![Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements (1955-1956), First Movement [2 of 2 total] @LendallPitts](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8nL5pkmdbc8/sddefault.jpg)
Uploaded July 2010 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
Billy Jim Layton, an innovative American composer of the 1950's and 60's who was well known in his prime but abruptly stopped composing and concentrated on academic pursuits, died on Saturday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 79.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, said his daughter, Daphne Layton.
Mr. Layton, who became the first chairman of the music department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, was widely recognized in his time as a fresh musical voice. He wrote well-crafted pieces in a style he termed "new liberalism," which he described, according to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, as "a new, rich, meaningful, varied, understandable and vital music which maintains contact with the great cultural tradition of humanism in the West."
Reviewing a performance of Mr. Layton's work in The New York Times in 1960, Eric Salzman wrote, "Billy Jim Layton's String Quartet is as vital, as startling, and as overwhelming as if nobody had ever written a quartet before."
Born in Corsicana, Tex., on Nov. 14, 1924, Mr. Layton started out in music as a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist before joining the Air Force and serving in a B-29 bomber in World War II. After the war, he studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, going on to Yale for his master's degree and Harvard for his Ph.D.; his teachers included the composer Walter Piston.
It was at the New England Conservatory that he met his wife, Evro Zeniou, a native of Cyprus, whom he married in 1949.
From 1946 to 1964, Mr. Layton wrote a number of well-received pieces, including "Three Dylan Thomas Poems" and "Three Studies" for piano; and won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship and the Rome Prize Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 1966, Mr. Layton was appointed chairman of the new music department at Stony Brook, which he helped to establish as a dynamic presence on the music scene, bringing in important composers and performers, in a tradition that remains alive today. In 2002, Brian Wise acknowledged the Stony Brook music department as "small but vital" in The New York Times.
In 1992, Mr. Layton retired and moved with his wife to Cambridge to be near his two children, Alexis and Daphne, and two grandchildren, all of whom survive him.
This recording of the String Quartet in Two Movements (1955-56) is by the Claremont String Quartet.
We apologize humbly, profusely, and on our bended knees for the execrable sound quality of this 1950s thirty-three-and-one-third revolutions-per-minute long-playing microgroove recording.
Billy Jim Layton, an innovative American composer of the 1950's and 60's who was well known in his prime but abruptly stopped composing and concentrated on academic pursuits, died on Saturday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 79.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, said his daughter, Daphne Layton.
Mr. Layton, who became the first chairman of the music department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, was widely recognized in his time as a fresh musical voice. He wrote well-crafted pieces in a style he termed "new liberalism," which he described, according to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, as "a new, rich, meaningful, varied, understandable and vital music which maintains contact with the great cultural tradition of humanism in the West."
Reviewing a performance of Mr. Layton's work in The New York Times in 1960, Eric Salzman wrote, "Billy Jim Layton's String Quartet is as vital, as startling, and as overwhelming as if nobody had ever written a quartet before."
Born in Corsicana, Tex., on Nov. 14, 1924, Mr. Layton started out in music as a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist before joining the Air Force and serving in a B-29 bomber in World War II. After the war, he studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, going on to Yale for his master's degree and Harvard for his Ph.D.; his teachers included the composer Walter Piston.
It was at the New England Conservatory that he met his wife, Evro Zeniou, a native of Cyprus, whom he married in 1949.
From 1946 to 1964, Mr. Layton wrote a number of well-received pieces, including "Three Dylan Thomas Poems" and "Three Studies" for piano; and won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship and the Rome Prize Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 1966, Mr. Layton was appointed chairman of the new music department at Stony Brook, which he helped to establish as a dynamic presence on the music scene, bringing in important composers and performers, in a tradition that remains alive today. In 2002, Brian Wise acknowledged the Stony Brook music department as "small but vital" in The New York Times.
In 1992, Mr. Layton retired and moved with his wife to Cambridge to be near his two children, Alexis and Daphne, and two grandchildren, all of whom survive him.
This recording of the String Quartet in Two Movements (1955-56) is by the Claremont String Quartet.
We apologize humbly, profusely, and on our bended knees for the execrable sound quality of this 1950s thirty-three-and-one-third revolutions-per-minute long-playing microgroove recording.
![Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements (1955-1956), First Movement [2 of 2 total]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8nL5pkmdbc8/mqdefault.jpg "Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements (1955-1956), First Movement [2 of 2 total]
Billy Jim Layton, an innovative American composer of the 1950s and 60s who was well known in his prime but abruptly stopped composing and concentrated on academic pursuits, died on Saturday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 79.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, said his daughter, Daphne Layton.
Mr. Layton, who became the first chairman of the music department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, was widely recognized in his time as a fresh musical voice. He wrote well-crafted pieces in a style he termed new liberalism, which he described, according to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, as a new, rich, meaningful, varied, understandable and vital music which maintains contact with the great cultural tradition of humanism in the West.
Reviewing a performance of Mr. Laytons work in The New York Times in 1960, Eric Salzman wrote, Billy Jim Laytons String Quartet is as vital, as startling, and as overwhelming as if nobody had ever written a quartet before.
Born in Corsicana, Tex., on Nov. 14, 1924, Mr. Layton started out in music as a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist before joining the Air Force and serving in a B-29 bomber in World War II. After the war, he studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, going on to Yale for his masters degree and Harvard for his Ph.D.; his teachers included the composer Walter Piston.
It was at the New England Conservatory that he met his wife, Evro Zeniou, a native of Cyprus, whom he married in 1949.
From 1946 to 1964, Mr. Layton wrote a number of well-received pieces, including Three Dylan Thomas Poems and Three Studies for piano; and won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship and the Rome Prize Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 1966, Mr. Layton was appointed chairman of the new music department at Stony Brook, which he helped to establish as a dynamic presence on the music scene, bringing in important composers and performers, in a tradition that remains alive today. In 2002, Brian Wise acknowledged the Stony Brook music department as small but vital in The New York Times.
In 1992, Mr. Layton retired and moved with his wife to Cambridge to be near his two children, Alexis and Daphne, and two grandchildren, all of whom survive him.
This recording of the String Quartet in Two Movements (1955-56) is by the Claremont String Quartet.
We apologize humbly, profusely, and on our bended knees for the execrable sound quality of this 1950s thirty-three-and-one-third revolutions-per-minute long-playing microgroove recording.")
![Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements, Second Movement [2 of 2 total]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8ssmcYKEIXo/mqdefault.jpg "Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements, Second Movement [2 of 2 total]
ABOUT the String Quartet in Two Movements, composer Billy Jim Layton has this to say: The
quartet was written during 1955 and early 1956 while I was at the American Academy in Rome as a
Rome Prize Fellow. It is a composition to which I devoted a great deal of thought and effort and, as
I look back on it, it seems to me that it represents a kind of summation of my artistic development
and convictions up to that point. In it my aim was to achieve the widest range of expression possible
without lapsing into incoherence, by always maintaining the strongest formal control.
The thought and effort expended by Layton on this work has resulted in a Quartet which holds
qualities of extraversion and introversion in an unusual balance, with areas of high emotional
tension and vigor being set off against other statements of the utmost passivity and inwardness,
sometimes almost expressionist in esthetic. A highly complex treatment of rhythmic resources is
always in evidence, whether the music flows along with an ethereal line singing above a lightly
punctuated counterpoint, or steps out in jazzy, muscular syncops. Indeed, rhythm would seem to
be the real heart of this Quartet. In more than one section, it constitutes the entire subject under
discussion. Instrumental color, however, is another string preoccupation of the composer. The
resources of his medium are constantly exploited to the full, bringing into combination writing con
sordino and senza sordino; non vibrato and molto vibrato; col legno plus high and low pizzicato.
There are even trills beginning as whole-step intervals and gradually contracting to quarter-tones.
Every measure of the score bespeaks meticulous handling of all materials; a high consciousness of
the potency of timbre, and a delight in its manipulation.
about the composer:
Billy Jim Layton was born in Corsicana, Texas, in 1924. He studied at the New England
Conservatory of Music in Boston, Yale University, and Harvard. Several scholarships and prizes
were awarded him by these institutions. He has also held the Hertz Travelling Fellowship from the
University of California and the Rome Prize, 1954-57. In 1958, a grant in recognition of creative
work in music was awarded him by the National Institute of Arts and Letters, in connection with
which the present recording is issued. He has received several important commissions, including
one by the Koussevitsky Foundation. Performances of his music for solo, chamber, orchestral, and
choral combinations have been given in many cities of the United States and Europe.
Claremont St ring Quartet
Marc Gottli eb, violin
Vladimi r Weisman, violin
William Schoen, viola
Irving Klein, cello
We apologize must humbly, profusely, and in a virtual paroxysm of self-deprecation, for the poor sound quality of this 1950s thirty-three-and-one-third revolutions per minute micro-groove recording.")
![Randolph Pitts, Sonata for Cello & Piano [3/3]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/90eENyICHxM/mqdefault.jpg "Randolph Pitts, Sonata for Cello & Piano [3/3]
The Sonata for Cello & Piano was composed in 2010 and was dedicated to the composers fiancée. The work is in one movement. This is the third of three parts.")
