20th century
Baroque
Classical
Romantic
20th century
21st century
Solo repertoire
Piccolo
Alto flute
Bass flute
Babbit Milton
Aitken, Robert
Amirov, Fikret
Amlin, Martin
Amram, David
Andriessen, Jurriaan
Arnold, Malcolm
Arrieu, Claude
Auric, Georges
Babbit, Milton
Bacchus, Peter
Bacri, Nicolas
Baker, Michael Conway
Baksa, Robert
Barber, Samuel
Barrere, Georges
Bartók, Béla Viktor János
Baton, René-Emmanuel
Beaser, Robert
Bennet, Richard Rodney
Berg, Gunnar
Berio, Luciano
Bernofsky, Lauren
Bernstein, Leonard
Bloch, Ernest
Bolling, Claude
Bon, Maarten
Bonis, Mel
Boughton, Rutland
Boulanger, Marie-Juliette
Boulez, Pierre
Bourdin, Roger
Bournonville, Armand
Bowen, Edwin York
Bozza, Eugène Joseph
Bréville, Pierre
Brings, Allen
Brotons, Salvador
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Brun, Georges
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Burton, Eldin
Büsser, Henri
Camus, Pierre
Carmichael, John
Carter, Elliott
Casella, Alfredo
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Clarke, Ian
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Copland, Aaron
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Cortese, Luigi
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Dahl, Walter Ingolf Marcus
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DeLaney, Charles Oliver
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Dinicu, Grigoraș
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Dohnányi, Ernő
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Ferroud, Pierre-Octave
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Françaix, Jean
Fukushima, Kazuo
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Genzmer, Harald
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Guarnieri, Mozart Camargo
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Kay, Ulysses
Kelterborn, Rudolf
Ķeniņš, Tālivaldis
Kennan, Kent Wheeler
Kennedy, Martin
Kernis, Aaron Jay
Khachaturian, Aram
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Kodaly, Zoltan
Koechlin, Charles
Kornauth, Egon
Kraft, Leo
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Lavista, Mario
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Martinů, Bohuslav
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Tower, Joan
Uébayashi, Yuko
Varèse, Edgar
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Weigl, Vally
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Wilder, Alec
Williams, Ralph Vaughan
Yi, Chen
Yun, Isang
Zgraja, Krystof
None but the Lonely Flute for solo flute
None but the Lonely Flute for solo flute
Milton Babbitt: None but the Lonely Flute for solo flute was written in 1991 for the American flutist Dorothy Stone, the founding member of the California EAR Unit and a prominent performer of experimental new music.
Dorothy Stone premiered and released the first major recording of the work in 1994 on her album of the same name (None but the Lonely Flute, New World Records).
The title is a witty play on the famous Tchaikovsky song "None but the Lonely Heart" (Op. 6, No. 6). Babbitt uses the song's themes of solitude to celebrate the "alone-ness" of the solo flute. The composition is a complex survey of flute techniques, incorporating multiphonics, whistle tones, key clicks, and singing while playing.
In 1991, Babbitt reflected on the lasting notoriety of his 1958 article, originally titled "The Composer as Specialist" but famously re-titled by editors as "Who Cares if You Listen?" He expressed frustration that he was still more known for that title than for the music itself.
1991 was an exceptionally productive year for the 75-year-old composer. Alongside None but the Lonely Flute, he composed several other major chamber works, including Preludes, Interludes, and Postlude (piano), Four Cavalier Settings (tenor and guitar), and Mehr "Du" (soprano, viola, and piano).
During this late period, Babbitt’s music became known for "maximal diversity," utilizing sophisticated all-partition arrays to organize pitch and time while allowing for more "expressive freedom" in the surface details of the performance.
Dorothy Stone (flute), 1994, Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc. / Orchard
None but the Lonely Flute
Babbit Milton
Milton Babbitt (1916–2011) was an American composer, renowned for his role as a leading figure in Total Serialism and a pioneer of electronic music.
Born in Philadelphia and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Babbitt was a child prodigy in both music (violin and clarinet) and mathematics. He initially studied mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania before transferring to New York University to study music with Philip James and Marion Bauer.
Babbitt extended Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique into a rigorous system called "Total Serialism," where every musical element—pitch, duration, dynamics, and register—was organized into complex mathematical arrays. In the late 1950s, he became a founding director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. He was one of the few composers to master the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, which allowed him to achieve the exact rhythmic and dynamic precision his complex scores required.
He held prestigious positions at Princeton University and The Juilliard School, mentoring generations of composers, including Stephen Sondheim.
Babbitt is often associated with this 1958 article title, "Who Cares if You Listen?" In the text, he argued that modern music should be treated as a specialized research field, like advanced physics or mathematics, and did not necessarily need to cater to the tastes of a general audience. Despite his reputation for cold intellectualism, Babbitt’s music is often described by performers as having a "jagged, jazzy energy" and a playful wit. He was deeply influenced by both the Second Viennese School and the Great American Songbook (jazz and Broadway). Among his key compositions: Philomel (1964) for soprano and synthesized tape; Composition for Twelve Instruments (1948), and Arie da Capo (1974) for chamber ensemble.