Sol Babitz (October 11, 1911 – 1982) was an American violinist, musicologist, teacher, writer, and pioneer of historically informed performance. He married artist Mae Babitz in 1942 and had two daughters, artist and writer Eve Babitz born in 1943 and designer Mirandi Babitz born in 1946. He lived in Hollywood across the street from the family of acting coach Jeff and Hope Corey. His family home was a musical and artistic salon with musicians

Bernard Herrmann Bernard Herrmann (born Maximillian Herman; June 29, 1911December 24, 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely r ...

, Ingolf Dahl,

Harry Lubin Harry Lubin (March 5, 1906 – July 21, 1977) was an American composer, arranger, and pianist. He is known for composing the theme and much of the music for the second season of the television series '' The Outer Limits'' and ''One Step Beyond'' ...

, Igor Stravinsky and poets Kenneth Rexroth, Kenneth Pagent, and Peter Yates and artists Eugene Berman and Vera Stravinsky. It was also where the Committee for Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts met to save the

Watts Towers The Watts Towers, Towers of Simon Rodia, or ''Nuestro Pueblo'' ("our town" in Spanish) are a collection of 17 interconnected sculptural towers, architectural structures, and individual sculptural features and mosaics within the site of the artis ...

from being torn down.

Career

He was born in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. His education began in New York where at the age of sixteen he received the Carnegie Hall Gold Medal for violin. His later violin education included studies with Alexander Roman and Carl Flesch at the

Berlin University of the Arts The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK; also known in English as the Berlin University of the Arts), situated in Berlin, Germany, is the largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research universit ...

and with Marcel Chailley in Paris. Babitz was a violinist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1933–37 under the conductor

Otto Klemperer Otto Nossan Klemperer (14 May 18856 July 1973) was a 20th-century conductor and composer, originally based in Germany, and then the US, Hungary and finally Britain. His early career was in opera houses, but he was later better known as a concer ...

, and then played with the Twentieth Century Fox studio orchestra from 1946-60. His education was also formed by jamming with

Stuff Smith Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith (August 14, 1909 – September 25, 1967), better known as Stuff Smith, was an American jazz violinist. He is well known for the song " If You're a Viper" (the original title was "You'se a Viper"). Smith was, al ...

and

Jelly Roll Morton Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (later Morton; c. September 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a gen ...

in the clubs on Central Avenue in the 1940s. In the early 1950s he collaborated with the poet Peter Yates and the architect Rudolf Shindler to create a concert space on top of Yates's home where the concert series "Evenings on the Roof" introduced works by Béla Bartók, Charles Ives, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky. He worked with Stravinsky as concertmaster of the Ojai Festivals in the 1950s, and collaborated with him on an arrangement of '' Circus Polka''. He played the violin part on a

Columbia Broadcasting System CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

's performance of '' l'Histoire du Soldat''. He also created fingering for Schoenberg. In 1965 he was a co-founder of the "Early Music Laboratory" (EML) in Los Angeles, investing considerable time in research into historical performance practice, especially the music of the 17th and 18th century. He also conducted research into historical instrumental techniques, e.g. for violin and harpsichord. He received several research grants in the early 1960s from the Fulbright Foundation and the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

to travel in Europe and study early music. He released an album and a pamphlet summarizing his views on the playing of Bach called "The Great Baroque Hoax." He died in Los Angeles in 1982.

Recordings

* Charles Ives: Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano, movements ii–iii (Sol Babitz nand Ingolf Dahl f for Alco label, issued c1947)Ives - Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano
- First recording by Babitz and Dahl

References

External links

Biography

Brief biography
(UCLA library)
Brief Biography
(Music And Dance In California And The West (1948) by Richard Drake Sauners)

Writing/Research

Works (@ openlibrary.org)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Babitz, Sol American performers of early music 1911 births 1982 deaths American male violinists 20th-century American violinists 20th-century American male musicians