Episode 1: Serial(ism)

Composers & Computers

This episode is the story of what happened when a Princeton composer, who was inspired to create some of the most challenging music ever written, decided it could be most reliably performed by a machine. His work to realize that machine led to the birth of the electronic synthesizer as a device upon which one could compose music. And it led, indirectly, to the digital music revolution.

The device wasn’t a computer – it was an early analog synthesizer in Manhattan, co-owned by Princeton and Columbia.

This episode will take you inside Milton Babbitt’s work with his “robot orchestra.” You’ll get to hear the music it made, and how Babbitt and the engineers who built it carved out a path that would lead to digital music as know it today.