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Vision and Prayer (1961)
Milton Babbitt:
"Vision and Prayer, for soprano and synthesized accompaniment, was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation ... and first performed in September 1961 by Bethany Beardslee, at a concert presented by the Foundation at the Congress of the International Musicological Society. The work was the first to combine live vocal performance with a tape produced entirely on the Mark II RCA Synthesizer.
"Dylan Thomas' poem 'Vision and Prayer' was first published in 1945, and consists of twelve 'shaped' stanzas, each of the first six of which progresses from an initial line of a single syllable, by the addition of a syllable per line, to a [maximum] line of nine syllables, and then subtractively returns to a single syllabic line. The second group of six [stanzas] reverses the process, by progressing from an initial line of nine syllables to a center line of a single syllable, and then returning to the nine-syllable line."
Milton Babbitt (b. 1916) is among the most influential teachers and composers in the United States and perhaps the foremost proponent of serial and twelve-note techniques in American music.
Babbitt was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, where as a child he played violin, clarinet, and saxophone. His father's job as an actuary influenced Babbitt's initial intention to study mathematics, which he began in 1931 at the University of Pennsylvania. However, he soon switched to music, studying with Marion Bauer and Philip James at New York University. During his time in New York, Babbitt developed an affinity to the music of Igor Stravinsky and Edgard Varèse, and later immersed himself in the (at the time little-known) 12-note works of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern.
Babbitt continued his studies with Roger Sessions at Princeton University in New Jersey, and became a member of its music faculty in 1938. During World War II he pursued mathematical interests both at Princeton and in Washington, DC, which led to a 1946 paper exploring Schoenberg's compositional techniques entitled The Function of Set Structure in the Twelve-Tone System. Babbitt composed film music and an unsuccessful Broadway musical in the mid-1940's, then rejoined the Princeton faculty in 1948. He served as a composer-consultant to RCA and its new Mark II Synthesizer in the mid-1950's, and in 1959 became director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, where the synthesizer was housed. Since 1973 he has taught at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.
Babbitt's many honors include the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation in 1982, and the William Schuman Lifetime Achievement Award. Organizations in which he has been active include the ISCM American section, American Music Center, and the journal Perspectives of New Music. Babbitt has written dozen of articles and essays, and tours often as a lecturer. His music has been recorded on the Albany, Bridge, Capstone, Centaur, CRI, Deutsche Grammophon, GM, Neuma, New World, and Nonesuch labels.
related websites
http://www.schirmer.com/composers/babbitt_bio.html
Soprano Bethany Beardslee was renowned for her powerful interpretations of contemporary music; she gave premiere performances of many works from the United States as well as pieces by Alban Berg, Ernst Krenek, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern. Beardslee's lyric soprano voice was also well-suited to the music of Bach, Haydn, Debussy, and Ravel. Her groundbreaking performances of the vocal music of the Second Viennese School were recorded on Columbia Masterworks; other performances can be found the CRI, GM, MHS, New World, and Pierrot labels. Beardslee initially studied at Michigan State University and the Juilliard School in New York. In 1962 she received the Laurel Leaf award from the American Composers Alliance. Her own teaching career included positions at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey; University of Texas, Austin; University of California, Davis; and Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Beardslee continued to perform well after her official retirement in the early 1980's.
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