Recent Pasts 20/21 Words Series - Andrew Imbrie and Milton Babbitt, Page 12
BABBITT:
I’m going to stop very soon, but I just want ten minutes or so more.
For example, one of the things that dominated my life was the Princeton Columbia Electronic Music Center. That was very hard won by us because these electronic things were taking place. I was very much interested. And the RCA studio – the RCA updated Sarnoff laboratories, which were and technically are still across Route 1 from the music building – was developing something called the RCA Synthesizer. They developed it because it was for David Sarnoff’s 70th birthday and they were going to surprise him. And they were going to surprise him with a great big synthesizer, which eventually became the Mark II synthesizer, which is the size of a huge, mainframe computer – (it would) go across this room, for example. And when they discovered that people had heard (such as Ernst Krenek) and found this important and interesting, in secret they improved it. They made it into the Mark II version. (They originally made the Mark I version). And then they allowed a couple of us – that includes me – to go in and work with it and see what could be done. And I was fascinated by it. It was just what I wanted. (I’m not going to go into details. Paul Lansky has talked about the computer).
The computer started about the same time. I was invited to go to Bell Labs and work with the people who were developing the computer, but at that time a computer was impossible. The turn-around time was two years (the digital-analog – well, the DA conversion took forever). It was just not what I needed. Then the synthesizer, which I won’t describe – I mean, there’s no point – was capable of doing anything if you had the patience and were willing to learn. Well, it was easily the thing to be brought over to Princeton.
So I went and talked to a man who was in the physics department who was in charge of all the rooms and the accessories at Princeton . And went with Arthur Mendel, our chairman, and tried to talk him into giving us just – all we asked was a room up there. That’s all I want. But no. He saw no reason to have anything like that. No, no, no, no, no. And again, music is a trivial pursuit. We’re doing physics. The physicists involved, by the way, had never done much in physics except written a description of the atomic bomb project. He hadn’t contributed to it; he wrote a description of it. But, he said, “No, we don’t have any time; we don’t have any room for that.” Columbia University said, “We have all the room you want. On 125th Street we have a wonderful building that was built during the war that is sound proof. We’ll give you all the rooms you want; we’ll give you all the power you want; we’ll give you all the furniture you want. So the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center was at Columbia and the kids here at Princeton had to go miles and subways to get there. And finally, I had to live in both New York and Princeton to use it. And, of course, the computer project developed here. And that was another case of where we lost what we should have had.
Now, I’m not going to belabor that aspect anymore, but you have to realize that music fought very, very hard for its existence here. Now it has a building. Never had a building. Now it has a library, a beautiful library, an autonomous library. In my day, in the library if you wanted to get a book on music you had to crawl under leaking pipes. That was the old – many of you may remember – a few of you remember, Pie Hall. That’s the building which in the Triangle Show was called the “Edifice Wrecks the campus”. You remember it, of course. So, anyhow, that’s where we were. Now, of course, where they are – I’ve been retired all these many years... It began, however, with Roger Sessions.
But I have a Roger Sessions story to tell because that’s where Andrew – if he wishes to respond – I hope he does…
One day, while the war was still on (it was a grinding on), I was still teaching mathematics. I ran one day to get a little bit of lunch at the Vault. (You know “the Vault” – at least I could live on those donuts and coffee, which is more than one gets now. I could walk from Fine Hall to the Vault). And I passed McCormick Hall one afternoon and – [to Andrew] you know about this story – Roger ran out of McCormick Hall screaming: “They gave Oliver Strunk an office; they didn’t give me one.” ’Cause none of us had offices and they suddenly gave an office to Oliver Strunk, the historian. That was really it. That’s all I can tell you and again, that’s misrepresented in the book, but it’s basically correct in the latest biography of Roger. He says, “Come with me to the post.” He came with me to the Western Union. Western Union then was at Nassau Street and it was on the corner. “And I’m going to send a telegram to Berkeley and tell them I’m coming.” (You might want to know the competition was University of Alabama. He was only made two offers – University of Alabama or Berkeley, and I thought he made a mistake, but he insisted upon Berkeley). In any case, Roger ran down, and that’s it – he’s going to Berkeley.