Morton Subotnick

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Morton Subotnick

Morton Subotnick (born April 14, 1933 in Los Angeles ) is an American avant-garde musician , composer and music teacher . He is one of the pioneers of electronic music .

Life

Subotnick taught at Mills College in Oakland in the early 1960s . Together with Pauline Oliveros and Ramon Sender , he founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center (SFTMC) in 1961 . At that time he was working with Anna Halprin , a representative of modern dance . This resulted in the works 3 legged stool and Parades and Changes . Subotnick became the musical director of the Actors Workshop in San Francisco . In 1963 he began working with Don Buchla on the development of an "electronic black box or electric music box", an early analog synthesizer . The device, Buchla Series 100 , which was completed a year before Robert Moog's groundbreaking keyboard synthesizer (the Moog synthesizer ), but found no commercial use, is now in the Smithsonian Museum .

1966 Subotnick was able to obtain grants from the Rockefeller Foundation , which made it possible to unite the SFTMC with the Chamber Orchestra of Mills College. Eventually, Subotnicks Tape Center became an integral part of Mills College and moved to Oakland. Subotnick went to New York , where he became chief conductor of the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts . Together with Len Lye , he became artist in residence at the newly founded Tisch School of the Arts at New York University . The School of the Arts enabled him to set up his own studio and purchase a Buchla synthesizer. Subotnick became artistic director of the New York avant-garde nightclub Electric Circus , a forerunner of the modern discotheque, and developed the Electric Ear concert series . In 1967, Subotnick's best-known work Silver Apples of the Moon was created , a commissioned work for the Nonesuch Records label and the first purely electronic composition to be released as a phonogram. The minimal pioneers Silver Apple named themselves after this piece.

In 1969, Subotnick accepted an invitation to Los Angeles to join a group of artists who were planning a new school. With Mel Powell as dean of the music school and Subotnick as deputy dean, as well as a team of four other artist couples, a new direction in music teaching at the still young California Institute of the Arts emerged . Subotnick stayed at the institute for four years, then resigned as deputy dean and became head of the composition program, which was expanded to include new media and interactive technologies in the following years . In 1978 Subotnick produced five internationally acclaimed new music festivals together with Roger Reynolds and Bernard Rands .

With his work Ascent Into Air , Subotnick reached a high point in the history of live electronic music programming in 1981: on the 4C digital sound processor at IRCAM in Paris , he presented numerous innovative techniques, experiments with quadraphonic and instrument tunings as well as his so-called electronic ghost scores (electronic " ghost scores. " "). One focus was on the use of traditional musical instruments in connection with sounds generated on the computer and in the control of the computer by the actors as living control voltages (see control voltage ).

Aside from electronic music, Subotnick composed numerous “classical” works for symphony and chamber orchestras, theater and multimedia productions. His play The Double Life of Amphibians , a collaboration with the director Lee Breuer and the visual artist Irving Petlin, is based on the interaction of singers and instrumentalists with the computer. The piece premiered in 1984 at the Olympic Art Festival in Los Angeles.

In 1998 he received the SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award .

Subotnick has three children with his wife, the singer and composer Joan La Barbara : the animation artist Steven Subotnick , the sound engineer Jacob Subotnick and the social worker Tamara Winer.

Well-known students of Subotnick are Rhys Chatham , Sidney Corbett , Orm Finnendahl , Aaron Jay Kernis and Guy Klucevsek .

Works

  • 1958: Sonata for viola and piano
  • 1967: Silver Apples of the Moon
  • 1968: The Wild Bull
  • 1969: touch
  • 1971: Sidewinder
  • 1973: Four Butterflies
  • 1975: Until Spring
  • 1978: A Sky of Cloudless Sulfur
  • 1982: An Arsenal of Defense for solo viola and electronic ghost score (electronic " ghost score ")
  • 1985: The Key to Songs
  • 1986: Jacob's Room
  • 1997: and the butterflies begin to sing
  • 1999-2001: Gestures

CD

  • Morton's music paint box. The first music painting program for children . (CD-ROM for Mac and PC) Systhema Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-634-43012-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b We were heroes: Morton Subotnick - Hallo Techno , in: De: Bug , No. 143, June 2010
  2. ↑ a b c d e About Morton Subotnick. Retrieved May 31, 2010 .
personal data
SURNAME Subotnick, Morton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American avant-garde musician, composer and music teacher
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH los Angeles