University in music in 1935 and later from Princeton in music in 1942 “Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt”).

He joined the Princeton music faculty in 1938 and received one of Princeton’s first Master of Fine Arts degrees in 1942. Then he actually did mathematical research during World War II in Washington, DC, and Princeton, where he became a member of the mathematics faculty from 1943 to 1945 (Barkin & Brody 2001).

Babbitt is a theorist and composer (“Smith Archives”) whose  works for instruments and accomplishments in synthesized sound have made him one of the most recognized composers of the 20th century. Babbitt’s interest in electronic music resulted in his being hired by RCA as consultant composer to work with their RCA Mark II Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, and in 1961 produced his Composition for Synthesizer.

Babbitt writes both electronic music and music for conventional musical instruments, and often combines the two. He has great talent and an instinct for jazz and other American popular music. In addition to teaching at Princeton, he has also taught at The Juilliard School. He founded the Committee of Direction for the Electronic Music Center of Columbia-Princeton Universities. He has been awarded many honors including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1986 (sometimes called the “Genius Award”) and a Pulitzer Prize Citation for his “life’s work as a distinguished and seminal American composer.” Milton Babbitt is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a part of the American Academy of Arts. He was the recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for music composition in 1988. He has had a major impact on the works of contemporary musicians. (Schirmer, G.). Babbitt once said, “I want a piece of music to be literally as much as possible (“Smith Archives”).

Babbitt is a leading composer of serialization (the use of predetermined series of pitches, rhythms, tone colors, and durations.) This is the start for the composition of music. His work contains the order of twelve tones in the vertical and linear succession. Two Sonnets for baritone, viola, clarinet, and cello create a parallel between the rhyme scheme and serial employed. The Third Quartet shows features of metronomic stability. Babbitt believes that a serious composer would accept his isolation from the public as a way of functioning and should help to develop the resources of his art in his work not suitable for most listeners. (“Babbitt, Milton Byron”).

His early influences included Webern and Schoenberg. Babbitt wanted to have control of every aspect of his compositions in a serialization of 12 tones, 12 dynamic levels, 12 note values, 12 instrumental timbres, and 12 time intervals. He compares the 20th century serialization of music as a revolution equal to the 20th century revolution in physics. Milton Babbitt wrote the article, “Who Cares If You Listen?” dealing with the composer as a writer of music that the general public does not understand or even want to understand (Arnold, C.).

Babbitt is a great composer and accomplished man who still works with serialization today (see update below). Milton Babbitt once said, “I am concerned with stating an attitude towards the indisputable facts of the status and condition of the composer of what we will, for the moment, designate as ‘serious,’ ‘advanced,’ contemporary music. This composer expends an enormous amount of time and energy — and, usually, considerable money — on the creation of a commodity which has little, no, or negative commodity value. He is, in essence, a ‘vanity’ composer. The general public is largely unaware of and uninterested in his music. The majority of performers shun it and resent it. Consequently, the music is little performed, and then primarily at 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.” (Arnold, C.). Nevertheless, the compositional and intellectual wisdom of Milton Babbitt has influenced a wide range of contemporary musicians.  His All Set, for jazz ensemble, reveals an extraordinary compositional flexibility, uniquely American and vintage Babbitt.

In May, 1998, there was a symposium in honor of Milton Babbitt in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Babbitt has been a friend of the Music Division in the Library of Congress for many years and has served on the Coolidge Foundation Committee.  Some of his works have been shown at the Library and show  insight into many of the most important developments in music. The purpose of the symposium in his honor was to acknowledge those developments (“Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt”).

Milton Babbitt’s wife Sylvia died in 2005. Together they had one daughter, Betty Anne Duggan. Babbitt’s brother Albert E. Babbitt, Jr., a mathematician who died in 2005.

2011 UPDATE: Milton Babbitt died on January 29, 2011, at the age of 94 in Princeton, New Jersey. The Associated Press stated that Babbitt was known for his complex orchestral compositions and credited with developing the first electronic synthesizer. Babbitt had earned degrees from Princeton and New York University and joined Princeton’s faculty in 1938. He became a professor emeritus of music there in 1984. In the 1950s, RCA hired Babbitt as a consultant while it was developing the Mark II synthesizer. The synthesizer was installed at Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Cente,r and Babbitt became a founder and director. He was best known for electronic music blended with vocal performances in compositions such as Vision and Prayer and Philomel in the 1960s and Reflections in 1975.

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Timeline

• 1916– May 10- Babbitt was born in Philadelphia, PA, but grew up in Jackson, Mississippi
• 1931-  Began his college educated at the University of Pennsylvania in mathematics, but soon moved to New York University to study music
• 1948- The first works in which linear succession, harmonic stimulaneity, dynamics, duration, articulation, register,  and timber were all derived from a single, all-inclusive premise were written by Babbitt.
• 1932-35- Educated at New York University in music.
• 1938-42-  Babbitt taught on the music faculty at Princeton
• 1942- Graduated from Princeton University in music.
• 1943-45- Babbitt was on the mathematics faculty at Princeton.
• 1959- Helped found the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
• 1960- Named Conant Professor of Music at Princeton.
• 1973- Composition faculty at the Julliard School of Music.
• 1977- Babbitt’s works premiered at the Library of Congress.
• 1981- Professor Emeritus at Princeton.
• 1982- Received a Pulitzer Prize Citation for his life’s work
• 1986–Received MacArthur Fellowship for $500,000
• 1998- Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt.
• 2011–January 29 at age 96

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Related Websites

• The British Telegraph has excellent obituary for Milton Babbitt.
• Biography and photo on Classical Net.
• Short Audio Clips of Philomel and other works available at bottom of this page.

Bibliography

• Arnold, C.  “Milton Babbitt.”  The 20th Century Music Composers.    June 11, 1998.  1-2.  Emory University. March 20,2002. <http://www.emory.edu./MUSIC/ARNOLD/babbitt_content.html>.
• “Babbitt, Milton Byron.”  Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia ’99.  CD-ROM.  Microsoft Corporation 1993-1998.
• “Milton Byron Babbitt.”  1995-2002.  Classical Net.  1-2.March 2002.<http://www.classical.net/music/comp.1st/babbitt.html>.
• Schirmer, G. “Milton Babbitt.” 1998. Composers. March 3, 1998. 1-2. G. Schirmer Promotion Department. G.Schirmer Rental and Performance Department. March 20,2002. <http://www.Schirmer.com/composers/babbitt_bio.htm.>.
• “Smith Archives.” The University of Akron Bierce Library. October 12, 1998. 1-2. March 20,2002. <http://www.Babbitt.m.html.>.
• Stokar, Howard. “MILTON BABBITT.” April 9, 2002. <http://www.stokar.com/milton_babbitt.list.htm>.
• “Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt.” Concerts From the Library of Congress. March 20,2002. <http://www.loc.gov/rr/perform/concert/1997-98/babbitt.html.>.

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