Milton Byron Babbitt was an American
composerA composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his
serialIn music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
and
electronic musicElectronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
.
Biography
Babbitt was born in
Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
(Barkin & Brody 2001) to Albert E. Babbitt and Sarah Potamkin. He was raised in
Jackson, MississippiJackson is the capital and the most populous city of the US state of Mississippi. It is one of two county seats of Hinds County ,. The population of the city declined from 184,256 at the 2000 census to 173,514 at the 2010 census...
, and began studying the
violinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
when he was four but soon switched to
clarinetThe clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
and
saxophoneThe saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
. Early in his life he was attracted to
jazzJazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and theater music. He was making his own arrangements of popular songs at seven, and when he was thirteen, he won a local songwriting contest (Kozinn 2011).
Babbitt's father was a mathematician, and it was
mathematicsMathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
that Babbitt intended to study when he entered the
University of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
in 1931. However, he soon left and went to
New York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
instead, where he studied music with
Philip JamesPhilip James was an American composer, conductor and music educator.Note: Composer and shakuhachi player Phil James is listed as Phil Nyokai James.-Life:...
and
Marion BauerMarion Eugénie Bauer was an American composer, teacher, writer, and music critic. A contemporary of Aaron Copland, Bauer played an active role in shaping American musical identity in the early half of the twentieth century....
. There he became interested in the music of the composers of the
Second Viennese SchoolThe Second Viennese School is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925...
, and went on to write a number of articles on twelve tone music including the first description of
combinatorialityIn music using the twelve tone technique combinatoriality is a quality shared by some twelve-tone tone rows whereby the row and one of its transformations combine to form a pair of aggregates...
and a serial "time-point" technique. After receiving his bachelor of arts degree from
New York University College of Arts and ScienceThe New York University College of Arts and Science is the oldest and largest academic unit of New York University, founded in 1832. This private liberal arts college is located at Washington Square in Manhattan and the administrative offices of the college are in the Silver Center for Arts &...
in 1935 with Phi Beta Kappa honors, he studied under
Roger SessionsRoger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...
, first privately and then later at
Princeton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. At the University he joined the music faculty in 1938 and received one of Princeton's first Master of Fine Arts degrees in 1942 (Barkin & Brody 2001). During the Second World War Babbitt divided his time between mathematical research in Washington, D.C., and Princeton, where he became a member of the mathematics faculty from 1943 to 1945 (Barkin & Brody 2001).
In 1948, Babbitt returned to Princeton University's music faculty and in 1973, became a member of the faculty at the
Juilliard SchoolThe Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
in New York. Among his more notable former students are music theorists
David LewinDavid Lewin was an American music theorist, music critic and composer. Called "the most original and far-ranging theorist of his generation" , he did his most influential theoretical work on the development of transformational theory, which involves the application of mathematical group theory to...
and John Rahn, composers
Donald MartinoDonald Martino was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer.Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Martino studied composition with Ernst Bacon, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, and Luigi Dallapiccola...
,
Laura KarpmanLaura Karpman is an American composer, whose work has included scoring for film, television, video games, theater, and concert. She has won four Emmy Awards for her work...
,
Tobias PickerTobias Picker is an American composer. Picker began composing at the age of eight and studied at the Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School and Princeton University, where his principal teachers were Charles Wuorinen, Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt...
,
Paul LanskyPaul Lansky is an American electronic-music or computer-music composer who has been producing works from the 1970s up to the present day .-Biography:...
, and
John MelbyJohn Melby is an American composer.-Life and work:John Melby is most widely-known for his numerous compositions for computer-synthesized sounds, particularly in combination with live acoustic instruments...
, the theatre composer
Stephen SondheimStephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
, and the jazz guitarist and composer
Stanley JordanStanley Jordan is an American jazz/jazz fusion guitarist and pianist, best known for his development of the tapping technique for the guitar....
.
In 1958, Babbitt achieved unsought notoriety through an
articleis an article written by the American composer Milton Babbitt and published in the February, 1958 issue of High Fidelity. In addition to being the single most well-known work of Babbitt, it epitomized the distance that had grown between many composers and their listeners...
in the popular magazine
High Fidelity (Babbitt 1958). Babbitt said his own title for the article was "The Composer as Specialist" (as it was later published several times, including in Babbitt 2003, 48–54), and "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" (Babbitt 1991, 17).
More than 30 years later, he commented that, "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", he was "still ... 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" (Babbitt 1991, 17).
Babbitt later became interested in
electronic musicElectronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
. He was hired by
RCARCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
as consultant composer to work with their RCA Mark II Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (known since 1996 as the Columbia University Computer Music Center), and in 1961 produced his
Composition for Synthesizer. Babbitt was less interested in producing new timbres than in the rhythmic precision he could achieve using the Mark II synthesizer, a degree of precision previously unobtainable in live performances (Barkin & Brody 2001).
Babbitt continued to write both electronic music and music for conventional
musical instrumentA musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...
s, often combining the two.
PhilomelPhilomel, a serial composition composed in 1964, combines synthesizer with both live and recorded soprano voice. It is Milton Babbitt’s best-known work and was planned as a piece for performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, funded by the Ford Foundation and commissioned for soprano Bethany...
(1964), for example, was written for soprano and a synthesized accompaniment (including the recorded and manipulated voice of
Bethany BeardsleeBethany Beardslee is an American soprano particularly noted for her performances of contemporary classical music....
, for whom the piece was composed) stored on
magnetic tapeMagnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...
.
From 1985 until his death he served as the Chairman of the BMI Student Composer Awards, the international competition for young classical composers. Milton Babbitt died in
Princeton, New JerseyPrinceton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
on January 29, 2011 at the age of 94 (Kozinn 2011; Anon. 2011b).
Honors and awards
- 1965 - Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 1974 - Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
(Anon. 2011a)
- 1982 - Special Citation by the Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
board, "to Milton Babbitt for his life's work as a distinguished and seminal American composer" (Columbia University 1991, 70).
- 1986 - MacArthur Fellow
- 1988 - Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for music composition.
- 2000 - National Patron of Delta Omicron
Delta Omicron is a co-ed international professional music honors fraternity whose mission is to promote and support excellence in music and musicianship.-History:...
, an international, professional music fraternity (Klafeta and Beckner 2009; Anon. 2000).
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," 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 0393021424. Reprinted, New York: Pendragon Press, 1985. ISBN 0918728509.
- (1987) Words About Music: The Madison Lectures, edited by Stephen Dembski and Joseph Straus. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
- (1992) [written 1946] "The Function of Set Structure in the 12-tone system." PhD Dissertation, 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
- 1935 Generatrix for orchestra (unfinished)
- 1939–41 String Trio
- 1940 Composition for String Orchestra (unfinished)
- 1941 Symphony (unfinished)
- 1941 Music for the Mass I for mixed chorus
- 1942 Music for the Mass II for mixed chorus
- 1946 Fabulous Voyage (musical, libretto by Richard Koch)
- 1946 Three Theatrical Songs for voice and piano (taken from Fabulous Voyage)
- 1947 Three Compositions for Piano
- 1948 Composition for Four Instruments
Composition for Four Instruments is an early serial music composition written by American composer Milton Babbitt. It is Babbitt’s first published ensemble work, following shortly after his Three Compositions for Piano . In both these pieces, Babbitt expands upon the methods of twelve-tone...
- 1948 String Quartet No. 1 (withdrawn)
- 1948 Composition for Twelve Instruments
- 1949 Into the Good Ground film music (withdrawn)
- 1950 Composition for Viola and Piano
- 1951 The Widow’s Lament in Springtime for soprano and piano
- 1951 Du for soprano and piano, August Stramm
August Stramm was a German poet and playwright who is considered one of the first of the expressionists. He also served in the German Army and was killed in action during World War I....
- 1953 Woodwind Quartet http://depts.washington.edu/ventorum/oggBabbitt4tet86.ogg
- 1954 String Quartet No. 2
- 1954 Vision and Prayer for soprano and piano
- 1955 Two Sonnets for baritone, clarinet, viola, and cello, two poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous 20th-century fame established him among the leading Victorian poets...
- 1956 Duet for piano
- 1956 Semi-Simple Variations for piano
- 1957 All Set for alto sax, tenor sax, trp, trb, cb, pno, vib, 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, setting of a poem by Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
Second Period
- 1964 Philomel
Philomel, a serial composition composed in 1964, combines synthesizer with both live and recorded soprano voice. It is Milton Babbitt’s best-known work and was planned as a piece for performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, funded by the Ford Foundation and commissioned for soprano Bethany...
for soprano, recorded soprano, synthesized tape, setting of a poem by John HollanderJohn Hollander is a Jewish-American poet and literary critic. As of 2007, he is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University...
- 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 and synthesized tape
- 1968 Relata II for orchestra
- 1968–69 Four Canons for SA
- 1969 Phonemena for soprano and piano
- 1970 String Quartet No. 3
- 1970 String Quartet No. 4
- 1968–71 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 clarinet
- 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
Third Period
- 1981 Ars Combinatoria for small orchestra
- 1981 Don for four-hand piano
- 1982 The Head of the Bed for soprano and four instruments
- 1982 String Quartet No. 5
- 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, setting of a poem by John Hollander
John Hollander is a Jewish-American poet and literary critic. As of 2007, he is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University...
- 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, setting of a poem by John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...
- 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 string trio
- 1996 Quintet for clarinet and string quartet
- 1996 Danci for solo guitar
- 1996 When Shall We Three Meet Again? for flute, clarinet and vibraphone
- 1998 Piano Concerto No. 2
- 1998 The Old Order Changeth for piano
- 1999 Composition for One Instrument for celesta
- 1999 Allegro Penseroso for piano
- 1999 Concerto Piccolino for vibraphone
- 2000 Little Goes a Long Way for violin and piano
- 2000 Pantuns for soprano and piano
- 2001 A Lifetime or So for tenor and piano
- 2002 From the Psalter soprano and string orchestra
- 2002 Now Evening after Evening for soprano and piano, setting of a poem by Derek Walcott
Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...
- 2003 Swan Song No. 1 for flute, oboe, violin, cello, and two guitars
- 2003 A Waltzer in the House for soprano and vibraphone, setting of a poem by Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.-Biography:...
- 2004 Concerti for Orchestra, for James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra
- 2004 Autobiography of the Eye for soprano and cello, setting of a poem by Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...
- 2005–6 More Melismata for solo cello
- 2006 An Encore for violin & piano
Discography (selective)
- 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. MN: American Composers Forum, 2009.
- Concerto for Piano And Orchestra/The Head Of The Bed. Alan Feinberg
Alan Feinberg is an American classical pianist. He has considerable experience with contemporary classical music and has premiered over 300 works among them Mel Powell's Pulitzer Prize winning Duplicates, as well as works by such composers as John Adams , Milton Babbitt, John Harbison, Steve...
, piano; American Composers OrchestraThe American Composers Orchestra is an American orchestra based in New York City. It is the only orchestra in the world dedicated solely to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers...
, Charles WuorinenCharles Peter Wuorinen is a prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. His catalog of more than 250 compositions includes works for orchestra, opera, chamber music, as well as solo instrumental and vocal works...
, conductor; Judith BettinaJudith Bettina is an American soprano particularly noted for her performances of contemporary classical music. Bettina was born in Manhattan to a violinist mother, Lilo Kantorowicz Glick. and a violist father, Jacob Glick, who was noted for his championship of new music...
, soprano, Parnassus, Anthony Korf. New World Records 80346.
- 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
The Group for Contemporary Music was an American chamber ensemble dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. It was founded in New York City in 1962 by Harvey Sollberger and Charles Wuorinen and was in residence at Columbia University from 1962 to 1971...
. 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
Alan Feinberg is an American classical pianist. He has considerable experience with contemporary classical music and has premiered over 300 works among them Mel Powell's Pulitzer Prize winning Duplicates, as well as works by such composers as John Adams , Milton Babbitt, John Harbison, Steve...
, piano; Bethany BeardsleeBethany Beardslee is an American soprano particularly noted for her performances of contemporary classical music....
, soprano; The Group for Contemporary Music, Harvey SollbergerHarvey Sollberger is an American composer, flutist, and conductor specializing in contemporary classical music.-Life:...
, conducting. CRI CD 521. New York: Composers Recordings, Inc., 1988. Reissued on CRI/New World NWCR521.
Further reading
- 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
Listening
- Milton Babbitt interview from National Public Radio Performance Today program, May 10, 2006
- Speaking of Music: Milton Babbitt Interviewed by Charles Amirkhanian
Charles Amirkhanian is an American composer. He is a percussionist, sound poet, and radio producer of Armenian extraction. He is mostly known for his electroacoustic and text-sound music...
, 1984
- In Conversation with Milton Babbitt Frank J. Oteri
Frank J. Oteri born May 12, 1964 is a composer based in New York City.Oteri's musical works have been performed in venues from Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art...
, NewMusicBoxNewMusicBox is an e-zine launched by the American Music Center on May 1, 1999. The magazine includes interviews and articles concerning American Contemporary Music, composers, improvisers, and musicians....
, December 1, 2001
- Art of the States: Milton Babbitt
- Recording Concerto Piccolino — Lee Ferguson, vibraphone *Luna Nova New Music Ensemble
- Woodwind Quartet (1953), performed by members of the Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet.
- Robert Hilferty/Laura Karpman documentary on Milton Babbitt
- Babbitt: Portrait of a Serial Composer (YouTube version of the Robert Hilferty/Laura Karpman documentary)