This remarkable composer of experimental music was born February 13, 1926 in Spokane, Washington. He received early musical incluences at home from his mother, but his original intent was to become an aeronautical engineer, and much of his adolescence was spent building model aircraft. During his time as a student at Palo Alto University he worked at the university library, and it was here he discovered Henry Cowell's New Musical Quarterly, which had a seminal effect in awakening him to the world of 20th-century music. He went on, however to become an aircraft designer, and served in the U.S. Army between 1943 and 1946. Upon leaving the army he entered the University of Nevada at Reno and received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1949, and it was in this year that he wrote his first composition, a piano trio.

From 1951 until 1954 he did postgraduate work at Stanford University where he studied composition with Leonard Ratner. During this time he also spent summers in Tanglewood where he studied with Carlos Chavez and Aaron Copland. In the fall of 1954 he moved to New York where he studied with Elliott Carter. Childs received his master's in English language and literature at Oxford in 1955 and his doctorate at Stanford in 1959.

From 1971 until 1990 Childs served as professor of music and literature at University of Redlands in California. He was on the executive committee and National Council of the American Society of University Composers, of the American Composers Alliance, as well as the advisory board of the American Music Society in England. The author of numerous scholarly articles, with Elliott Schwartz he edited Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (1967). Childs composed eight string quartets, five brass quintets, two symphonies, two violin sonatas and thirty-seven chamber and orchestral compositions prior to his death on January 11, 2000. ~ Philip Krumm, Rovi