Milton Babbitt

Milton Babbitt (born May 10, 1916, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died January 29, 2011, Princeton, New Jersey) was an American composer and theorist known as a leading proponent of total serialism—i.e., musical composition based on prior arrangements not only of all 12 pitches of the chromatic scale (as in 12-tone music) but also of dynamics, duration, timbre (tone colour), and register.

Babbitt attended public schools in Jackson, Mississippi; he played violin as a young child and then turned to piano, clarinet, and saxophone. In his youth he loved jazz and other popular music. After beginning mathematics studies at the University of Pennsylvania, he transferred to New York University as a music major. In New York City he also studied privately for several years with the composer Roger Sessions.

Babbitt’s Composition for Synthesizer (1961) displayed his interest in establishing precise control over all elements of composition; the machine is used primarily to achieve such control rather than solely to generate novel sounds. Philomel (1964) combines synthesizer with the voice, both live and recorded, of a soprano. More traditional in medium is Partitions for Piano (1957). Babbitt wrote chamber music (Composition for Four Instruments, 1948; All Set, 1957) as well as solo pieces and orchestral works. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Babbitt continued to use serialist techniques in his later works, which include Arie da capo (1974), The Head of the Bed (1982), Swan Song No. 1 (2003), and An Encore (2006; commissioned by the Library of Congress) for violin and piano, among other compositions for small ensembles; solo pieces, such as Play It Again, Sam (1989; written as a viola solo for Samuel Rhodes) and More Melismata (2005–06; commissioned by the Juilliard School) for cello; and Concerti for Orchestra (2004) and several other pieces for larger groups.

Babbitt was a member of the music faculty at Princeton from 1938 to 1984, and he joined the faculty of the Juilliard School in 1971. He also taught composition at the Berkshire Music Center (now Tanglewood Music Center) in Massachusetts and at the Darmstadt Music Festival in Germany. His interest in electronic music brought him the directorship of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In 1959 he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1982 he received a lifetime Pulitzer Prize in composition.

Babbitt was unapologetic about the difficulty of his music, arguing that understanding “advanced music,” like “mathematics, philosophy, and physics,” requires extensive background and effort. Nonetheless, he saw his music as belonging in a tradition that flowed from Johannes Brahms through Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. The composer and conductor Gunther Schuller said conducting Babbitt was “a great thrill, to get inside that music with those marvelous sounds and textures,” and critic Alex Ross wrote that Babbitt’s “music…shuffles and shimmies like jazz from another planet.”

As an active participant and thinker, Babbitt wrote extensively about music. His writings are collected in Milton Babbitt: Words About Music (1987; edited by Stephen Dembski and Joseph N. Straus) and The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt (2003; edited by Stephen Peles).