(b New York, 15 May 1912). American composer and teacher. He studied at New York University and with Piston at Harvard (1936) and has taught at various institutions, including Mills College and Brandeis University. His works of the 1940s were neo-classical, but his harmony became more spare and fragmented (Babbitt referred to ‘diatonic Webern’); in 1957 he began using 12-note serialism, though this soon gave way to an individual cellular technique. His output is small and almost exclusively instrumental. He has been active as a music critic.

The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.