Milton Babbitt

Milton Babbitt (1916- ), American composer, a leading proponent of total serialism (the use of pre-set sequences to determine pitch, rhythm, duration, tone colour, and other musical elements) as the basis for musical composition. Born in Philadelphia, he studied with the American composer Roger Sessions. He joined the Princeton University faculty in 1938, and in 1959 he helped found the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In the 1960s and 1970s he was at the forefront of the development of electronic music, with such works as Philomel (1964), for soprano and magnetic tape, and Concerti for Violin, Small Orchestra, and Synthesized Tape (1976). In a completely different idiom, he is also a composer of musicals. In 1982 he was awarded a Pulitzer Special Citation for his life's work, and in 1999 he was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.