Milton Babbitt in a 1962 BBC program

[mosc]

This is a very interesting view of electronic music in the early days. Milton Babbitt was a pioneer in electronic music. In this program he explains his early work on the RCA Synthesizer at Columbia University. He forshadows much of what we have today, including MIDI, in this case "the programing device". Note the absense of what we now call effects in early e-m, at least from the academic composers. It's not that effects weren't used in those days; for example the electronc score for Forbidden Planet by Louis and Bebe Barron.



Many of us were fortunate to attend a talk about the RCA Synthesizer presented by Rebecca Mercury in 2005 in Princeton. Rebecca invited Milton to speak there. Here's the calendar item on this site: https://electro-music.org/forum/post-35669.html&highlight=babbitt#35669

He spoke to us over 40 years after this program was recorded. He said that in retrospect he was interested in electronic music not because of the new sounds, but for the ability to compose rhythmns that couldn't be played conventionally. He repeated his famous, "Nothing gets old as fast as a new sound" that we here him say in the BBC program.

He did something that night that impressed me. He asked that a tape of his music be played through the Sarnoff Library's sound system. The tape started, but after about a minute he waved his arms vigorously to signal to the tech to stop the playback. He apologized to the audience for stopping the tape. He said the sound system was inadequate for listening to his piece. He said "I'd rather my music not be heard at all if it can't be heard as I intended it."