MATRIXSYNTH: RIP Milton Babbitt


Sunday, January 30, 2011

RIP Milton Babbitt



Milton Babbitt passed away yesterday January 29, 2011. He was 94 years old. Via Wikipedia:

"Babbitt later became interested in electronic music. He was hired by RCA 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 instruments, often combining the two. Philomel (1964), for example, was written for soprano and a synthesized accompaniment (including the recorded and manipulated voice of Bethany Beardslee, for whom the piece was composed) stored on magnetic tape."

Babbitt: "Occasional Variations"

YouTube via NewMusicXX | October 24, 2008 |
Re-Published on Sep 15, 2009 Karin Schneider

"Milton Babbitt: "Occasional Variations"
Realized on the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, 1968-1971"

image via Perfect Sound Forever

Update:


RCA Synthesizer comes in at 12:51. Do watch up to it. Only calling it out so you know when it comes in.
Full article on NPR

Update:

Milton Babbitt on Electronic Music

YouTube via echasalow | January 29, 2011 |

"1997, from the Video Archive of Electroacoustic Music. Barbara Cassidy and Eric Chasalow curators.

more videos at:

http://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/12_2...

copyright 1997 Eric Chasalow, all rights reserved"

Update:

milton babbitt- vision and prayer

"NewMusicXX | February 02, 2011 | 3 likes, 0 dislikes
Re-Published on May 25, 2015 Joe

Milton Babbitt: "Vision and Prayer"(1961) for soprano and synthesized tape. Bethany Beardslee, soprano. The text and title are from a 1945 poem by Dylan Thomas, the first section of which reads: Who Are you Who is born
In the next room So loud to my own That I can hear the womb Opening and the dark run Over the ghost and the dropped son Behind the wall thin as a wren's bone? In the birth bloody room unknown To the burn and turn of time And the heart print of man Bows no baptism
But dark alone Blessing on The wild Child.

2 comments:

  1. As Vladimir USSACHEVSKY,Milton was the last real pionneer player of electronic music pre-data and synthesizer masterworks of that gorgeous and fantastic "T-Rex" RCA Mark II synthesizer. It is for me the best era of electronic music discovery, like masterworks from Olivier MESSIAN,Karlheinz STOCKHAUSEN, Wendy CARLOS, Raymond SCOTT,Pierre BOULEZ,Otto LUENING and more... A strange mood of new space sounds. (sorry for my english )...

    ReplyDelete
  2. One of the best moments in 20th-Century music is when the white noise starts playing in the middle of Composition for Synthesizer.

    ReplyDelete

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