Avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt dies at 94

He was 94. Paul Lansky, a composer and Princeton University colleague who was once a student of Babbitt's, said he died Saturday at a Princeton hospital. Lansky said he did not know the cause of death. Born in Philadelphia, Babbitt earned degrees from both Princeton and New York University. He joined Princeton's faculty in 1938 and became a professor emeritus of music there in 1984. In the 1950s, RCA hired Babbitt as a consultant as it was developing the Mark II synthesizer. He became a founder and director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, where the synthesizer was installed.