-- Liner Notes from CRI SD 499 --MILTON BABBITT (b. 1916, Philadelphia) was educated in the public schools of Jackson, Mississippi, and at New York and Princeton Universities. His primary teacher of musical composition was Roger Sessions, with whom he studied privately for three years.
He is William Shubael Conant Professor of Music at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1938, including three years as a member of the Mathematics faculty. He also is on the Composition Faculty of the Juilliard School, and has been a Visiting Professor at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem. Babbitt has taught, conducted seminars and lectured internationally. He is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences.
His honors include: two New York Music Critics Circle Citations (1949, 1964); National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1959); Brandeis University Gold Medal (1970); National Music Award (1976); Pulitzer Prize Special Citation (1982). He has received honorary degrees from Middlebury College, New York University, Swarthmore College, New England Conservatory, and University of Glasgow.
The most recent recordings of his music are of his early
Three Compositions for Piano (by Robert Taub on CRI) and
Composition for Viola and Piano (by John Graham and Robert Black on CRI), and his recent
Solo Requiem (by Bethany Beardslee on Nonesuch). He writes:
"
PARAPHRASES, for ten instrumentalists, was completed in December 1979, and first performed by Parnassus, under Anthony Korf's direction, the following March. "Of the work's multiple manifestations of the paraphrastic, in the senses of the glossed restatement, the reinterpretation, the clarification, the amplification, surely the most immediately evident is that which maintains between the first two large sections of this one-movement composition and the third, final section whose explicit foreground is paraphrased by the woodwinds in the first section and by the brasses in the second, thereby inducing a mutual paraphrasing between those two sections which is yet further enhanced by the brasses 'doubling' (yet otherwise autonomous) role in the first section being assumed analogously by the woodwinds in the second.
"Further, within and among the sections, there are successive, simultaneous, immediate, and proximate instances of paraphrasing, within and between instrumental lines and collections, individual and compounded musical dimensions, and the spatially and temporally delineated 'phrases'."
Parnassus performers and their instruments on
PARAPHRASES are: Keith Underwood, flute; Nora Post, oboe and English horn; Robert Yamins, clarinet; Dennis Smylie, bass clarinet; Steven Dibner, bassoon; David Wakefield, horn; Raymond Mase, trumpet; Ronald Borror, trombone; David Braynard, tuba; Edmund Niemann, piano.
Sirce its inception in 1975, PARNASSUS has earned a distinguished reputation as one of America's foremost virtuoso champions of contemporary chamber music. They have appeared as guest artists on many important new music series, and have toured extensively throughout the Northeast. Active in the commissioning of works by both celebrated and emerging composers, they are recorded on CRI SD 480 and New World Records.
This recording was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC, a Federal agency, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. Additional funding was provided by the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, the Princeton University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, the Jerome Foundation, the Ernst von Siemens Foundation, Time-Life Inc., Mr. David Braynard, Mr. and Mrs. Jose M. Ferrer Ill, and Mr. Andrew Schneider.
PARAPHRASES - C.F. Peters (BMI): 13'
STRATA - lone Press (BMI): 6' 19"
FAREWELL - ACA (BMI): 17' 52"
All recorded by David Hancock, May 1982, New York City
Production Assistants: Donald Palma, George Rothman.
Cover @ Thelma Gomilas 1983
Liner @ 1983 Composers Recordings, Inc.
FOR CRI -
Producer: Carter Harman
Product Manager: Michael Bennett
LC#: 83-743195
This recording employed hand-made ribbon microphones in pairs, spaced six feet apart, in the best available acoustical environment. Their output was fed to a 30 IPS Studer A-80 tape recorder, slightly modified for constant velocity record-playback characteristics, using half-inch tape with two channels, each channel almost 1/4-inch wide. In this way the need for conventional (and troublesome) noise reduction devices was eliminated and the resulting reproduction challenges the digital storage method so far as clarity and cleanliness of sound are concerned.
Lacquer masters were cut from the original tapes, employing an Ortofon transducer system with motional feedback. To minimize groove echo, the lacquer masters were processed within twelve hours using the latest European equipment and techniques. Strict quality control pressings were made of the purest available vinyl.
1983 Composers Recordings, Inc.
THIS IS A COMPOSER-SUPERVISED RECORDING
Printed in the U.S.A.
CRl's Board of Trustees wishes to express its gratitude to the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation and the Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation for support during 1982-83.
WRITE FOR A COMPLETE LISTING OF ALBUMS ON CRI
COMPOSERS RECORDINGS, INC.
170 WEST 74 STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10023
A NOT-FOR-PROFIT, TAX-EXEMPT CORPORATIONLabels: Avant Garde Project, jodru, Milton Babbitt
