Uploaded July 2022 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Randolph Pitts’ composition “Concerto per pianoforte ad orchestra dedicato ad Anita DeFrancesco” is based on a musical cryptogram (Arthur Honegger system) of the name “Anita Marie DeFrancesco” (pictured here with the composer in a photograph by Amy Halpern, who passed away on 08-15-2022). The movements are i. Moderato appassionato; ii. Amoroso ma non tanto; iii. Largo desolato, andante rirgoroso, allegro furioso (attaca), morendo (calando). This musical cryptogram was then used as the basis for two twelve-tone rows, which the composer then subjected to the usual dodecaphonic transformations (Inversion, Retrograde, Retrograde Inversion). He also made derived rows from these employing the approach used by Anton von Webern in his Concerto (Op. 24) and elsewhere, as well as using pitch set class multiplication as used by Milton Babbitt and others. Randolph Pitts holds Summa Cum Laude degrees in Social Psychology and Egyptology from the University of California Berkeley, and a Masters Degree in Motion Picture Production and Entertainment Law from UCLA. He has also done advanced research for the Department of Psychology at UCLA, concentrating on couples and relationships dynamics. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Association, the organization of university professors of Philosophy. He is also an associate member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Randolph has been a top executive at several entertainment companies, including a ten year stint as Chief Executive Officer of the company that produced Leaving Las Vegas for which Nicolas Cage won the Academy Award as best actor. The first volume of his eagerly anticipated tetralogy of novels will be published during 2022. Pitts' spellbinding novels deal at an unrelenting fever pitch with eroticism, mysticism, terrorism and crime on a global scale. And also… with women and men falling in love. Randolph Pitts has a lifelong interest in the relationship between philosophy, psychology and history. He is the founder and host of the Explore Ecstatic Sensuality podcast, the number one sex and sensuality podcast in the world. Randolph Pitts holds Summa Cum Laude degrees in Social Psychology and Egyptology from the University of California Berkeley, and a Masters Degree in Motion Picture Production and Entertainment Law from UCLA. He has also done advanced research for the Department of Psychology at UCLA, concentrating on couples and relationships dynamics. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Association, the organization of university professors of Philosophy. He is also an associate member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Randolph has been a top executive at several entertainment companies, including a ten year stint as Chief Executive Officer of the company that produced Leaving Las Vegas for which Nicolas Cage won the Academy Award as best actor. The first volume of his eagerly anticipated tetralogy of novels will be published during 2022. Pitts' spellbinding novels deal at an unrelenting fever pitch with eroticism, mysticism, terrorism and crime on a global scale. And also… with women and men falling in love. In a recent interview Randolph Pitts said, “Love is the main theme of my novels. Women and men, women and women, come together because they recognize and come to cherish each other’s uniqueness. They fall in love because they know that the objects of their love are their special people – woman or man. The people who will make life joyful and fulfilling for them. The people with whom they will find mutual fulfillment and enduring happiness.” Randolph Pitts has a lifelong interest in the relationship between philosophy, psychology and history. He is the founder and host of the Explore Ecstatic Sensuality podcast, the number one sex and sensuality podcast in the world. As a composer he has written pieces in all genres, including works for vocal orchestra and soloists ("A Cabaret for Cesare Pavese,” dedicated to the memory of Constance Dowling; "Der Schatten eines Traumes" ; "Das Buch der Blauen Rose,” dedicated to Cristie Strongman and based on a cryptogram of her name. He has also written chamber music (strings quartets and a sextet), a "Concerto for String Orchestra," dedicated to Anita DeFrancesco; the large orchestral piece "Love-- for Three Orchestras and Large Organ,” dedicated to Anita DeFrancesco, a chamber works for vocalist and small ensemble ("Le sang des rêves," dedicated to Cristie Strongman).
Randolph Pitts’ composition “Concerto per pianoforte ad orchestra dedicato ad Anita DeFrancesco” is based on a musical cryptogram (Arthur Honegger system) of the name “Anita Marie DeFrancesco” (pictured here with the composer in a photograph by Amy Halpern, who passed away on 08-15-2022). The movements are i. Moderato appassionato; ii. Amoroso ma non tanto; iii. Largo desolato, andante rirgoroso, allegro furioso (attaca), morendo (calando). This musical cryptogram was then used as the basis for two twelve-tone rows, which the composer then subjected to the usual dodecaphonic transformations (Inversion, Retrograde, Retrograde Inversion). He also made derived rows from these employing the approach used by Anton von Webern in his Concerto (Op. 24) and elsewhere, as well as using pitch set class multiplication as used by Milton Babbitt and others. Randolph Pitts holds Summa Cum Laude degrees in Social Psychology and Egyptology from the University of California Berkeley, and a Masters Degree in Motion Picture Production and Entertainment Law from UCLA. He has also done advanced research for the Department of Psychology at UCLA, concentrating on couples and relationships dynamics. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Association, the organization of university professors of Philosophy. He is also an associate member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Randolph has been a top executive at several entertainment companies, including a ten year stint as Chief Executive Officer of the company that produced Leaving Las Vegas for which Nicolas Cage won the Academy Award as best actor. The first volume of his eagerly anticipated tetralogy of novels will be published during 2022. Pitts' spellbinding novels deal at an unrelenting fever pitch with eroticism, mysticism, terrorism and crime on a global scale. And also… with women and men falling in love. Randolph Pitts has a lifelong interest in the relationship between philosophy, psychology and history. He is the founder and host of the Explore Ecstatic Sensuality podcast, the number one sex and sensuality podcast in the world. Randolph Pitts holds Summa Cum Laude degrees in Social Psychology and Egyptology from the University of California Berkeley, and a Masters Degree in Motion Picture Production and Entertainment Law from UCLA. He has also done advanced research for the Department of Psychology at UCLA, concentrating on couples and relationships dynamics. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Association, the organization of university professors of Philosophy. He is also an associate member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Randolph has been a top executive at several entertainment companies, including a ten year stint as Chief Executive Officer of the company that produced Leaving Las Vegas for which Nicolas Cage won the Academy Award as best actor. The first volume of his eagerly anticipated tetralogy of novels will be published during 2022. Pitts' spellbinding novels deal at an unrelenting fever pitch with eroticism, mysticism, terrorism and crime on a global scale. And also… with women and men falling in love. In a recent interview Randolph Pitts said, “Love is the main theme of my novels. Women and men, women and women, come together because they recognize and come to cherish each other’s uniqueness. They fall in love because they know that the objects of their love are their special people – woman or man. The people who will make life joyful and fulfilling for them. The people with whom they will find mutual fulfillment and enduring happiness.” Randolph Pitts has a lifelong interest in the relationship between philosophy, psychology and history. He is the founder and host of the Explore Ecstatic Sensuality podcast, the number one sex and sensuality podcast in the world. As a composer he has written pieces in all genres, including works for vocal orchestra and soloists ("A Cabaret for Cesare Pavese,” dedicated to the memory of Constance Dowling; "Der Schatten eines Traumes" ; "Das Buch der Blauen Rose,” dedicated to Cristie Strongman and based on a cryptogram of her name. He has also written chamber music (strings quartets and a sextet), a "Concerto for String Orchestra," dedicated to Anita DeFrancesco; the large orchestral piece "Love-- for Three Orchestras and Large Organ,” dedicated to Anita DeFrancesco, a chamber works for vocalist and small ensemble ("Le sang des rêves," dedicated to Cristie Strongman).
![Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements (1955-56), First Movement [1 of 2 total]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U9InVL2Nz1E/mqdefault.jpg "Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements (1955-56), First Movement [1 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.")
