Milton Babbitt

Milton Babbitt studied math at the University of Pennsylvania for a short time before transferring to New York University to study music. He attended graduate school in music at Princeton University, where he later became a faculty member. During WWII he worked as a mathematical researcher and at this time developed his ideas concerning Schoenberg's twelve-tone serial compositional method. Babbitt was a pioneer in introducing terms from other areas into musical discourse. He explored the use of non-pitch components and advocated the reinterpretation of the elements of traditio...