Recent Pasts 20/21 Words Series - Andrew Imbrie and Milton Babbitt, Page 11
BABBITT:
I just want to talk about a few other little events and I’ll get out of here because I don’t want to run over and – it’s okay, I have, I think, with your permission, another 15 minutes. There were certain issues I just wish to discuss representing the growth of music in Princeton University.
The next one is Paul Fromm. Now, I’m going to be very critical of certain aspects of the university. I hope you don’t mind because this is the Institute after all. What do you care? There was a man named Paul Fromm, whom you knew well and we all got to know well. Paul Fromm was a refugee from Germany from a very famous wine family in Germany. And when he came over here he was destitute. But what he managed to do was go to Chicago and sell wine from floor to floor in apartment houses and offices and build up the winery. And within a very few years – remarkable people that they were, I’m going to say six years – he was a very wealthy man, and formed a foundation called the Fromm Foundation. And he announced that anyone who would like to could submit compositions. Do you remember that? Could submit compositions, anything else, and the Fromm Foundation would consider to print them and publish them. But I – instead of printing or publishing them – didn’t respond. And when I didn’t respond they wrote to me and asked me why I didn’t respond. And I told them why I didn’t respond because I just pointed to the judges who would decide whether my work was good enough to be published and recorded. And that was the end of it.
Speak about fortuity, here we go. In 1957, I went to teach at Tanglewood and one day I got up in the little place I was living and in the dark bumped into a man as tall as Andrew and he introduced himself as Paul Fromm. I introduced myself. He said, “I’ve always wanted to talk to you.” He said, “I’ve always wanted to talk to you about the letter that you wrote. I’ve come to agree with you completely about my judges. I fired them all and I want to start a whole new path.” Well, very briefly, I’ll tell you that the Fromm Foundation did more for the Princeton University music department than any group of people had ever done before.
They immediately set up, first of all, a magazine – Perspectives of New Music. I don’t have to tell you more about that. It’s still published; no longer by Princeton, but it was published by the Princeton University Press at that time and it was closely associated with the University. And it represented a kind of writing on music that many people resented and other people were very grateful for. It was not the first magazine of that kind. There was a Journal of Music Theory from, if I may say so, Yale. But that was totally theory; this was contemporary and represented all aspects of contemporary music. So that was one thing.
The next thing that Paul Fromm did was commissions. He commissioned composers who were not accustomed to being commissioned. He put on a concert at Town Hall (NYC) of contemporary music by really able musicians, conducted by Gunther Schuller, and… it went on like that. The Fromm Foundation was the most active organization of our time in contemporary music. Here he sponsored – and this is the story I want to tell you – in 1958, ’59, and ’60, he sponsored a series of what were called Princeton Seminars of Advanced Musical Studies. All of us lectured, but what is more we invited people. Of the people we had Ernst Craig here, we had (Swedish composer Karl-Birger) Blomdahl here, we had foreign composers of all kinds, whether we regarded them as worthy of this position or not, we had them. And so for three years this was the center of activity in the summer. Paul Fromm paid for these young composers who were selected, of course, to come, to live here and take these courses and enjoy everything that was Princeton in the summer. All that wonderful heat.
So, what happened? After all of this, then he put on an enormous concert here of contemporary works. Suddenly, the following took place: Paul Fromm – now this is a delicate matter, but I don’t mind telling it. It’s one of the things we’ve suffered in the music department at least because things didn’t change with regard to the attitude toward music. The attitude of the art and archaeology department was the same as the physicist who wouldn’t let us have our electronic studio here. I mean, music is a trivial pursuit. It belongs – really, the teaching belongs in girls’ seminaries, and we really shouldn’t bother with it, and we really shouldn’t waste our time on it here. Go somewhere else. That was – you think we’re being paranoid? No, ’cause here’s the story:
Paul Fromm, who had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Princeton University (it was Princeton University who got the money to distribute all of this), received a little… Well, I should tell you first: The chairman of the music department realized that Paul Fromm was going and living in what was then called the Nassau Tavern, paying his own way. Nobody was paying any attention to him. So he prevailed upon the president of the University to write him a thank you note. Paul Fromm received a typewritten sort of form note just signed by the president saying, “Thank you very much for your interest in Princeton University.”
Well, that’s all that was necessary.
A couple of Princetonians who had met Paul Fromm here and were then teaching at Harvard, if I may say so, prevailed upon the president of Harvard University to write Paul Fromm and tell him he’d love for him to visit Harvard. Paul was flattered. He went to Harvard. He was put up in a beautiful guest house. He didn’t have to pay his way. He was treated as Paul Fromm should’ve been treated.
The next thing that happened was that Paul Fromm set up Paul Fromm professorships at Harvard – visiting professorships of which I happened to have been one at one time (one of only many). He also set up a foundation and left it to Harvard. So, now Harvard distributes commissions every year to young composers. This, I’m afraid, reflects the attitude toward music here which prevailed in any number of ways.