10 Facts About Milton Babbitt

Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher.

Milton Babbitt is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.

Milton Babbitt was raised in Jackson, Mississippi, and began studying the violin when he was four but soon switched to clarinet and saxophone.

Milton Babbitt was making his own arrangements of popular songs by age 7, "wrote a lot of pop tunes for school productions", and won a local songwriting contest when he was 13.

Milton Babbitt's father was a mathematician, and Milton Babbitt intended to study mathematics when he entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1931.

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Milton Babbitt joined Princeton's music faculty in 1938 and received one of Princeton's first Master of Fine Arts degrees in 1942.

In 1948, Milton Babbitt returned to Princeton's music faculty and in 1973 he joined the faculty of the Juilliard School.

In 1958, Milton Babbitt achieved unsought notoriety through an article in the popular magazine High Fidelity.

Milton Babbitt was less interested in producing new timbres than in the rhythmic precision he could achieve with the synthesizer, a degree of precision previously unobtainable in performance.

From 1985 until his death Milton Babbitt served as the Chairman of the BMI Student Composer Awards, the international competition for young classical composers.