MIT Music and Theater Arts fondly remembers the legacy of Professor Emerita Jeanne Shapiro Bamberger, who passed away peacefully at home in Berkeley, California, of natural causes on Dec. 12, 2024 on the age of 100.
For 3 a long time on the Institute, Bamberger found ways to make use of computers to have interaction students and help them learn music. A trained pianist who became fascinated with the concept of using technology to realize insights into music education, Bamberger ultimately helped to alter how music was taught at MIT and elsewhere.
Bamberger was born on Feb. 11, 1924 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her mother, Gertrude Shapiro (nee Kulberg), from a Romanian Jewish family, studied child psychology and was energetic within the League of Women Voters. Her father, Morse Shapiro, of Lithuanian and Polish Jewish heritage, was a groundbreaking pediatric cardiologist.
In 1969, Bamberger began her 32-year profession at MIT, initially in the previous MIT Education Department. While at MIT, Bamberger became the primary woman to earn tenure within the Music and Theater Arts Section. She was know for pioneering using computer languages to show children to learn music. She also used her computer innovations to review how children — and by extension, all humans — learn music, and this vector particularly became her life’s work.
Ahead of her time, Bamberger worked within the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab within the Nineteen Eighties and developed computer languages (MusicLogo and Impromptu) while on the MIT Division for Study and Research in Education from 1975 to 1995. She became associate professor in music and theater arts in 1981, earned tenure soon thereafter, and chaired the department in 1989-90. During this era, she continued to perform as a concert pianist, participating in concert events with the MIT Symphony Orchestra, and actively playing chamber music each at MIT and locally. She also taught on the Harvard University Department of Education.
Institute Professor Marcus Thompson recollects, “During her time with us as a senior professor she was clearly a jewel within the crown. For somebody who had studied piano with an historic legend in Artur Schnabel, who had studied with and known a minimum of certainly one of the French Six, Darius Milhaud, and worked with French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, she was amongst that group of our professors who continually advocated for a brand new music constructing, considered the potential of a graduate program in music at a time after we were being pushed to grow, at a time when she was our only senior woman when the necessity to do higher was finally seen.” Each the dedicated music constructing and the graduate music program are actually a reality.
Bamberger loved her work and was beloved and admired by her students and colleagues. Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor Evan Ziporyn shares that she “was very much a shaping presence for our section — MIT Music and Theater Arts would not be what we’re today without her contributions. She’s also just a really cool person — I mean, what number of 90-year-old academics find yourself working with Herbie Hancock and taking their research to the White House?”
Ziporyn adds that “amongst 7 million other singular accomplishments,” Bamberger published quite a few articles and books including “The Art of Listening”with Howard Brofsky, “The Mind Behind the Musical Ear,” “Developing Musical Intuitions,” and “Discovering the Musical Mind.”
While at MIT, Bamberger took many students under her wing and assisted many more with their academic careers. Elaine Chew SM ’98, PhD ’00, an operations researcher, pianist, current professor of engineering at King’s College London, and mentee of Bamberger, says, “I’d not be doing what I’m today if not for Jeanne. A toddler prodigy turned music philosopher, Jeanne was a pioneer in music and AI long before it was fashionable. She was deeply occupied with people and obsessed with how we learn. I won’t forget the day after I got here to her with complaints about things not working. Reasonably than telling me what to do, Jeanne said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ prompting me to reflect on and develop my very own sense of agency.” (Chew speaks more on Bamberger’s inspirational role in a 2016 interview.)
All told, Bamberger had a creative, fertile mind and loved to ask probing questions, a high quality she passed to her progeny and community — it was her excitement and her passion.
While a professor at MIT, Bamberger was a force to be reckoned with. Along with her long and productive academic profession — by which she published 4 books and nearly 20 book chapters — she was politically energetic and supported the anti-Vietnam war and the civil rights movements. She continued teaching and publishing her work well into her 90s and had a robust community of companions and colleagues to the tip.
In 2002, Bamberger became professor emerita at MIT and moved to Berkeley, California, continuing to show within the Music Department on the University of California at Berkeley.
At 100, she was predeceased by her former husband, Frank K. Bamberger. She is survived by her two sons, Joshua and Paul (Chip); 4 grandchildren — Jerehme, Kaela, Eli, and Noah; and lots of caring relatives and friends.
