MIT Music and Theater Arts Professor Emerita Jean Shapiro fondly remembers the legacy of Bamberger, who died peacefully at home in Berkeley, California, of natural causes at the age of 100 on December 12, 2024.
For three decades at the institute, Bamberger found ways to use computers to engage students and help them learn music. A trained pianist who became fascinated with the idea of using technology to gain insight into music education, Bamberger ultimately helped change the way music was taught at MIT and elsewhere.
Bamberger was born on February 11, 1924 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her mother, Gertrude Shapiro (née Kulberg), was from a Romanian Jewish family, studied child psychology and was active in the League of Women Voters. His father, Morse Shapiro, of Lithuanian and Polish Jewish heritage, was a pioneering pediatric cardiologist.
In 1969, Bamberger began his 32-year career at MIT, initially in the former MIT Education Department. While at MIT, Bamberger became the first woman to earn tenure in the Music and Theater Arts section. She was known for pioneering the use of computer languages to teach children to learn music. He also used his computer innovations to study how children – and by extension, all humans – learn music, and this vector in particular became his life’s work.
Before his time, Bamberger worked at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in the 1980s and developed computer languages (MusicLogo and Impromptu) while at the MIT Division for Study and Research in Education from 1975 to 1995. She became associate professor in music and theater arts in 1981, earning tenure shortly thereafter and chairing the department in 1989–90. During this period, he continued to perform as a concert pianist, participating in concerts with the MIT Symphony Orchestra and actively playing chamber music both at MIT and in the community. He also taught in the Department of Education at Harvard University.
Institute professor Marcus Thompson recalls, “She was clearly a jewel in the crown during her time with us as senior professor. For someone who had studied piano with a historical legend in Artur Schnabel, who had studied with and knew at least one of the French Six, Darius Milhaud, and worked with the French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, she was among that group of our professors. Joe constantly advocated for a new music building, considered the possibility of a graduate program in music at a time when we were being pushed to move forward, at a time when she was our only senior woman and finally realized the need to do better.” Both the dedicated music building and the graduate music program are now a reality.
Bamberger loved his work and his students and colleagues liked and admired him. Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor Ivan Ziporyn shared that she “was a shaping presence for our section – MIT Music and Theater Arts would not be what we are today without her contributions. She is also a very nice human being – I mean, how many 90-year-old academics work with Herbie Hancock and take their research to the White House?”
Ziporyn states that “among 7 million other prodigious accomplishments,” Bamberger published numerous 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 several students under his wing and assisted many students in their academic careers. Ellen Chew SM ’98, PhD ’00, an operations researcher, pianist, current professor of engineering at King’s College London, and Bamberger’s advisor, says, “I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did if it weren’t for Jean. A child prodigy turned musical philosopher, Jean was a pioneer in music and AI long before it was fashionable. She was deeply interested in people and passionate about how we learn. I’ll never forget the day I came to her with complaints about things like that. Came in that I didn’t know was working. Instead of telling me what to do, Gene said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ It inspired me to reflect on this and develop my own sense of agency.” (Chew spoke more on Bamberger’s inspirational role in a 2016 interview.)
All told, Bamberger had a creative, fertile mind and loved to ask deep questions, a quality he passed on to his offspring and community – such was his enthusiasm and passion.
While a professor at MIT, Bamberger was a powerful man. In addition to her long and productive academic career – in which she published four books and approximately 20 book chapters – she was politically active and supported the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements. He continued to teach and publish his work well into his 90s and by the end he had a strong community of peers and colleagues.
In 2002, Bamberger became professor emerita at MIT and moved to Berkeley, California and continued teaching in the music department at the University of California at Berkeley.
At the age of 100, her former husband, Frank K. Bamberger had already died. Surviving are his two sons, Joshua and Paul (Chip); four grandchildren – Jereham, Kaila, Eli and Noah; and many caring relatives and friends.
