SexViolHist Bib: Representations: Music: Milton Babbitt

»Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He was a Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, recognized for his serial and electronic music. Babbitt's compositional approach was deeply inspired by Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. He built a compositional system based on permutations of the total chromatic.« (Extract from: Wikipedia)

Philomel

I n f o r m a t i o n

»Philomel, a serial composition written in 1964, combines synthesizer with both live and recorded soprano voice. It is Milton Babbitt's best-known work. Planned for performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was funded by the Ford Foundation and commissioned for soprano Bethany Beardslee. Babbitt created it in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, of which he was a founding member.
The three sections of the piece are based on Ovid's myth of Philomela, a maiden without the capability of speech, her escape from King Tereus, and her transformation into a nightingale. In the second section, John Hollander, the librettist, has Philomel communicate with some of the inhabitants of the woods in echo verse. In fact, Hollander had written a book on Echo Poetry, so the section is written not in straight echo but in very elaborate and intricate poetry. The third section is a series of five arias where Philomel finally regains her voice and sings about her life.« (Extract from: Wikipedia)

K e y w o r d s

I. Chronological Index: Modern History: 20^th Century

II. Geographical Index: American History: U.S. History

III. Topical Index: Cases: Mythological Victims: Philomela; Types: General: Rape

B i b l i o g r a p h y

I. Author Index

[Info] Sommer, Jessica. »Embodying Sexual Abuse in Voice: Babbitt’s Philomel.« Indiana Theory Review 41 (2026): 85-111.

II. Speaker Index