Milton Babbitt

Milton Babbitt was born in Philadelphia in 1916. He grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, beginning the violin at age four, and later the clarinet and saxophone. At fifteen, he graduated high school, and had developed ability as 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.

He soon found that he was more interested in composing music than studying math, and he transferred to New York University. After graduation, he began to study composition with Roger Sessions and began work on his graduate degree, becoming a member of the faculty in 1938 and receiving his degree in 1942. He was awarded the Bearns Prize for one of his compositions. During WW II, he worked both as a math professor at Princeton and a mathematician for the government. In 1948, Babbitt returned to the Princeton faculty. He invented a technique known as combinatoriality, and also coined the terminology used in the discussion of twelve-tone music: pitch class, time point, and the five parameters of sound (pitch, duration, intensity, timbre, envelope). Babbitt was approached during the 1950s by RCA to help develop one of the first synthesizers. In 1959, Babbitt was one of the founders of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Studio. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960.

In 1964, he completed perhaps his best known electronic piece, Philomel. A year later, he earned membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1982, Babbitt received a Pulitzer Prize. In addition to his work at Princeton, he has served for many years on the faculty of the Juilliard School.