{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/j38kd1r769/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Babbitt, Milton"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","metadata":[],"provider":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/116/792/small/Milton-Babbit.jpg?1625227430","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - L1899_MA_Oral_History_Babbit_2017_Logo.mp4"]},"duration":4386.02667,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/116/792/small/Milton-Babbit.jpg?1625227430","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-milken.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/116/792/original/L1899_MA_Oral_History_Babbit_2017_Logo.mp4?1623007496","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":4386.02667,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Milton Babbit interview [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Mr. Babbitt, this is a great, great honor, to have you with us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  It’s a great pleasure to be with you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  It’s an honor, too, I must say.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Tell us, before we talk about anything else about what you were just beginning to tell us, the origin of your name.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=16.0,33.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e The name Babbitt.  Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t know the origin myself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I was in Israel many years ago, I went to one of these lectures.  Now, those of you who have been to Israel know that when you’re in a touring — I was with a touring group.  This was my first trip to Israel, back in the early ‘60s.  And there was some, we were being guided around the country, and I was part of a large group of so-called educators, and there were very few.  But I was there with Dallapiccola and Kodály and people like that — it was a very funny combination of people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=33.0,59.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And there was, and we were taken to various places, and somewhere along the line, there was a lecture on architecture.  And then there was a lecture on agriculture.  And you know, in Israel, you don’t play games about there.  You don’t sit in the audience and pretend that you’re interested in agriculture.  If you’re not, you go to the back of the room and you talk.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=59.0,75.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And I went into the back of the room with some other people, and we were talking.  And a man came up to me and saw my little label which said, “U.S.,” and my name, Babbitt.  Because we were an international group.  And he said, “Where are you from in the United States?”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=75.0,88.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, I knew that if I said, “Princeton,” or “New York,” everybody’s from Princeton or New York.  But I said what was indeed my hometown, Jackson, Mississippi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said, “Do you know the rabbi in Jackson, Mississippi?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, “Well, I don’t.  My father probably does.  But I know why you’re interested.”  Because that was Arthur Rubinstein’s son-in-law.  So, I said, “I don’t know him, but I mean, I know why you’re asking me.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=88.0,110.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And then he looked at me and he said, “Do you know where your name comes from?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I said, “No.  I’ve never known.  My father has never known.  It’s too many generations gone.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said, “Come and see me.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo, a few days later, in Tel Aviv — no, it must have been in Jerusalem — in Jerusalem, at — he had an office, a very, very, very elaborate governmental office.  He was the name-giver.  You know, when you come to Israel, you’re given your Hebrew name.  They look you up.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=110.0,131.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e He looked up my genealogy, and he said, “Well, this is very easy.  Your name comes from a, it’s an archaic name from a South German vegetable.”  And he said, “Babbitt, it’s always been spelled with these two Bs and these two Ts.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=131.0,143.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, that interested me, too, because it had gone through — part of it had gone East.  The usual, the usual story of South German Jews.  Some went East, to Russia, some went West, and it turned out, part of my family went to Scotland.  And that I could tell you about later.  And, and they were Babbitts, and they’ve always retained that name of Babbitt, with the two Ts.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=143.0,162.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, if you look on the map in Minnesota, you’ll see a Babbitt, which is north of Duluth, which is up in the cold country, far, far away from my part of the world.  But it’s a ship-building, a little town on the lake.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=162.0,174.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Now, when the Babbitts were in Scotland, they were ship-building people until Glasgow simply went out of the ship-building business.  If you’ve ever been there, you know the docks sit there, rotting away.  I’ve been there many times.  And that was another part of my family.  So that takes me to another part of the story about the Babbitts, if you wish it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=174.0,190.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e My mother is an old Philadelphia girl.  My mother, when she was about 16 or 17 years old, decided she wanted to go on the stage.  She wanted to go following someone whom she knew, and whom the family knew, in the Philadelphia, called Vivian Segal, a name that probably means nothing to you people.  But Vivienne Segal was a great, great star of Broadway musicals.  She was in the last revival of The Connecticut Yankee — that recently.  Before that, she was in any number of Broadway musicals, and my mother’s family knew her.  She was a nice, Philadelphia Jewish girl.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=190.0,219.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e My mother wanted to go on the stage, but we did not go onto the stage in my family.  So, to get rid of her — to just really wipe this out of her memory — they put her in charge of a great-aunt of ours, who apparently spoke a number of languages.  They sent her on the Grand Tour.  The Henry James Grand Tour.  And she was, toured Europe.  You know, of course, where do you go?  You go everywhere in Europe in about ’19, whenever this was — very early 20th century.  You go to Russia and see our old friend the Czar, and all those other nice people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=219.0,244.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e So, she was sent with my, with my great-aunt, whom I never knew.  And when she was over there, she met my father.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy father was from a Russian family, a very well-off.  We’re not quite sure, I’m afraid, I must admit this to you — it’s supposed to be a Jewish family, but it’s been suspected that my father’s mother, my grandmother, none of whom I ever knew, was not Jewish.  I mean, I confess that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=244.0,266.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e But she met my father, who was a mathematics student, and who, at that time, had already gone to Zurich, and was studying at the university, but was home for the holidays.  They met, they had a skating party, and she brought him back.  She brought him back to this country to go to college and graduate school.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=266.0,280.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e I interrupt only to say this — we have a wonderful postcard, one of the few things we’ve salvaged from all of that.  A postcard written back to her parents in Philadelphia.  Handwritten, penciled postcard which says, “Mr. Babbitt and I are having such a wonderful time in Berlin, we’re going to stay for a few extra days.”  Those were the days.  You know, you went to Berlin — if you liked it, you stayed for a few extra days.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=280.0,301.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e She brought him back, he went to college here, and he went to graduate school here.  In the meantime, the Revolution broke out in Russia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWell, he intended to go back, ‘cause he was a mathematics student, and he was going to be a mathematician.  And both of his parents were killed by the Bolsheviks.  So when I was a bad little boy, I would always be called a “Little Bolshevik.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=301.0,318.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  I inherited none of that.  I don’t know a word of Russian — my mother spoke only Philadelphian; my father abandoned his Russian.  And that was how I happened to be brought up in Jackson, Mississippi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  You spent your childhood in Jackson, Mississippi?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, I grew up entirely, if I ever grew up, in Jackson, Mississippi.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=318.0,334.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  My father was an academic mathematician — he was teaching, through World War I, at the universities.  And then — I might as well drop a name — the father of Eudora Welty, who was my lifelong friend, made my father an offer he couldn’t resist.  That is, to come to Jackson and live the way he never could as an academic mathematician.  Become actuary vice president of a very large Southern insurance company.  And he did, and I grew up and lived in Jackson all my life, until I came up to Yankee country to go to college.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Until college?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Till college.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=334.0,364.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Do you recall anything of the, did you have any — and this makes no difference one way or the other, but just to get a context — of a Jewish community in Jackson?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBIT:  Sure.  I can tell you all about the Jewish community in Jackson.  There were about 20 of us, and they were all very richer than we were.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=364.0,379.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e The Jewish — I’m sure — I don’t want to be patronizing about this, but I find so many people, you know so much about Jewish life in this country.  What people forget is that when many of the boats from Germany docked in this country, they went to New Orleans.  And that’s where they got off the boat and came north.  So every distinguished Jewish family left a part of the family somewhere in the South.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=379.0,398.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e We had Laymans, we had Dreyfusses.  All in Jackson.  I was supposed to marry Margaret Dreyfuss.  I would have been richer, but probably not happier.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor example, when I finally went to — and I’m going to have to clarify this — to what we called “the temple” in Jackson.  It was not a synagogue yet.  It later became a very fancy synagogue in the right part of Jackson.  But when I went to the temple, which I did when I was about ten or 11, my teacher was Lehman Engel.  Does that mean nothing to you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=398.0,429.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Lehman Engel, of course, was both, was a Lehman, and his mother was a Lehman — therefore, he had the name Lehman Engel.  And he came up here, studied with Roger Sessions before I did, and then became the great conductor of musical theater, the musical workshop.  And that was my Sunday school teacher.  I mean, I’m calling it Sunday school, because it — one did.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=429.0,446.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  The Jewish community was a very small community, but it consisted of some of the most powerful people in town. \u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Where was Lehman Engel?  Where did he originate?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Lehman Engel was also in Jackson.  We grew up together.  This is, this was part of it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=446.0,460.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And Lehman, Lehman went off to the University of Cincinnati Conservatory to study.  He was a pianist, serious composer, and went off to study, eventually, with Roger Sessions.  And when — he was here in New York when I came to New York.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe, the Engel family was not much, but the Lehman family….","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=460.0,476.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  There was a family in Jackson, for example, which — I’m doing a little Southern history for you — the Hart family.  Mrs. Eva Hart Lewis.  She was a Hart by, and she was a Lewis by marriage, but she was a Hart by birth.  An old, old Southern, much, much before what you people call “The Civil War,” which we call “The War of Northern Aggression.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Or “The War Between the States.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=476.0,499.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Or “The War of Northern Aggression.”  Forgive me. Sometimes, “The War for Southern Independence.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I used to walk to school in Jackson, and there’d be sitting out, in front of this gorgeous Southern mansion, which was now sort of getting to be a little big within the city limits in Jackson, this man in his Confederate uniform.  I mean, it sounds preposterous, I know.  He was a man in his 90s by then.  He would be sitting out on the front porch, and I’d always have to go up and talk to him, because we knew the Lewises.  And he knew me.  A Jewish general.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=499.0,527.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Now, one forgets that Lincoln — we never forgot this — that Lincoln would not allow Jews to be commissioned in the Union Army.  But there were lots — lots and lots — of Confederate officers who were Jewish.  Did you know that?  The rabbis from Baltimore went and pleaded with Lincoln to allow Jews to be commissioned, but he said no.  See, that’s the kind of thing we were taught in the South.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=527.0,551.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e So, no — this, the Southern Jewish community, we were always aware of the fact that we were Jews, but it meant nothing.  I mean, any notion that, you know, we were affected by any kind of prejudice — out of the question.  Absolutely out of the question.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere were the Lewises, who was, who were very, very wealthy.  And the young lady was in my class in high school, and she’d be driven to school, and the only chauffeur in town, in her big Lincoln, and she’d study until the last minute before jumping out to come to class.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=551.0,576.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And there were the Dreyfusses, who were a large house on one of the main streets.  There were a few who had the usual thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor example, the large department, the department stores in Jackson were not owned by Jews.  There was the Emporium, there were Genigman’s — no.  The Jews were not.  The banks, yes.  More and more and more.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=576.0,596.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"My father’s insurance company — he was the only Jew in it.  But they were trying to make him an Episcopalian.  He, he decided not to become an Episcopalian.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut I never experienced any kind of prejudice of any kind.  Yeah, I know it’s hard for people to believe.  But this was a different kind of community.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=596.0,612.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Did you hear anything in the synagogue or in the community along the lines of synagogue music, of cantorial, whether…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I wish I could answer that more, more — what should I say? — more conscientiously.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=612.0,628.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Let me say this — the, the temple, as it was called, was on the wrong side of the tracks.  This would have been regarded as a pre-Civil War Temple, except there was nothing pre-Civil War left in Jackson.  Jackson was totally destroyed.  It was called “Chimney Town,” because there was nothing left except smoke and chimneys.  Because as, as your general went from Vicksburg on to Mississippi and to the Atlantic Ocean, he destroyed everything.  So there was only one lookout post left in Jackson.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=628.0,653.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e So we had this old temple, which was a very, very, very old, so it must have been built right after the Civil War.  Frankly, I’ve forgotten, if I ever knew.  And it was very Reformed, and I don’t know exactly how to define it.  And there was no synagogue.  Now, later, there was a very, very beautiful synagogue, a marvelous synagogue, though, on the right side of the tracks, and it became very prestigious.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=653.0,672.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e The, and it was, it was just taken for granted — it was there, and if you went, you went.  There were Friday night services, but the Sunday school was usually on Saturday morning.  And we called it the Sunday school even though it was Saturday morning.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=672.0,686.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  I also — by the way, I must confess to you — would you want a confession under these conditions?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Because all my friends were going to Sunday schools on Sunday, I went with them, too, for a while.  I went to the Baptist Sunday school.  I joined the, the Boy Scout troop of the First Baptist Church, ‘cause the Jewish, the temple didn’t have a Boy Scout troop.  It did, later.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=686.0,703.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e See, all of this changed.  Remember — you’re going back now, 75 years, 70, 75 years.  It all changed very much.  Jackson was then a very small city.  It was not even the largest city in Mississippi.  It was the capital, but not the largest city.  Meridian was the largest city.  Jackson was then about 32, 35,000.  It’s now half a million.  You know, it’s a, it’s a Sun Belt city — it’s full of Howard Hugheses and the Zeemans, and things like that, and you can hardly recognize it.  And if you want anecdotes about that, I can tell you that later.  It’s totally transformed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=703.0,732.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e I was there a couple of years ago to receive an award from the Mississippi Arts and Letters Foundation.  This even gives you money for the award.  And there’s a, there’s a new museum, there’s a new everything.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=732.0,745.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e I was walking — would you like an anecdote about how the South has changed?  My wife and I went down to the museum one morning.  It was a very, very hot and wonderful, hot Mississippi morning.  We parked our car behind the museum, and we were the only car there.  No one goes to the museum before it’s opened.  We went in because we had to arrange for the ceremonies that night.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=745.0,764.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e We came back — a lady had parked her car beside us.  And she saw our New Jersey license, and she said, “Would you like directions?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, “I really don’t need directions.  I’m a native.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe said, “What do you mean?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, “Well, I was brought up here.  I went to school here.  This is where my parents are buried.  This is my hometown.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe said, “Really?”  She said, “We’ve never met a native before.  We’ve been here five years, and we regard ourselves as natives.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=764.0,783.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  That’s how it’s been transformed.  There are very few of my people left down there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  We’re going to be recording, for the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, a work of yours, a setting of the 150th Psalm, with the American Boy Choir, either next fall or…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Whenever they can.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=783.0,802.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  …the following spring.  No — they have two dates, because it depends upon whether they go to Russia for a tour or not.  So we have one date or the other.  We’ve settled it with Litton.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI’d like you to tell us a little bit about the piece.  How did it come to be written?  And it’s an unusual piece, because it’s in more than one language, isn’t it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBIT:  It’s in four languages.  I’d be delighted to tell you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=802.0,821.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e I — unfortunately, the credit is not mine.  When I had to write a piece, when I was commissioned to write a piece for the American Boy Choir, and for a consortium, including three choirs, I didn’t know what to do for a text.  The idea of finding a text that would sound reasonable and appropriate for a bunch of young men, young boys, ranging from about ten to 16, I didn’t know where to go for a text, and I didn’t want something cute.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=821.0,841.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e So I called my old friend, John Hollander, the poet and the critic who had written the text for my Philomel, and whose poetry I had set, and who’s one of the most erudite people I’ve ever known.  And I said, “What do we do for a text?”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=841.0,853.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e He said, “Look — I’m not going to look around for a text.”  He had edited a collection of things for young people.  He said, “These are not appropriate for a serious piece of music.”  He said, “I’ve always wanted to write a macaronic version of the 150th Psalm.”  He said, “And I’d like to do it in terms of the chronology of the Bible itself.  From the Hebrew to the Greek to the Latin to the German to the English.”  And he gave me this incredible text.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=853.0,880.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e My problem was that, although I do know Latin and I do know German and I do know English — I don’t really know Hebrew at all, but I’ve heard so much and I’ve been around so many people who can help me.  But the Greek I had to reject.  I just couldn’t cope with that.  I had no sense of the Greek, and I couldn’t get enough help.  So I dropped the Greek.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=880.0,896.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e So, it’s in four languages — Hebrew, Latin, German and English.  And it is a mixture of these, and I didn’t create the mixture — John did this.  There’s an interaction of the sounds; there’s an interaction of the meaning.  Glossis is exactly that — it’s a kind of commentary.  It’s a commentary from language to language; it’s also a commentary about the music — climaxes created by the music.  There’s all kinds of fragmentation of the text","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=896.0,922.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Unfortunately, I couldn’t really convey this to the boys at that time.  They were very confused.  A word would be split between, of course, and let’s say three voices.  It would be divided, a single word, but it would be a word in which there were syllables in common between the two languages.  Much of that they had difficulty with.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=922.0,941.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e The performance eventually — by the way, I must tell you — was very good.  And I was delighted, because it proves something about what one doesn’t know about boys’ choirs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI originally suggested that if they had to double — and that’s a common thing for an a cappella chorus — double it with instruments.  Friedolph, Erduv, Shöenburg, was always doubled by instruments.  So I suggested two flutes and two clarinets — that was the obvious thing for sopranos and altos.  They doubled it with brass, and it was terrific.  Absolutely terrific.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=941.0,967.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And regarding the text itself, all I can say is that it’s about as intricate as anything I’ve ever had to deal with.  John Hollander is a remarkable man.  And he gave me — I set it very much as he suggested it.  The text was printed out in ways that you go from language to language to language.  And interpolating these languages — that’s the only word I can use.  And that’s how it came to be.  It’s not my idea — it was his, entirely.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=967.0,996.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  So they performed it with the brass doubling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  They performed it with the brass doubling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I must point out to you that John does know Hebrew very well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah, I was going to ask that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  John grew up in an old, if you wish, Jewish tradition.  He went to Hebrew school, and he knows, he knows the language — he knows all of these languages.  He also knew the Greek, which I just couldn’t touch.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=996.0,1014.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Are we, I mean, I don’t even know — are we going to record it with the brass, or a cappella?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I don’t know myself.  I thought it was…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Has it ever been performed a cappella?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, it has been performed a cappella.  There is, it was performed by the Phoenix Boys Choir.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd by one of these strange coincidences, I now have a student at Juilliard, a composition student, who is an undergraduate sophomore, who sang it with the Phoenix group.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Uh-huh.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1014.0,1035.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  And they did it a cappella.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Is there a preference?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  But I never got a tape.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Is there a preference?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I thought this was terrific, with the brass, to be honest with you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It doesn’t overpower it.  It doesn’t overpower it?  The brass.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBIT:  Oh, on the contrary.  It just supported it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey did it extremely — Jim Litton knows how to handle boys choirs.  I don’t.  He knew what to do.  He did it remarkably.  I was completely surprised by the effect of this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1035.0,1055.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"NESS:  Were people surprised by the fact that the young boys sang a piece of yours?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well, no.  This was at Princeton.  You know, I’m known in Princeton.  They expected much worse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd the truth is, that there were no problems of any kind, and it was done in a huge, huge, huge celebration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1055.0,1070.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e But I was surprised by the effect of the brass.  I go back to that because I was so accustomed to the conventional thing of doubling with woodwinds under those conditions.  And he had known already that this would work.  He had tried it with other works.  And it came out absolutely wonderfully.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1070.0,1084.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  The only trouble is, the tape is unusable, because it was in a huge hall in the summer.  You can’t hear it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  What ensemble, specifically?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  It was a group from Boston.  I forgot the name.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  I’m talking about numbers of brass.  Was it…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, it was just four.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  …four horns, or…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Just four.  Everything but — in other words, it was the usual quartet, without the tuba.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1084.0,1099.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"NESS:  Okay, okay.  Wow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Now, is, and what was the third chorus that has done that piece?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  It was some children’s choir in Glenellen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Oh, Glenellen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s boys and girls, though.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yes.  Well, I don’t know if they ever did it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But they were supposed to?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well, they were listed as part of the consortium.  I know that Phoenix did it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1099.0,1115.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  But Glenellen was boys and girls.  It’s a different sound.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yes, exactly.  I never heard it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But they sing with the Chicago Symphony, which is what they need, because it’s the, but it’s not — it’s good, but it’s not, it’s a totally different sound, because it doesn’t have the…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1115.0,1128.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Well, of course I had no idea of this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …it depends what you want.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  The Phoenix Boys Choir never sent me a tape. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I discussed this with this young man who sang it with the Phoenix group, he said they had a great deal of difficulty with the pitches.  Well, the American Boys Choir had no problems with the pitches.  They virtually sight-read it.  But they had difficulty with the rhythms, and I can assure you that there are no complicated rhythms — I’m not writing seven in the time of three, for this group.  This is a relatively….","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1128.0,1151.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Their difficulty simply is in how to make a rhythmic ensemble.  By the very nature of the text, they were constantly, constantly completing each other.  They were constantly picking up from each other.  They weren’t accustomed to this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is a group that can sight-read Max Reger.  They can do chromatic music of the late 19th, early 20th century, and with beautiful intonation.  They can sing marvelous German.  But they’re just not accustomed to singing a triplet that sounds like a triplet.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1151.0,1174.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e So, when I said to one of the older boys, after it was all over, and I broached it for the first time, I said, “Why, why do you have rhythmic troubles?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey said, “It’s the same old story.”  They said, “We’re never trained in rhythm.  We have pitches, we can solfeg all over the place, we can sing anything.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1174.0,1188.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  And they can — they can sight-read anything.  But not when it comes to rhythmic notes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s very strange.  Because it’s a school, right?  It’s a boarding school.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, it’s a real school.  And it’s a choir school.  I mean, it’s a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I mean, the main focus of everything there is…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Absolutely.  It is indeed.  It is the, as far as I know, the only school of its kind in the country.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1188.0,1204.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  It is, as far as I know as well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah.  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  Because these others, even Phoenix, there, there’s San Francisco, but those are all after-school activities.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, no, this is a full, this is a full boarding school.  I was on the Board of Trustees there for years, and they’re phenomenal kids — there’s no question about it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1204.0,1218.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  So this piece — and this is very important, I mean, as far as the sound is concerned.  I mean, this piece really is written for the particular sound of a boy choir, as opposed to children, mixed children.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Absolutely.  Two sopranos, two altos — four parts, all the way.  No divided choruses, no attempt to get any kind of a mass sound or anything of that sort.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1218.0,1235.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  And so, they’re not Anglican male countertenor sound or…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, no, no, no.  As Jim Litton calls it — what does he call it?  The “Hoot Sound.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  The Hoot.  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  The Hoot Sound of the British.  No, absolutely not.  They avoid the Hoot Sound very, very much.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It gets boring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Is it more of a German sound, or…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1235.0,1250.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  The German boy choir sound.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBIT:  Yeah, perhaps a little bit, but it’s very much on pitch.  It’s a very focused sound.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  It’s, I mean, I only have to characterize it.  They have their own sound.  They’re a remarkable group.  I mean, they, put them in a room, and they’ll sight-read.  You put music in front of them, and if it doesn’t have any great difficulties rhythmically, they can simply sight-read.  I mean, Max Reger they sang absolutely magnificently.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1250.0,1272.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Is this 150th Psalm built on a row?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBIT:  Well, first of all, you see, that’s the kind of thing I would prefer to leave to the listener.  Whether it’s a so-called “12-pitch class series” or what-have-you — and Schöenberg, you know, objected to the word “rows.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1272.0,1289.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e I mean, after all, if we’re talking about Jewish composers, there was a man named Arnold Schöenberg who meant a great deal in my life.  Not only was I here in New York, I arrived in New York a few months after he arrived in New York.  And I met him 1934.  And he meant a great deal to me.  His music even meant a great deal more to me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1289.0,1306.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  So, and he hated the word.  He saw this word “row” and he, I think he thought it meant row.  He was having a great deal of trouble with English, at that point.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd he turned to me — well, he, through someone, Martin Bernstein — does that name mean anything to you?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1306.0,1320.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, Martin Bernstein, who was teaching at NYU, where I went, that wonderful Washington Square college, in the ‘30s, it’s an incomparable institution, incomparable milieu.  And here was I, a Southern boy in the middle of all of this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1320.0,1332.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Martin Bernstein knew that I had this great interest in Schöenberg.  And said to me one day, he said, “You know, Schöenberg” — whom he had met, and whom he had talked with at Chautauqua — “doesn’t like this word ‘row.’  He thinks, maybe he thinks it means row, but he doesn’t like the idea that it implies left to right, that it implies some sort of thematic, motific thing, which so demeans the whole conception.”  He said, “Could you give him another name?”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1332.0,1343.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And I said, “Well, the obvious name for it is ‘series.’”  That’s still the best name.  It’s a series.  It’s a serial relation — it’s a series.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe took it back to Schöenberg, and Schöenberg talked to his friends, and after all, I was only a little American boy of 17.  And what did I know?  And his friends said, “Oh, it has to be a trick.”  You know, series means a trick — a metric series, an algebraic series.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1343.0,1373.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And he came back, and I said, “Look — that’s not true.  I mean, a serial relationship is well-defined for all kinds of possible fields of activity.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo, but he doesn’t like series.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo, then I gave him “set.”  Set, at least, had no particular connotations in music.  And it wasn’t right, because a set, strictly speaking, is not ordered — it’s a collection.  But he picked it up, and then, by calling it 12-tone set, we tried to overcome that difficulty.  I prefer “series.”  And that’s how it all began.  But that’s how my life with Schöenberg began, back in 1934.  And…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1373.0,1402.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  And that relationship continued on?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, indeed it did.  Though I never saw very much of him, personally.  Do you want to hear the story?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I would love to, because we’re doing a number of things of Schöenberg.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well, of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I mean, first of all, his Kol Nidre, for example.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, naturally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It was commissioned by Leo Beck Temple in Los Angeles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Absolutely.  And I know it well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1402.0,1420.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  As a matter of fact, the, the rabbi who functioned in that Kol Nidre — I’ve forgotten his name, now.  Do you know it offhand?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I can’t remember either.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well, as a matter of fact, he was with me when I went out to give the dedicatory address, in 1974, for the beginning of the Schöenberg archives, which now, sadly, have been moved back to Austria, for which I’ll never forgive the Schöenbergs.  But after all, we were the country who…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  How did that happen?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1420.0,1440.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  From USC, from the University of Southern California.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well, exactly.  Well, I mean, here was Schöenberg.  He arrived here with his wife and small daughter, Nuria, whom I knew very, very well, indeed.  They arrived…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Is she still in this country?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  She’s married, isn’t married to…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  She married Nono, and then Nono died.  Luigi Nono.But the fact is that, that he was welcomed in this country.  For a moment, he thought of going to Russia, you know.  And, and a wonderful conductor friend of his, named Fritz Stiegre, whom I got to know, and who eventually came to this country, as most of the refugee composers did, said, “Don’t come near Russia.  You don’t know the trouble you’ll be getting into.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1440.0,1475.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  So, he came here, and we welcomed him, and no one — and after all, no one, in no other country was his music played as widely, was he as much written about, was he as studied as he was in this country.  And for them to go back to Austria is something for which I’ll never forgive them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Now, how did that happen?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well, I’ll tell you.  Do you really want to know?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Hmmm-mmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Look — I know his family…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I mean, I’ve heard all the various stories…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1475.0,1491.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e No, no, the story is a very simple one, from one point of view.  From another point of view, it’s a horror.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI mean, here were people who came here — the sons were born in California.  They’re as Austrian as I am.  They’re native-born Americans.  They, they were California kids, in every sense of the word.  But — and Nuria was two or three when she came here.  I’ve forgotten now.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1491.0,1511.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e I arrived in New York just a few months after they came to New York.  And through Lehman Engel, this strange coincidence, interviewed him when he arrived at the boat.  But Lehman knew no German.  And there are any number of anecdotes involved with this, but when he said, when, when Lehman welcomed him at the boat, and he, he couldn’t understand any English, he thought that he was, that this was a welcoming committee.  All that it was Lehman Engel, who was reviewing him for Musical America.  But that’s hardly of any significance.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1511.0,1541.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  What is significant is he came, he finally arrived in New York, he was — taught in Boston for a while, met Martin Bernstein at Chautauqua, played tennis with him, spoke German with him, and heard, from Martin Bernstein, about the fact that we have student orchestras in this country, which were and are very remarkable.  He was so touched by this he decided he wanted to write a piece for the NYU’s Washington Square String Orchestra.  It was a wonderful string orchestra in those days, conducted by Philip James, an extraordinary musician.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat were going to say, Darren?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  There was a piece in G or something…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1541.0,1572.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  That’s the so-called Suite in G.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Yeah, okay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  And Schöenberg said, “I want to write for this group.”  He didn’t want any money, he didn’t want anything.  And he wrote.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe all got very excited.  I was going to be a senior that year at NYU, and I was, therefore, more or less the delegate.  I finally have the score from Martin Bernstein which says to me, “Who was so responsible for all this happening.”  I wasn’t that responsible — I was the go-fer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1572.0,1592.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e But I saw Schöenberg was living at the Ansonia Hotel, right here on Broadway.  And he wrote this piece for the NYU String Orchestra.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUnfortunately, he had a son-in-law who then — by that time, was working at Schirmer’s.  And when the man at Schirmer’s, Karl Engel, heard that Schöenberg was going to give his first piece written in this country to a student orchestra at NYU, he said, “That’s preposterous.”  I mean, this is an important historical event.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1592.0,1620.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Klemperer is out in Los Angeles, conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, or whatever it was called in those days.  Klemperer would like to have the piece.  They gave it to Klemperer; Klemperer played it there; Klemperer brought it to the Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, the following year, and NYU never played it.  It was something that hurt Martin Bernstein very much. But this was a very special piece.  It was Schöenberg’s Bridge to Europe.  It was a suite in G, originally called — he had various subtitles for it — it’s the olden style.  All of that was dropped.  It became A Suite for String Orchestra, which no one ever plays.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1620.0,1650.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Because, as Martin Bernstein says, if a student orchestra had played it first, student orchestras would be playing it.  It was played by Klemperer — it’s not, you know, it’s not the kind of work that professional orchestras are going to play.  It was written for a specific, pedagogical purpose. Schöenberg wanted to show these people how to play, in contemporary terms, how to deal with modern contemporary — if you wish — devices, techniques for strings.  But it was not in his latest style — it was not a 12-tone work.  And he just didn’t want them to have to confront a music which would have been unfamiliar, where they couldn’t use their ears as accurately as they might have otherwise.  It’s an extraordinary work which never gets played.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1650.0,1686.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  And Schöenberg stayed here, as you know, only for a very short time.  His bronchitis caught up with him.  He wasn’t going unnoticed — Juilliard offered him a position; other places did.  He went out to California because of his, of his bronchitis and his physical condition. And he came back to New York, and I saw him on a few occasions when he came back to lecture, but that was it.  So I didn’t really see much of him.  I got to know Mrs. Schöenberg, and the children very, very well indeed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I went out and delivered this address in ’74, which was his hundredth birthday, to inaugurate the Schöenberg collection at USC which was a marvelous, marvelous collection. And they got a better offer from Austria. Now it’s going back to the country where if they had stayed, they would not have survived.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And that’s what it boils down to, a better offer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT: Well, I mean, USC simply threw up their hands. They couldn’t match this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1686.0,1736.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  And of course, you know what Austria is doing?  They’re putting on a month of celebration, with all the most famous conductors, and they have it out in a castle in the country.  And of course, they’re doing this, and that’s, that’s…\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  A whole Schöenberg celebration they’re putting on?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah, it’s a great celebration. And people such as Paul Zukofsky, who would give their life for this thing, out there in California, and any number of my other friends and colleagues, are just left out in the cold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Did you know Zeisl?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Of course I knew Zeisl.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  How are they related?  The son married the, the daughter married the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Don’t, don’t, don’t get me involved in that.  I always forget who’s who.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1736.0,1765.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  I can’t remember.  A son…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  There are son-in-laws and daughters…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  The son married the daughter, or the daughter married the son.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  There’s Greisler, who is a son-in-law.  There’s — don’t forget, the Kolishes come into this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  And Kolish was a brother-in-law.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI’ll tell you an anecdote about that, if you’d like to hear about that milieu, as a little American boy.  In about 1940 — I’m guessing the year, it doesn’t matter — I was, I was already teaching in Princeton at that time, but I was spending a lot of time in New York.  Schöenberg came to New York, and I saw him then, to conduct a performance of Pierrot Lunaire at Town Hall as part of the, what used to be called “The Friends of Music,” the “New Friends of Music” — we used to call it “The New Friends of Old Music.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1765.0,1798.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And they, he was going to, he was going to have a rehearsal, and I was told I might attend.  Because Sturmann was going to be the pianist, and by that time, I knew Sturmann very, very well.  And there was Kolish playing the violin — I knew Kolish.  And I had met all these people through Roger Sessions, by the way, my teacher.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1798.0,1815.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e So, I was sitting in the Town Hall, I was virtually the only one there, with my little miniature score of Pierrot Lunaire.  And suddenly, at a given moment, Kolish turned to Schöenberg and said, “Schöenberg” — and this was all in German, but fortunately, I understand German.  He said, “Schöenberg, there’s a harmonic here, and I’m not going to play it the way you notated it.  I can play it in another way with a different, a different fingering, and it’s much more comfortable for me, and I can make a much smoother transition.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1815.0,1839.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Schöenberg said, “No, no, no, no.  Do it the way I wrote it.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKolish said, “But Schöenberg, turn your head, and I’ll play it both ways, and see if you can tell the difference.  And one is much more comfortable for me.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSchöenberg said, “No, no, no.  Do it the way I wrote it.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow, I don’t know how he finally fingered it.  I couldn’t see.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1839.0,1855.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e But later, I said to Sturmann, “Sturmann, look.  Explain something to me.  Kolish is the brother-in-law of, of Schöenberg.  He calls him Schöenberg.  Does anyone call him Arnold?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe says, “Well, sometimes, his wife does, but he doesn’t like it.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow, that, that characterized that milieu that for me, better than I ever could have had it otherwise.  Didn’t understand.  And that’s the way it was.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1855.0,1874.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  There’s a piece Schöenberg wrote that, it’s part of a larger work called The Genesis Suite.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, I know it well.  Yeah, sure.  He wrote it for Nat Shilkret.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s right.  And I just located Shilkret’s son, or grandson.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, really?  It must have been grandson, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Wayne Shilkret.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah, that’s the grandson, I think.  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah, grandson.  Because we’re going to record some of that for the Archive.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1874.0,1896.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Oh, that’s wonderful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And very few people know about that.  I mean, you’re one of the very few who would know about it.  What, you would obviously know something about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  About The Genesis Suite?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, yes.  Well, Nat Shilkret commissioned a number of mainly refugee composers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Who was Nat Shilkret?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1896.0,1913.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Oh-hoh.  Oh-hoh.  Oh, that’s funny.  You know, that’s another milieu, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNat Shilkret was the most celebrated — what can I say? — arranger, entrepreneur.  His, he had a brother named Jack Shilkret, who was better known around New York, because he had one of those factories where people wrote music all day long.  And then he could slip them into any newsreels, slip them in anywhere whatsoever.  A lot of arrangers worked for him.  I don’t know if you’re aware that that ever existed.  It doesn’t.  There are still agencies, but not — you know, now, they do it, of course, electronically, and they don’t have to worry about people writing for big orchestras.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1913.0,1946.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Nat Shilkret ran a very big band at one time.  He was a big band conductor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Here or in L.A.?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Both.  Both.  He was here originally.  The Shilkret family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd he, then he went out to where he was a musical director for various movie studios.  And he suddenly felt that he should do something for all of these émigré composers who were staying out there. And he commissioned each one to take some element of the Bible, some aspect of the Bible.  Stravinsky, you know, wrote one of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Stravinsky wrote the…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1946.0,1974.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Cain and Abel, was it or Babel?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No.  Babel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Babel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  That’s part of that suite?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  That’s part of that suite, absolutely.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Oh, so that’s with men’s choir…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah.  It’s a big, it’s a big, it’s a big orchestral thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  …and a very large orchestra.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, indeed.  And so was Schöenberg’s a big orchestra.  But no chorus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Schöenberg has chorus or not?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No.  No.  It’s an instrumental introduction.  It’s been published individually as an instrumental introduction.  He may have intended more — I don’t know.  But he didn’t.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1974.0,1996.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  And then, did Shilkret write something himself for it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Shilkret wrote something himself, Alexander Tansman wrote something — all kinds of people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Toch?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Toch wrote something.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s five.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  He was in California.  I’m not going to be able to supply you with — I don’t know whether Milhaud did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Milhaud.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I think Milhaud did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And Tedesco.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, yes.  Castelnuovo-Tedesco.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=1996.0,2012.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  I think that’s the seven.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yes.  As a matter of fact, now that you’ve mentioned this, I guess the only one who wasn’t Jewish was Stravinsky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  That’s funny.  I hadn’t thought of that before.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  There are only, that’s right.  Seven, for the seven days of the week.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Right.  Now, that was well-recorded, as you know, at that time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yes.  But of course, it’s an obscure thing.  You can’t…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2012.0,2029.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Oh, it’s on 78s, it was on 78s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It was on 78s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  In fact, Alex Ringer told me he, you know he had this funny kind of memory.  He remembers that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, he has all kinds of memory, does Alex.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That it was a red — remember those red, red records?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yes, it, yes, it was a red.  That’s right.  The grooves were red.  That’s absolutely correct.  The body of the record was red.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:   Yeah.  Right.  Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2029.0,2047.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  ‘Cause I have a copy somewhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It was apparently performed with the Jansen Symphony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT: Oh, Werner Janssen had a symphony, all right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  In Los Angeles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Werner Janssen in Los Angeles had its own symphony, and he was a very wealthy man.  In other words, he made it.  This is money he made as a musical director.  He probably was at one time Warner Bros. in one of the large studios.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2047.0,2064.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Yes, and his brother, Jack Shilkret, was sitting back here, hiring all my friends as arrangers to write music for any given event.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So you know, you knew, intimately, many of these émigré Jewish composers from Germany, from Austria?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2064.0,2077.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Well, I must tell you, that I have written a chapter on this, which I wish I could supply you.  The Harvard, the — well, I don’t know whether this, this, can some of this be cut, if I’m indiscreet?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  There’s a man at Harvard now, the chairman of the department, who’s German, Naiman Brinkman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah, who…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2077.0,2094.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e You know, who wrote a book on Schöenberg — Opus 11 — who has a tremendous conscience about being a German.  It’s an extraordinary kind, and it’s a genuine thing, I can assure you.  And I taught at Harvard after I retired from Princeton, and I was confronted by this all the time.  He was just, he can’t believe that Germany ever behaved the way it did. So, to come to terms with this, he’s taken various roads.  One of them was to ask a number of us to write about this country at the time that the German musicians came — and not only the German; all refugee musicians — came here, émigré musicians came here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2094.0,2127.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And it turned out that, for example, and many of the people who wrote about it were themselves émigré musicians.  What it was like to be an émigré musician; Walter Levin of The LaSalle Quartet — people of that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut it turned out, I was the only musician, I was the only person of my generation left who was sitting here when it all took place.  When Schöenberg came here, when the, when the Shenkerites came here, when everybody came here.  And I knew them all.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2127.0,2148.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"This was mainly through Roger Sessions.  I mean, this could be anybody, such as Arthur Schnabel, or Klemperer, and so forth.  And thanks to Roger, who had spent most of his life in Europe after he got out of college or after he stopped teaching at the Cleveland Institute, I met them all and got to know some of them intimately, like Sturmann, and…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2148.0,2165.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"NESS:  Because of Sessions, you’re saying?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yes, because of Roger Sessions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo they asked me to write this chapter, and I did.  I mean, Krenek, for example, who was not Jewish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Who was an émigré musician I knew intimately.  Yes, most of them I did.  I, there are very few…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  What about Paul Dessau?  Did you know him?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2165.0,2180.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Well, Paul Dessau I knew.  I’ve got a Paul Dessau anecdote in the book.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Please.  Yeah, tell us, because, well, Dessau’s a special case, because he went back to…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  He went back to East Germany.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …Communist Germany.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Of course he did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was the ISCM — the ISCM festivals were transferred from Germany, and from France and from Europe to this country all through the War, of course.  And it must have been — don’t try to give me the year, but let’s say 1941.  Around in there.  There was the big ISCM festival here in New York, and one of the concerts was at the 42nd Street Library.  And I went there to hear a rehearsal of Dessau’s piece.  It was a great piece for two pianos and percussion that was — I don’t remember the name of it now, but I have it in my article.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2180.0,2218.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And at one of the rehearsals, at a break in the rehearsal, Dessau and Roger — they took Roger by the arm and he was walking him back and forth, screaming at the top of his voice, in the halls of the 42nd Street Library, which are rather resonant, “Should I be writing music like this at a time like this?”  All of this in German, which fortunately, I understand.  “Should I be writing, is this the thing for me to do, you see?”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2218.0,2241.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  So, when the War was over, it took him back to East Germany, and he never wrote music like that again.  But he became the great composer of East Germany, a very conservative, old-fashioned composer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHans Buchner was here, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  So you’re saying that his music after he went to East Germany was more old-fashioned?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, he began writing symphonies in the acceptable East German fashion.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2241.0,2257.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"NESS:  Because just recently, they made a recording of this piece called Haggadah that he wrote, I think, in the ‘30s, probably.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBIT:  Yeah, that was in the ‘30s.  That was before he came here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  That was in the ‘30s.  It was very progressive for then.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well, he was very much non-traditional.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2257.0,2271.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  I mean, he was commissioned by the Park Avenue Synagogue here to write some music for a Friday night service.  And — as were many other composers.  Which leads me to the next, slightly different arena here. But there have been times, there have been eras in history when there at least was an attempt to interest the, what would have been called, in the Kennedy days, “the best and the brightest,” or the most prominent, the most serious, the most intellectually advanced composers, to contribute something back to the synagogue, musically.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.  I mean, we don’t know for sure that — some musicologists think that Beethoven was approached to write, you know…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2271.0,2321.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/111","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  …for the opening of the Vienna Synagogue.  I’m not convinced, I mean, as a musicologist.  I think..\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I’ll leave that to you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I think it’s a lot of — but whatever it is.  And in France, of course, they went after all the big people, and they got, from Halévy, from Offenbach, from Meyerbeer, everybody, something for the synagogue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah, they were Jewish, after all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  They were Jewish. In America, there were a few attempts at this kind of approach, mostly — well, there were some in Los Angeles, with the Leo Beck Temple.  There were some in New York.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Lazare Saminsky.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2321.0,2353.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/112","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Lazare Saminsky.  And even beyond that.  There were interesting people who were not devoted, who were not associated at all with, with the synagogue — in fact, who may not even have been Jewish.  So, people like David Diamond…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Roy Harris.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …Roy Harris, and Gretchaninov.  Yeah — Roy Harris.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I had no idea.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2353.0,2368.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/113","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Douglas Moore.  These were all commissioned by…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  He certainly wasn’t Jewish.  I can vouch for that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  No, that’s for sure.  But some pretty progressive people, I mean, without regard to one being too progressive harmonically or that sort of thing.  But, by and large, I mean, there are a number of composers — and you are one of them — who were not motivated internally to contribute to the synagogue.  Now, do you have any thoughts about why that is?  I mean, is it…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2368.0,2394.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/114","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Nobody ever asked me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Haydn’s answer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, nobody ever asked me.  Arthur Berger, I remember, contributed to a collection.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Also at the Park Avenue Synagogue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Was that the Park Avenue Synagogue?  Well, of course.  Well, we all went to the Park.  Kurt Weill wrote a piece for the Park Avenue Synagogue, and I remember going to hear that.  That was one of the nicest of the pieces, I remember.  One of the most interesting of the pieces.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That was a Kiddush.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2394.0,2414.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/115","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, a Kiddush — that’s it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut nobody ever asked me.  I mean, there was never any question about my being Jewish.  Look, and I lived through Hitler in New York.  You know, you couldn’t have lived through Hitler in New York without being Jewish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe, I mean, Arthur Berger, I knew Lazare Saminsky very well.  I knew Lazar Weiner very well, Yehudi Wyner’s father.  It just, nobody ever mentioned it, and I would have been delighted to do it.  Believe me, I would have.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2414.0,2440.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/116","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Hugo Weisgall said the same thing, you know.  We both, Hugo was…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well, Hugo, of course, was one of my oldest friends in the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Hugo and I started with Roger very much at the same time.  Hugo was living in Baltimore at that time, and would come to study with Roger in New York, and I had the same…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Wait, I’ve got to stop you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  What?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2440.0,2459.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/117","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Hugo, you would say Hugo was, Hugo Weisgall, we’re talking about?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yes, of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  You would say that he studied formally with Roger Sessions?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, absolutely.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But he never said that.  He always made off as if he was totally self-taught, for some reason.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2459.0,2473.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/118","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e No, well, that’s ridiculous.  I mean, I knew when Hugo came here for lessons with Roger.  And I think, if you look in the books, they’ll say he studied with Roger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI met Hugo through, through his studying with Roger.  I mean, I just went to study with Roger after I graduated from college.  I was sent there by a dear lady named Marion Bauer, and there was Hugo, there was Miriam Gideon — there’s somebody else who, of course, you would know a great deal about.  And David Diamond, of course.  We all started more or less at the same time.  A few of them started a year earlier, when he was teaching at the, at a school here in New York — the Dalcroze School.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2473.0,2505.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/119","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  But I went to study with him privately and studied with him from ’35 to ’38, before I joined him at Princeton.  And it was all through that period that I met all these musicians.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  He in turn was a student of Bloch, right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  He was a student of Bloch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  There’s some sort of continuum.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2505.0,2517.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/120","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e He taught with Bloch at the Cleveland Institute.  There was an explosion there about, with Bloch — there was always an explosion with Bloch.  And he went to Europe and lived in Europe until Hitler went — there’s a terrible story about that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRoger was living in Italy.  Very Italian-oriented — he learned to speak fluent Italian.  And he also spoke fluent — he was a remarkable linguist.  Not, not orally, because he was a very slow speaker, but his knowledge of the language was simply quite extraordinary.  German, too.  He, all of his Shenker was annotated in handwritten German — try that sometime.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2517.0,2548.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/121","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  And Klemperer convinced him to come live in Germany, where the action was.  So, he was in Germany when Hitler came to power.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Who was?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Roger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Roger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBIT:  And Klemperer was with him.  And you know, Klemperer was a converted Jew, and that was a very, very rough time for people like Klemperer.  ‘Cause they would walk out in the street as allegedly non-Jews, watching what was going on.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2548.0,2566.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/122","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Klemperer had converted to Christianity?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yes.  They all had.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  As they, as many American conductors did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  As many — as Schöenberg did, but then converted back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut Schöenberg didn’t convert to Catholicism, the way Mahler did.  He converted to Lutheranism.  Mahler said he went to the Catholic church because the music was better.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2566.0,2585.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/123","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"No, they had all converted.  I mean, that’s an exaggeration — many of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Had Hugo spoken to you with regard to his Jewish writings or anything?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Hugo had spoken to me with regard to practically everything.  I mean, I knew Hugo for years and years and years.  We were together in so many connections.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2585.0,2599.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/124","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"NESS:  I mean, did he speak to you about commissions for synagogues?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Hugo said something similar to what you’ve said.  But to carry this a little further, I mean, here was Hugo Weisgall with a position as chairman of the faculty of…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Queens.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  No.  But also, the cantorial school.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, yes.  Of course.  Yes, yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2599.0,2619.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/125","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  The son of a very important cantor.  And so, involved in certain ways, and yet, and not compositionally involved.  That’s why — not since his early days.  And he used to say to me — well, he was 75 years old, and he said, quote-unquote, “Don’t you think it’s extraordinary that no synagogue has ever commissioned me to write a service?”  Until, of course, finally, at the age of 78 or 79, the Temple Emmanu-El did, and then you know what happened?  They canceled the commission after they saw that it had some dissonance is in it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, really?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Oh, yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2619.0,2650.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/126","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Who was the musical director at that time, if I may deign to speak?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Well, it’s the cantor, is…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I don’t think Lazare Saminsky was there then.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Oh, no.  Saminsky was dead.  I’m talking about…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, I know it wasn’t Saminsky at that time, but…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Howard Nevis is the cantor there.  I mean…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  That’s interesting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But there really is no music director there.  I mean, there’s an organist.  It’s, it’s…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2650.0,2667.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/127","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  You know, it came up, and I’m going to be very scanty with regard to this.  It came up when I was out in Los Angeles.  And this, the rabbi, whom I’ve forgotten, who is the one who was responsible for the Kol Nidre.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Who was that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSPEAKER:  Leonard Beerman at Leo Beck?  Is that who you’re thinking of?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2667.0,2680.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/128","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Well, this is a long time ago.  This is like in the ‘40s.  No, late ‘40s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, no, no.  No, not for…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Well, when was, when would the Schöenberg, would the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, the Schöenberg Kol Nidre, that would have been…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Early ‘50s?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  …that would have been in the late ‘50s, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Late ‘50s?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Wait a minute — hold on.  Schöenberg passed away when?  ’54, wasn’t it?  ’52?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2680.0,2694.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/129","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  ’52, no, I’m sorry.  I said late ‘50s, I meant late ‘40s.  Yeah, I’m sorry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Late ‘40s.  It was shortly after the War.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  He passed away in ’51.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  If I heard the name, I’d remember.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, I can’t remember the name either, and he was the one who had originally done the, this, the Kol Nidre.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But the Kol Nidre is an interesting piece.  We’re going to record it.  Now, for example, that’s recorded, in the orchestral version, with — I guess it’s Bernstein, right?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2694.0,2714.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/130","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  It was Bernstein.  Yes, right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  But it, but it has never been recorded in the way he really intended it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, I know.  I’ve heard that only once.  I heard that at Kennedy Center.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  With a student group.  That’s the only time I’ve ever heard it in the original form.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  In the original form.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  That’s another aspect of all of this. That, that piece was published by Belka Baumart.  When Schöenberg came to this country, nobody would publish his music.  Though he had great friends at Schirmer’s, they weren’t going to.  They published a few of his little pieces, they published his piano concerto and his variations, of course, but in compressed score, which was almost unusable.  And so, too, with his violin concerto.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2714.0,2747.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/131","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And Belka Baumart, this wonderful man named Belka — I can’t remember his first name now.  I wish I could.  Who decided he wanted to pay back this country for what they had done for him.  He was a German refugee boy.  And he had a wonderful little publishing house.  Not music publishing — he knew nothing about music.  But he very much, like Paul Fromm, decided he wanted to do something for American composers.  And so, he began using his engraving techniques to publish music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2747.0,2773.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/132","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  He published, he has the Kol Nidrei of Schöenberg, he has the Survivor from Warsaw, he has the string trio — all of those pieces were taken by Belka, when nobody else would publish them.  Those terribly important works.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Schöenberg actually — did he ever talk to you about the Survivor — about not the Survivor; about the Kol Nidre?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2773.0,2789.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/133","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Schöenberg?  No.  I didn’t see, I didn’t see him in those days.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  In those days.  Because he, apparently, I mean, well, it wasn’t Schöenberg — it was Leo Beck Temple’s commissioning of it, was indicative that they thought, in the late 1940s, that this would actually be the direction of the mainstream of synagogue music.  And that’s why they commissioned it.  I mean, they didn’t commission it on some crazy fluke — they commissioned it to be, to substitute…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2789.0,2811.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/134","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  To establish a precedent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yes.  Of course, it never caught on, because it’s too progressive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  And very few people know the work.  The piece was never published as such by Belka.  He sort of gave it out on a rental basis.  But he published others of the works.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2811.0,2825.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/135","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  You see, there are two people — he, Belka, and Paul Fromm are two people who’ve been too long forgotten about what they’ve done for us all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  You mentioned Fromm.  I mean, what about his brother, Herbert Fromm?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  His brother, Herbert Fromm, who — I’ll be indiscreet and say, his brother Herbert was never very friendly to most of us, because he thought Paul was commissioning the wrong people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2825.0,2846.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/136","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  It’s interesting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, it’s true.  I mean, I’m being very frank about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou see, when Paul Fromm came — do you know anything about the background of Paul Fromm?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Oh, yeah, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  You know a great deal about Paul.  Well, you know, Paul decided, after he had made a certain amount of money, as he said to me once, “If I’d only stayed in New York instead of going to Chicago, I would have gotten much richer.”  But he went to Chicago and he became a very dear friend.  I’ve written about Paul in a dedicatory album.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2846.0,2868.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/137","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I was just going to say.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2868.0,2881.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/138","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e So, and then, when he decided how it was — but he started out, quite typically, with a foundation which his old German friends were his advisors.  And these were people who would never look at my music, or at most of our music, even Roger Sessions — any of those.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2881.0,2897.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/139","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e So, when we were asked to contribute to it, I simply wrote back and said, “Look, I see no particular reason to do this.  Because, I mean, I know you’re not interested in my music.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd they, there were a lot of people — I’ve forgotten their names now.  There was some man who lived in Brooklyn who believed that music had gone all wrong, and he wrote this very pure parallel of fifths — almost organum music.  Wish I could remember his name.  I know people who studied with him.  He wrote a book on counterpoint, and lead the way back.  And it wasn’t even, it wasn’t even Volksian counterpoint, it wasn’t even species counterpoint.  It was manneristic, of a very strange kind.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2897.0,2926.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/140","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  In any case, suddenly, Paul realized what he had been doing.  In about 1957, he changed the whole direction of the foundation, and we became very, very close friends.  And he, he did more, and nobody else has done so much with so little, but he didn’t have that much money.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Were you commissioned by him?  Were you commissioned by him?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2926.0,2942.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/141","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Oh, many, many times.  Yes.  Sure, my Vision and Prayer came out of Paul Fromm.  He commissioned all of us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So what you’re telling us is that there was a, in other words, his brother is a different kind of composer, and that’s…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  His brother was a different kind of composer, who tried to convince Paul.  And Paul told me this frankly — we were very close friends.  We still are very close to his widow, who’s suffered every kind of tragedy imaginable.  That family has gone through hell.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2942.0,2966.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/142","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  By the way, the older brother, in California, has passed away already, yeah?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, you mean the one who had Christian Bros. Wine?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah, he…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Was it Christian Bros. or Paul Masson?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Paul Masson.  I’m sorry, you’re right — Paul Masson.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  ‘Cause he, we were just talking about this before you came around.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah, right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  He’s not living anymore?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, Paul Masson, no, I’m sure they’re not","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2966.0,2982.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/143","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  He was the oldest.  But he was living two years ago, or three years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I’m trying to remember when I saw him last.  You see, they had a terrible tragedy.  Their daughter — I mean, after Paul died, Mrs. Fromm is still there — Erica Fromm is still living in Chicago.  Their daughter was burned alive in their house.  It was just a terrible, terrible thing, and she’s never been quite the same.  So, we’ve talked with her on the phone, but we haven’t seen her since.  The whole family sort of came apart.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=2982.0,3003.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/144","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  But one of the, one of the sons came to Princeton as a graduate student.  Grandsons, I should say.  So, I’ve kept in touch with them, and we talk to him.  So, I’ve really lost track of the Fromm family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  We just recorded a piece yesterday of Herbert Fromm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah.  That’s good.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3003.0,3016.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/145","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  And it’s an interesting piece.  I mean, this is not — but…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, Paul had great, Paul was very upset that his brother Herbert, when he felt this way.  He said he was going to help these composers, and he began to go on when people would probably call and say that Herbert…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Herbert Fromm, for example, wrote — I was just telling Joseph, before you came along — that, for example, he wrote a piano sonata that Eugene List recorded.  It’s a forgotten kind of part of his career, because most of his associations were more gebrauchsmusik music…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3016.0,3043.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/146","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Absolutely.  Absolutely.  And he was in Boston all those years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  And Paul didn’t really have very much, and he really didn’t approve of what Paul was doing.  He thought he was subsidizing the wrong music, had gone off the wrong way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Well, he was very close — I guess, one of his major beneficiaries was Ralph Shapey.  Paul Fromm.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3043.0,3063.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/147","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Yeah.  Well, that’s only because he was in Chicago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  He was there, and he helped Ralph with his performance group out there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  With the Chamber Players.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah, exactly.  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut, I mean, Paul, he distributed it all over, as you know.  He had this, really, a tiny bit of money, you know.  The foundation was a very small foundation.  He wasn’t that rich.  His wife was still teaching at the university.  But he, he distributed, and very carefully, and, and helped a lot of people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3063.0,3090.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/148","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  What about, there are some names that have just come to mind — not come to mind; come to attention — in the last few years, because of this series, that I’m sure you’re familiar with — the Entarte Musik, which is ongoing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3090.0,3106.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/149","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  I mean, I thought, I thought it was a finite series of CDs, but it isn’t.  It’s, there is no real end to it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  And so, they can raise money for each one.  And there was a composer by the name of Julius Berger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT: I only know the name.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s all I know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  That’s all I know is the name, and it’s one of these things out of the past.  There were so many names of this. You know, what people forget is, that, forgetting the great names — I mean, the ones that I can name.  And some are not so great, but people who became very great here.  For example, Ari Hitor Kahn, Stefan Wolpe, of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Tell me about Wolpe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  All right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  You knew Wolpe, I’m sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT: I knew Wolpe very well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  We’re doing a number of Wolpe things.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3106.0,3140.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/150","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, what happened was this — that when Wolpe arrived in this country, Marion Bauer, who had been a teacher of mine at NYU, and was really the reason I went to Washington Square College.  She had written a book called Twentieth Century Music, which was the first book in English on 20th century music, which even had musical examples, which was unheard of in those times.  The assumption was that the reader could read music.  And there were examples, there was examples from Schöenberg and from Krenek, and from, you know, obviously, the, the 20th century composers who had gotten some attention.  And we became very, very close.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3140.0,3170.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/151","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e In fact, I did reviews for free for her magazine, called Musical Leader.  I did it for two years, in order to go to a lot of concerts for nothing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd when Wolpe arrived in this country, she heard about him, and you’ll find that article in Modern Music magazine.  She went, but she couldn’t speak German, and he could speak very little English, so she asked me to go along.  And I met Stefan when he came to this country, just a few — maybe a few months after he arrived — I can’t be sure now.  And I’ve known him ever since.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3170.0,3194.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/152","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, of course I knew him.  I knew all of his disciples, including Ralph, who was a disciple for a certain length of time, and many, many, many others.  Of course I knew the Wolpe circle very well.  I was never part of it, but I certainly knew them very well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3194.0,3207.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/153","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e But Stefan — well, you know, that was a phenomenon.  You know, after the War, he, he was the most sought-after teacher in New York.  He founded a school on Second Avenue — I think it was called The New School for Music, or something such as that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWell, Ralph Shapey and a man named, I think, Johnny Karissi, a jazz trumpet player, became involved in a fist fight on Second Avenue.  You know, they became, it was a battlefield.  And Isaac Nemiroff.  You know, Bobby Mann, the first violinist of the Juilliard Quartet, until he retired very recently, was a student of Stefan Wolpe’s.  Oh, yes, I…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3207.0,3239.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/154","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"NESS:  Did he teach more than composition, or was it…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No.  He was a composition teacher.  He was teaching his own thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou know, first he said he had studied with Schöenberg — it turned out not to be true.  But I couldn’t blame these people, who, when they came over here, he was virtually unknown.  All anybody knew him for, if they knew him at all, was not going to help.  It was for a, a Stalinist worker’s song from Berlin, the name of which, Forward but not Forgotten — Farbitz aber Nicht Vergessen.  Yeah, which was published in all the books here, published by the Stalinist press.  So there were those people who had nothing to do with him.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3239.0,3274.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/155","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e After he did that, he went to Vienna, and he said he studied with Weber.  Nobody knows. Sturmer [?] says that’s not true.  But you know, their in-fighting was terrific.  And then he went to Israel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had a very funny experience with him in Israel.  Because I had just been to a meeting in Israel, where, where everything was in Hebrew, but we had these translator things on our, on our ears, of course.  And I was getting very tired, and it was very hot, even for a Mississippian.  And I went downstairs, where people were fighting to get cold drinks.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3274.0,3300.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/156","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And there was Stefan, who had been visiting his wife’s parents in Tel Aviv, who heard about this meeting and came over.  And he was downstairs, and I said, “Stefan, good, it’s wonderful to see you.  Because you can talk for me, you can get me a drink in Hebrew.  I don’t speak any Hebrew.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said, “I never learned a word of Hebrew.”  He said, “I was here for, you know, for the time I was in Israel, all I did was speak German.”  He had nothing but German students and German friends.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3300.0,3320.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/157","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  When he came over here, he was sort of known as an Israeli composer.  He had written some Israeli songs, as you know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yes.  Those were the song settings, those were the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Ten Songs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  Hans Nathan, the musicologist…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, I knew Hans very well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3320.0,3336.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/158","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Oh, wait a minute.  That’s right — at Princeton.  Oh, you can tell us something we wouldn’t find out elsewhere.  Tell us about Hans Nathan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well, I mean, it’s very hard to talk about Hans Nathan, because he was one of the most disliked people that ever walked this earth.  He made a nuisance of himself.  You know, it was nothing very profound, but it was very annoying.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3336.0,3351.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/159","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Hans came and lived in Princeton.  I’m not quite sure why he picked on Princeton after he retired.  He came…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That was after he retired?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  That was after he retired.  He never had any relation to the University.  But he was constantly being made, he was making demands on our library and on everyone else.  It was a terrible nuisance.  And though I saw him, he was working on Dallapiccola’s music at that time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3351.0,3369.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/160","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Did you ever think, I mean, before that, he wrote a book on…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Minstrel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Minstrel.  Minstrel music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Of course.  Absolutely.  That was it.  That was what he was going to show me that he was an American.  I think it was at the University of Indiana — wasn’t he at Indiana University then?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Probably.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I’ve forgotten.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Something like that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3369.0,3381.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/161","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And he came to Princeton and made a terrible nuisance of himself.  And then, the next thing I know, I was up at, I was in Cambridge, I was at Harvard, and there he was again, making a nuisance of himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe got along fine, you know.  He, he was working on Dallapiccola, and he was not prepared to deal with this music at all.  And he wrote an article on Dallapiccola somewhere, and I helped him with it, and that was that.  But, you know…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3381.0,3403.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/162","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Well, I’ll have to send you — you know, he commissioned — oh, commissioned is the wrong word — he invited, I don’t know, about ten composers, ten composers, among whom was Wolpe, Copland, Dessau…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Kurt Weill.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3403.0,3417.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/163","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  …Kurt Weill, Toch, Tansman.  He used to take two or three…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Copland, I think.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Copland was one of them, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  He mentioned him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Two or three Palestinian folk songs.  Because this was before the state.  And create a setting.  As artistically as they could, without, for piano and voice, but, but simple in the positive sense of the word. In other words, it’s still, it could somehow be an art song. Anyway, it’s called the Hans Nathan Collection. It’s just…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT: I didn’t know about this. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It was just finally published. But only musicologists would get the AR editions. \u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  That’s an old enemy of mine, you know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3417.0,3456.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/164","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  So, I mean, it’s a man who got into a lawsuit with a friend of mine about AR editions — this had nothing to do with what we’re talking about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But anyway, it’s interesting, because he publishes, he was obsessed with this a little bit, Hans Nathan.  And he, in the introduction there, he prints the correspondence back and forth to himself and some of these people, like Wolpe and Milhaud and so forth.  And why they, how they took it on as a challenge to set this simple little folk tune — I mean, a typical Hebrew Palestinian folk tune…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3456.0,3481.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/165","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Well, I’d love to see those.  I’m glad you told me about that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s how I know Hans Nathan.  Because we’re recording, for the Archive, some of the ones — like Copland wrote two.  And Dessau wrote two.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, I’ll look into this.  I’m sure we have them in the library.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  It’s an AR edition.  It’s called — I forget the name of it.  You look at, edited by Hans Nathan.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3481.0,3499.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/166","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Well, I can look under Hans Nathan.  Yes, of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But Wolpe, of course, is one of the most important ones.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah.  No, well, you know, Stefan cut a great figure around New York at that time.  He had a great deal of influence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd there were, of course, a number of scandals.  When his Man from Midian was played by Mitropoulis, and Mitropoulos and wanted to have the orchestration changed.  And then, of course, his famous symphony, which Lenny Bernstein was supposed to conduct, and finally didn’t.  Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg had to take over and conduct it, and they had to, basically, re-bar it.  And that was a great scandal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3499.0,3530.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/167","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  What would it take for you to write a piece for the synagogue?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  About 30 years ago.  That’s what it would take.  I’m so overburdened at this point — look, I’m supposed to be finishing a second piano concerto, which I’m so far behind on.  And I’m losing my sight, if you want to know the truth.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3530.0,3546.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/168","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e You see, there’s a great joke about — I don’t think this is very funny — about Schöenberg and me.  In the midst of my many operations which I’ve had over the last couple of years — at one point, I went into cardiac arrest.  Well, you know the famous story of Schöenberg’s cardiac arrest.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWell, allegedly, out in Los Angeles, he had cardiac arrest while he was writing his string trio, and they stuck a needle into his heart and revived him.  And that’s supposed to be a particular moment in the string trio.  This, I assure you, is apocryphal.  But that’s, that’s the story.  But he did have a cardiac arrest.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3546.0,3574.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/169","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  And then, of course, you know, his sight failed so badly that he had to write on, basically, on what is butcher paper, with these huge lines.  That I have seen.  That’s why the string trio is such a mess, and no one could figure out what half the notes were.  And the man who was editing it for Mr. Balkey…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Is that true?  Because of his eyesight?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3574.0,3588.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/170","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah.  For Balkey.  And Balkey knew no music, and he hired a man named Kurt List, who, because he was Viennese, was allegedly an authority, and he didn’t know what to make of the music.  And they’re just loaded with mistakes.  And then Jacques Minot brought out a revised version of it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3588.0,3601.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/171","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  I saw that.  How could anyone make it out?  You know, he erased with a crayon on — and since I’m also having trouble seeing these days, I’m, I’m imitating Schöenberg.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s not too funny.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I don’t think it’s funny, either.  Some people do.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3601.0,3616.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/172","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e The situation today in synagogue music — whether it’s synagogue music or with Jewish music outside the synagogue — still remains, though, largely a case of one-offs — of special cases of composers of your stature addressing something for the synagogue.  And then, the other side — well, actually, it’s a, you alluded to it in the Fromm story.  Because then there are those people who are gebrauchsmusik composers.  But that’s not what we’re talking about.  We’re talking about the level of addressing the liturgy, even outside the synagogue.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3616.0,3652.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/173","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I mean, why do you suppose, why is it, if I asked you why is it that no, no, or very few, American composers — all right, let’s say, especially a Jew, who happens to be a Jew — has seized upon the Hebrew liturgy as a source, in the same way that Verdi seized upon the Requiem?  Not for the church, but for an artistic basis.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3652.0,3679.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/174","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e No, I think one of the reasons is because they don’t feel at home with it.  They don’t know it well enough.  I think that’s one of the reasons.  I think they simply don’t know of the Hebrew liturgy.  I certainly don’t.  And I don’t know that many of my colleagues do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I look, after all, unfortunately, for better — when we were, when we were speaking on the telephone, you were talking about the American popular composers who were Jewish.  We haven’t gotten around to that, and I guess we won’t.  But I was made aware of that when I was in Israel.  Because, you know, they weren’t aware of this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3679.0,3704.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/175","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And I was on a panel of Jewish composers from all over the world, and it began with someone saying what it is to be Jewish.  And I’m happy to say that an Israeli composer got up and said, “I accept Hitler’s definition.  Let that be the end of that discussion.”  So I was rather grateful for that.  So we were all Jewish composers.  You know what he meant by that.  I mean, look — we’re Jewish composers because, you know, we’re Jewish.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3704.0,3723.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/176","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  But then came the issue which surprised them very much.  They had no idea — most of the Israelis, and people from other countries — how many of the American — call them what you will — composers for the musical theater or for Broadway were Jewish.  They weren’t even quite sure of Irving Berlin.  And when I reminded them that Irving Berlin had written an Easter Parade and a White Christmas, they were a little shocked.  But then we went through the others, and you know, it’s very hard to come up with many names, right down through my dear friend Steve Sondheim, you know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yes.  Or…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3723.0,3754.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/177","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  There are…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Well, you know, the time that you put me onto Sondheim when you gave me like — I spoke to him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Oh, I remember that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Remember that?  That’s a long time ago.  It was 1989.  And I asked him to write a piece.  We were going to commission him.  To write a piece however he wanted, without any restrictions whatsoever.  You know the story?  For — so take, for example, Sim Shalom.  But that is an easy text, you know, grandiose piece, at the end of the service.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3754.0,3780.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/178","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: And he said, he said, “Look, Mr. Levin.  I’ll be honest with you. There is no plot.  There is no plot.  And…”.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  There is no theater.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  “There is no theater.  And I wouldn’t know what to write.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah, I understand this.  I understand this in the case of Steve.  Yes, of course.  And…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Stephen Sondheim was, was your pupil.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3780.0,3797.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/179","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Oh, he was my private, my last private pupil.  I haven’t taught anyone privately since.  Yes, we are very close friends.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Are you serious?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Oh, so you — oh, wow.  I didn’t realize that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBIT:  When he got out of Williams College, he had, he was given money to go anywhere he wanted to go.  Since Williams is a college, and doesn’t have a graduate school, he could go to any graduate school he wanted.  Believe me, I’m not being coy about this.  I have no idea why he chose to come work with me.  This is back in the early ‘50s.  No, I’m serious about this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3797.0,3820.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/180","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  And he, we had nothing, he had nothing to do with popular music.  But when he found out I’d had the background in popular music that I did, we did occasionally…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  What about this background in popular music?  ‘Cause you were also known, I mean, as a, as one of the authorities on the history of American popular music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3820.0,3835.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/181","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e I’m not an authority.  I lived it, I played it, I arranged it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou know where I grew up.  In Jackson, Mississippi, when you grew up, I started on the violin, and soon discovered it was socially much more acceptable to play clarinet and saxophones.  I played every kind of popular music — New Orleans jazz, but pop music, arrangements, and everything else.  And, and I know every pop tune between about 1926 and 1933-4.  I kept up with it after that, and then lost all contact with it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3835.0,3859.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/182","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  But there is a tremendous influence, isn’t there, or crossover, with, let’s say, what was Yiddish theater music?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Of course there was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And influence on…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Were we together at that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  At Merkin Hall that day…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s right.  That’s when I had you…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  When we discussed this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …at the symposium, yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3859.0,3875.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/183","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And you know, and who was it?  It was Stanley Green, I think, who said that, that, Rich, that who was it?  Cole Porter, who was one of the non-Jewish composers, said to him that whenever he wants to come out with some sort of a bar, he’d always think of Jewish music that he knew.  And I don’t think Cole Porter was, had any Jewish influence in his life, otherwise.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3875.0,3890.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/184","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  He wouldn’t have.  No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No.  But he did it.  And you figure, and you know, You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To — I can think of any number of Cole Porter songs which — My Heart Belongs to Daddy — which have what some people would obviously regard as sort of an obvious Yiddish influence.  And, and it’s certainly there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3890.0,3906.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/185","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e I mean, the, I don’t know where — you know, when does it become — I think, again, it just became a great tradition for, for our American, American boys to write, you know, at that particular stage, to write for the musical stage or write pop tunes.  It’s very hard.  I mean, for the Broadway, for the Broadway musical, there are obvious names.  Cole Porter is one; Vernon Duke is another, who were not Jewish.  But most of them were.  Take it or leave it — it happens to be a fact of life.  And it’s continued to be that way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3906.0,3931.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/186","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"NESS:  Would you come up with a good reason for that, or…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, I don’t, I don’t presume to know the reason.  It became simply one of these things that one did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut there are plenty of pop song writers who are not — there’s Harry Warren, there’s Richard Whiting, who are great, you know, great pop song writers, who are not.  But for the, for Broadway, and even for Hollywood, too.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3931.0,3947.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/187","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Yeah.  You see, I think that’s — the difference is maybe — and I don’t know how you feel — but with Broadway, as opposed to just pop songs, but particularly the medium of Broadway show, in terms of its influence from Yiddish theater, from Jewish theater…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3947.0,3962.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/188","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  From Yiddish theatrical writing.  Maybe even more so than individual popular songs, [INAUDIBLE].\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  And from the Viennese musical, too.  I mean, after all, the Frimls and the Rombergs came out of, came out of Vienna, came out of Europe.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3962.0,3977.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/189","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  And they were Jews.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  They were Jews.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  In fact, who else — Lehar was the only one who wasn’t.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Was he not?  I don’t know about Lehar.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  No, no.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I know about Romberg and Friml, and many others.  Of course.  And I can’t think if there some other one who came out who then went out to Hollywood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Oscar, what’s his…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah, no, there’s a famous one, like second only in fame who went to Lehar, who went to Hollywood.  I can’t think of it, either.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  No, no, the…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3977.0,3996.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/190","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Yeah, The Gypsy — one of them wrote The Gypsy Baron; the other one wrote The Gypsy Princess.  So whichever one is the other one, I don’t know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Oscar Strauss, I think, is the other one.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, no, that’s one of the Strausses.  The other one.  The Strausses were Jewish, of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No, I think that, you know, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting point, certainly.  And I mean, you’ve got them.  You know, you have Richard Rodgers coming out of Columbia, and then people like that.  They were mainly New York boys who were writing for the theater, and who got, and who were very much involved in the theater at a very early age.  As Steve Sondheim was and is.  Or as Cy Coleman.  We could go on and on.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=3996.0,4028.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/191","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eNESS:\u003c/strong\u003e I just remember…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4028.0,4043.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/192","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  August Cates, you know, and everyone thought, “What a strange name, Coots.”  How do you become Coots?  You become Coots from Katz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Many of those people grew up either, you know, if not consciously — I mean, this is the question, anyway — is whether they, whether even the subconscious existence in New York of the Yiddish theater, which was so pervasive down on Second Avenue over there…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yes.  Of course.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4043.0,4062.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/193","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: …didn’t have some second-generational influence on Broadway.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  It could very well have been.  You’d have to talk to my wife about that.  She knows all about this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe grew up — her — for example, I became aware of this through her, because her father was a very celebrated surgeon whose, who numbered among his clients Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor.  She grew up with all of those people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4062.0,4080.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/194","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  No, the, by the way — those are two of the best examples of what I’m talking about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Of course.  Of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  People who came, who transferred…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Absolutely.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …basically uptown.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Absolutely.  Of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd but even so, but down in Jackson, Mississippi, we were playing all of these things, we were arranging all of these things.  We were all very much influenced by them, we were all writing pop tunes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4080.0,4096.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/195","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  You wrote pop tunes?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Of course.  Hundreds of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Where are they now?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well, I know a lot of them are only in my head, or on sheet music that got lost.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI must tell you something.  When I, after the War, when I wasn’t sure what to do — I had lost a great many years to the War, when I was doing nothing related to music.  I came back to New York. I was trapped into writing a musical comedy.  I would call it a musical comedy, as they did in those days, musical theater.  Which, which I wrote, and which was auditioned, and which we got involved, and all these fancy agents and the whole thing.  And that’s when I learned that was not, that milieu was not for me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4096.0,4128.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/196","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Three of those songs have been published through my dear publisher, Peters, as three theatrical songs.  They’re nothing but three show tunes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Recently, or…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  They’ve been done a great deal, and there’s a whole score, which is there, and I was, that was very much part of my milieu.  And then I decided I just couldn’t take it, and I went back to the academic.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4128.0,4145.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/197","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"NESS:  Well, you couldn’t take it because of the politic of the thing?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Well, and the whole, and the whole, the auditions, the agents, the — it was just too demeaning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs a matter of fact, one of my, one of my colleagues, who was then a very well-known young movie director and movie scriptwriter here in New York — you must realize, there was much of that going on in the late ‘40s here in New York.  Many movies were being made here in New York.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4145.0,4166.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/198","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  I wrote a score for a film with all the Broadway stars.  And that was not a pop score, and that was another.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  But the film was made?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I had the New Music String Quartet for my, for my first chairman and my orchestra.  I had the best orchestra I ever had in my life for my film score.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut no — that was not pop.  But I wrote, I wrote this, this musical…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4166.0,4183.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/199","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"NESS:  But that film score is out?  I mean, it was…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  The film score is gone and dead.  I don’t want to hear about it again.  I had to write it in practically no time, and, and it was the kind of physical effort I never want to….\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut my pop tunes were published.  Three of them were published by Peters — they are being done all the time.  And nobody does them right of course, but they are being done.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4183.0,4201.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/200","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  And there’s a whole score.  And I did it, and it was supposed to be for Mary Martin, to tell you the truth.  It was, it was her, her husband asked for it, and it’s a long story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Now, when we hear the 150th Psalm…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Right.  You won’t hear the pop tunes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: …we won’t hear any, any…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4201.0,4215.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/201","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, people always insist that it’s there.  Of course, I know they’re imagining this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou see, I do have, I did have at one time, my only claim to celebrity was that I knew all these songs — words and music.  Not because I’d ever learned them — because I had lived them, I’d played them.  You know, so much of what we are is what we were, you know.  This is my informal and formal conditioning.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4215.0,4235.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/202","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  And they, but I don’t know, I don’t — look, I still know these.  I still keep them.  You know, one remembers.  That’s what one remembers, above all.  It’s my Madeline and Tea.  And I know a tremendous number of pop tunes.  I don’t know whether they have anything to do with my music or not.  Who am I to say?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Well, this has been fascinating.  When we record the 150th Psalm, I hope you’ll come to the recording.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4235.0,4253.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/203","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  I wouldn’t miss it for the world.  Just be sure that I’m still alive, that’s all.  Yes, be sure to do something about my eyes.  Do something about time marching on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Well, we hope…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  I could sing As Time Goes By for you, but I shouldn’t.  I can even sing the verse.  Nobody sings the verse of Time — everybody knows As Time Goes By.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4253.0,4271.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/204","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBITT:  Then that remark — see, there’s a remarkable songwriter for you, named Herman Hupfeld.  And people only know As Time Goes By.  He wrote some other remarkable songs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe story of Herman Hupfeld should be told sometime, and he was Jewish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  He was?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Yeah.  He lived in New Jersey.  He lived with his mother.  He was a man about 300 pounds, and he used to come over to New York almost every day, and he would play with, you know, the way these people used to play the sort of little piano, and he would sing these songs.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4271.0,4296.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/205","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e And he — when he would come to New York, he would sing his songs.  Everybody knew him.  He was not a, he was not a silly man at all.  He was a very ingenious and a very clever man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe producer would say, “Herman, but you write wonderful songs.  But we can’t have you write a whole score.  Your songs are too clever, they’re too sophisticated.  And you must write something simpler.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4296.0,4311.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/206","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBABBITT:\u003c/strong\u003e So, one day, he wrote a song called Sing Something Simple.  A little ditty that’s sweet and simple.  You get the swing of it soon, ‘cause here’s a tune that any child can sing.  And that was his first big hit.  And the second little show. He wrote a number of other songs.  The only person who ever recorded them well and who ever could do the lyrics was Rudy Vallee.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd As Time Goes By goes back — you know, it was not for Casablanca.  As Time Goes By was written in 1932, to be sung by Francis Williams in a very bad show called Everybody’s Welcome.  It was picked up again.  By the time it was picked up for Casablanca, Herman Hupfeld was long dead.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4311.0,4345.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/207","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BABBIT: He wrote some other wonderful songs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNESS:  Do you ever go to the theater, now?  I mean…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  No.  Who can afford it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut I mean, you know, the verse of As Time Goes By — not the chorus, because, you know, this day and age we’re living in gives cause for apprehension.  With speed and new invention and things like third dimension, we get a little weary of nostalgia.  It’s theory.  See what I mean?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4345.0,4367.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792/transcript/29244/annotation/208","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  We’re going to have to continue this another time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  We certainly must.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  This is a whole other subject which is fascinating.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Thank you very much.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But we have a date for the recording session.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  We certainly do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Thanks for coming.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBABBITT:  Thank you very much for having me here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/43699/file/116792#t=4367.0,4386.02667"}]}]}]}