Rhythmic Interplay Music by Babbitt and Feldman - heard by PATRIC STANDFORD '... fresh and striking ...'

Milton Babbitt's work list begins in 1935 with an orchestral work, Generatrix, soon to be followed by Composition for Orchestra, a systematically controlled twelve-note work which gained him Princeton's first MFA degree and a major foothold in the musical world. He soon integrated his mathematical skills and sure instinct for serial organisation into work with synthesized and electro acoustic work and a familiarity with jazz and popular styles (All Set for jazz ensemble was widely programmed in the late 1950s).

His list of compositions well exceeds one hundred and his volume of writings are still widely influential. It is therefore of major interest that his relatively recent Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet, completed in 1996 (he was born in 1916 in Philadelphia), should be programmed by the distinguished clarinettist Mark Lieb, and the Phoenix Ensemble of which he is founder and director.

The Quintet is in four interconnected movements, two shorter outer parts enclosing a central two-part development...

MILTON BABBITT

MORTON FELDMAN

INNOVA RECORDINGS

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA