Robert Miller (pianist)

Robert Miller (December 5, 1930 – November 30, 1981) was an American pianist and attorney.

Miller was born in New York City and grew up in Mount Vernon. His early musical studies were with Mathilde McKinney and Abbey Simon, after which he studied at Princeton University where he graduated in 1952, magna cum laude in music, with a senior thesis on Beethoven's Diabelli Variations (Rockwell 1981; Babbitt 1981–82, 26).

After serving in Korea with the U. S. Army for two years, he decided that the music he preferred to play would never lead to success with critics or to public fame in a world which he saw as one of musical museums, public salons and performing circuses (Babbitt 1981–82). Consequently, he studied law at Columbia University where he graduated in 1957, the same year that he made his formal debut as a pianist in Carnegie Recital Hall. He was admitted to the bar in the following year, joining the firm of Scribner & Miller and becoming a partner in 1965. This firm later became Miller & McCarthy (Rockwell 1981).

As a pianist, Miller specialized in performing music by Northeastern American composers "of a cerebral, technically demanding bent", such as Milton Babbitt, Stefan Wolpe, Charles Wuorinen and Elliott Carter. Mario Davidovsky wrote his Pulitzer Prize–winning Synchronisms No. 6 for Piano and Electronic Sound (1970) for Miller (Rockwell 1981). His fluent technique enabled him on one occasion to learn Roger Sessions's Second Piano Sonata in a single night (Babbitt 1981–82, 26). He performed throughout the United States, as well as in Europe and Latin America. Beginning in 1964, he taught in the summers at the Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center in Vermont, and also gave master classes and seminars throughout the US. (Rockwell 1981).

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