Milton Babbitt

A composer and music theorist who extended Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique into a rigorous compositional system built on permutations of pitch, rhythm, and dynamics, becoming a central figure in American serial and electronic music. He won a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur "genius" Fellowship, and spent decades teaching at Princeton and Juilliard, shaping generations of American composers even as his music remained deliberately difficult.