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Milton Babbitt's Death

Born (Birthday) May 10, 1916

Death Date January 29, 2011

Age of Death 94 years

Cause of Death N/A

Place of Death Princeton, New Jersey, United States

Profession Composer

The composer Milton Babbitt died at the age of 94. Here is all you want to know, and more!

Biography - A Short Wiki

Writer of very complex, impenetrable music. He prided himself on being inaccessible to all but a few. He was a proponent of “total serialism,” arranging in scales not just notes and striving for dynamics, timbre, and register.

He studied violin, piano, clarinet, and saxophone in his youth with some of his influences coming from jazz.

His 1958 essay “The Composer as Specialist” was published in High Fidelity magazine under the title, “Who Care if You Listen?” This was the work of the magazine editor and not Babbitt, but it caused an uproar and placed him in a controversial light he did not desire.

He grew up the son of a successful actuary who inspired his abiding love for mathematics.

He taught many future notables, including Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim.

Quotes

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The new limitations are the human ones of perception.

Milton Babbitt
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I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media.

Milton Babbitt