Babbitt, Milton (Byron)

US composer and theorist. A leading proponent of serialism, he pioneered the application of information theory to music in the 1950s, introducing set theory to series manipulations and the term ‘pitch class’ to define every octave identity of a note name. His works include four string quartets, works for orchestra, Philomel for soprano and electronic tape (1963–64), and Ensembles for Synthesizer (1967), both composed using the 1960 RCA Princeton-Columbia Mark II Synthesizer, which he helped to design.

Babbitt was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied music and mathematics at New York University under Marion Bauer (composer and writer, 1887–1955) and Philip James (composer and conductor, 1890–1975), and Princeton University, where one of his composition teachers was Roger Sessions. From 1948 he taught at Princeton University.