Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Princeton University

  • Princeton’s Lost Music: A Digital History

    Princeton’s Lost Music: A Digital History

    60 years ago, Princeton University engineers noticed members of the music department, staring agog at a recently-installed computer. It wasn’t long before a not-so-unlikely alliance was formed that helped to change history. New Jersey’s role in the creation of digital music is the subject of a new podcast, “Composers & Computers.”

    The accessible, absorbing presentation illuminates the work of engineers at RCA Laboratories in Princeton in the 1950s, Princeton music faculty at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York, and musicians who first entered the computer center in the Princeton University EQuad in 1962, with the intention of harnessing a new IBM 7090 to synthesize music.

    No less than 20 subjects were interviewed for the series, to create an oral history spanning six decades. Commentary, anecdotes, and insights are punctuated and underscored by samples of electronic music, from Milton Babbitt and Charles Wuorinen (his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Time’s Encomium”) to Stevie Wonder and The Beach Boys.

    Aaron Nathans, Digital Media Editor at Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, is the mastermind behind the podcast. He too is an interesting, multifaceted individual, who became the unexpected co-subject of an article I wrote for this week’s U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo.

    Learn more about electronic music pioneers Milton Babbitt, Godfrey Winham, Paul Lansky, Ken Steiglitz, and their colleagues and students, and the continued vitality of the Princeton computer scene as exemplified by the Princeton Laptop Orchestra and the multidisciplinary experimentation of Naomi Leonard and her “Rhythm Bots.”

    Look for the story in print in area vending machines and local businesses, or find immediate gratification here:

    https://www.communitynews.org/princetoninfo/artsandentertainment/a-good-ear-for-stories-and-electronic-music-inspires-a-princeton-podcast/article_93780110-3384-11ed-93a9-1ba8b9106ed7.html

    The “Composers & Computers” podcast, sponsored by Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, can be heard on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and other platforms. Show notes, including playlists, sources, rare photos, and podcast audio, are also available at https://engineering.princeton.edu/series/composers-computers-podcast

    ONCE UPON A TIME IN NEW YORK: Princeton composer Milton Babbitt at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center

  • Princeton Pioneers Digital Music Podcast

    Princeton Pioneers Digital Music Podcast

    60 years ago, Princeton University engineers noticed members of the music department, staring agog at a recently-installed computer. It wasn’t long before a not-so-unlikely alliance was formed that helped to change history.

    The story of New Jersey’s role in the creation of digital music is the subject of a new podcast. “Composers & Computers” will span six decades in five installments and include interviews with 20 people. Their commentary will be punctuated by vintage computer and electronic music clips.

    Princeton music faculty shared an analog synthesizer with Columbia University in the 1950s. In 1962, composers entered Princeton’s new Computer Center in the Engineering Quadrangle, and were soon engaged in trying to figure out how to harness the new IBM 7090 to make music. Then they worked to improve that music.

    Some of the most complex works ever written drove numerous technological innovations, and vice versa. Princeton composers and computer engineers worked together to program some of the earliest music composition software, invented a device to hear the music they were creating, synthesized some of the earliest computer-generated speech for use in music, and more.

    The story has a distinctly New Jersey flavor, illuminating the work of engineers at RCA in Princeton in the 1950s and Bell Labs in Murray Hill in the 1960s.

    The podcast will tackle the science of sound in a refreshing and accessible way. The series promises to be full of human drama, as participants in the project became great friends in their shared quest to coax sound out of a previously-silent, room-sized machine.

    The podcast will be available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, as well as the Princeton Engineering website, https://engineering.princeton.edu/series/composers-computers-podcast. The first two episodes will drop today, and one episode will run each week for the next three weeks.

    Here’s a link to the series’ introduction:

    Introducing “Composers & Computers,” a new podcast about digital music

    Episode 1:

    Episode 1: Serial(ism)

    Episode 2:

    Episode 2: Composers in the Computer Center

    PHOTO (left to right): Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center personnel Milton Babbitt, Mario Davidovsky, Pril Smiley, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, and Alice Shields, circa 1970

  • Paul Lansky From Crummy Student to Composer

    Paul Lansky From Crummy Student to Composer

    “I was a crummy student. I never really did what my teachers told me.”

    That independent streak has served Paul Lansky well. Lansky was on the faculty of Princeton University from 1969 to 2014. He chaired the music department there for nine years, from 1991 to 2000.

    A French hornist who became a pioneering composer of computer music, he caught the ear of the experimental rock band Radiohead and formed a fruitful association with guitarist David Starobin. Starobin’s Bridge Records, Inc. continues to document Lansky’s post-electronic works for standard acoustic instruments.

    When he retired from Princeton after 45 years of service, it was never Lansky’s plan to stop composing. In fact, he remains as busy as ever, with the past few years being a remarkably fertile period.

    You can read more about him in this article I wrote in 2019, to preview a special tribute concert presented at Richardson Auditorium, in honor of the composer’s 75th birthday. It’s the first time I ever used the word “fart” in print.

    https://www.communitynews.org/princetoninfo/artsandentertainment/a-composer-celebrates-with-wit-and-human-touch/article_9d5126f9-b138-56ba-b139-9d4108840e67.html

    Happy birthday, Paul Lansky!

    While you’re at it, check out Paul’s new album, “Angles”:

    Paul Lansky: Angles (VOL. 17) <br> BRIDGE 9532

    Some selections:

    “Four’s Company” (2018): Vivaldiana

    “Angles” (2017): A Sad Song

    Also, some of his greatest hits:

    “Table’s Clear” (1990) for utensils, kids, and computer:

    “Threads” (2005) for percussion quartet:

    “Partly Pavane” from the “Semi-Suite” (2001) for guitar:

  • Indiana Jones’ Princeton University Connection

    Indiana Jones’ Princeton University Connection

    Did you know Indiana Jones was born in Princeton, NJ? Supposedly on July 1, 1899. According to his fictional biography, he lived here until 1908, at which time his father, Henry Jones, Sr. – a professor of medieval studies at Princeton University – embarked on a lecture tour.

    The Joneses returned to Princeton in time for Indy to attend Princeton High School. However, he never did graduate. While on spring break during his senior year, he fell in with Poncho Villa, while visiting the Southwest, then got caught up in World War I.

    Indy himself is supposed to have taught at Princeton University in 1933. However, his longtime employer, and the one we see in the movies, is Marshall College, a fictional institution, in Bedford, Connecticut.

    40 years after the release of “Raiders of the Lost Ark (on June 12, 1981), and all this is news to me. Then, I was never a follower of “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” television show or the spin-off novels or video games.

    The period during which the Joneses lived in Utah, in 1912, portrayed in the opening sequence of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” coincides with Henry Jones Sr.’s Princeton sabbatical. Henry Jones taught at Princeton from 1899 until at least 1938.

    At some point, Oxford-graduate Marcus Brody, Indy’s boss at Marshall, also took courses at Princeton.

    Needless to say, as a “Raiders” fan and now a Princetonian, I find this newly-acquired Indy lore fascinating.

    https://indianajones.fandom.com/wiki/Princeton

    https://indianajones.fandom.com/wiki/Princeton_University

    In real life, William Hootkins, the actor who played Major Eaton in “Raiders” (and memorably uttered the line “TOP… MEN”) graduated from Princeton in 1970. I wrote a post about it in 2019.

    PHOTO: Indiana Jones and the Princeton Tiger?

  • Milton Babbitt a surprising composer

    Milton Babbitt a surprising composer

    In reading an interview with John Williams in The New Yorker only a few months back, I was amused to discover that he and Milton Babbitt enjoyed a friendship of sorts. I guess Babbitt was a Bernard Herrmann fan. Who knew?

    https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-force-is-still-strong-with-john-williams

    Babbitt, who was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1916, was a fixture at Princeton University for many years. It’s telling that he joined both the music and mathematics faculties there. Later, he also served on the faculty of the Juilliard School.

    He gained widespread notoriety for his essay published under the title “Who Cares If You Listen?” The provocative slant was actually the result of an editorial decision. Babbitt’s original title had been “The Composer as Specialist” – not likely to generate nearly as much controversy.

    Broadly speaking, while he frequently composed in a serial style, his music is fairly lucid, without undo congestion, and with a minimum of soul-crushing dissonances. On the contrary, he often achieved a paradoxical simplicity under the guise of complexity.

    In the 1960s, Babbitt became interested in electronic music, apparently more for its rhythmic precision than for any unusual timbral considerations. I find it endearing to learn that he was also fond of jazz and musical theater. He himself was a saxophonist. In 1946, he penned a musical, “Fabulous Voyage,” a retelling of Homer’s “The Odyssey.”

    Babbitt was the recipient of an honorary Pulitzer Prize in 1982. He died in Princeton in 2011, at the age of 94.

    Listen here for “Penelope’s Night Song” from “Fabulous Voyage”:

    “Composition for Twelve Instruments” (1948):

    “Reflections” (1974) for piano and synthesized tape:

    Milton Babbitt on electronic music:

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