Editing Morton Subotnick

{{short description|American electroacoustic composer and musician}}
{{More footnotes|date=April 2020}}
[[Image:Simultaneous MIDI control and Buchla touch keyboard.jpg|thumb|Morton Subotnick playing a [[Buchla synthesizer]] at his studio, [[New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Asia|NYU]] (2012)]]

'''Morton Subotnick''' (born April 14, 1933) is an [[United States of America|American]] [[composer]] of [[electronic music]], best known for his 1967 composition ''[[Silver Apples of the Moon (Morton Subotnick album)|Silver Apples of the Moon]]'', the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, [[Nonesuch Records|Nonesuch]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35607200|title=Meet the 'founding father' of electronica|date=February 20, 2016|website=Bbc.com}}</ref>  He was one of the founding members of [[California Institute of the Arts]], where he taught for many years.<ref name="Bernstein2008">{{cite book|last=Bernstein|first=David W.|title=The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-uSNYnr3VWIC&pg=PA117|access-date=23 April 2012|date=2008-07-08|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=9780520248922|pages=117–}}</ref><ref name="Gillespie1972">{{cite book|last=Gillespie|first=John|title=The musical experience|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_34YAQAAIAAJ|access-date=23 April 2012|date=June 1972|publisher=Wadsworth Pub. Co.|page=444|isbn=9780534001612}}</ref><ref name="Schrader1982">{{cite book|last=Schrader|first=Barry|title=Introduction to electro-acoustic music|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xtUIAQAAMAAJ|access-date=23 April 2012|date=February 1982|publisher=Prentice Hall|isbn=9780134815152|pages=130–}}</ref>

Subotnick has worked extensively with interactive electronics and [[multi-media]], co-founding the [[San Francisco Tape Music Center]] with [[Pauline Oliveros]] and [[Ramón Sender (composer)|Ramon Sender]], often collaborating with his wife [[Joan La Barbara]].<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/style/la-bk-bernstein27-2008jul27-story.html|title='The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde' edited by David W. Bernstein|date=July 27, 2008|newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]]}}</ref> Morton Subotnick is one of the pioneers in the development of electronic music and multi-media performance and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems. Most of his music calls for a computer part, or live electronic processing; his oeuvre utilizes many of the important technological breakthroughs in the history of the genre.

==Early career==
[[Image:Buchla 100 series at NYU.jpg|thumb|[[Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments#Company origin|Buchla 100]] [[modular synthesizer]] at NYU]]
Subotnick was born in [[Los Angeles, California]], and graduated from the [[University of Denver]]. In the early 1960s, Subotnick taught at [[Mills College]] and with [[Ramón Sender (composer)|Ramon Sender]], he co-founded the [[San Francisco Tape Music Center]]. During this period he also collaborated with [[Anna Halprin]] on two works (''the 3 legged stool'' and ''Parades and Changes'') and acted as music director of [[the Actors Workshop]].

In 1966 Subotnick was instrumental in getting a Rockefeller Grant to join the Tape Center with the Mills Chamber Players (a chamber group at Mills College with performers Nate Rubin (violin); Bonnie Hampton (cello); Naomi Sparrow (piano) and Subotnick on clarinet). The grant required that the Tape Center relocate to a host institution that became Mills College. Subotnick, however, did not stay with the move, but went to New York with the Actor's Workshop to become the first music director of the Lincoln Center Rep Company in the [[Vivian Beaumont Theater]] at Lincoln Center. Along with [[Len Lye]], he became an artist in residence at the newly formed [[Tisch School of the Arts]] at NYU. The School of the Arts provided him with a studio and a Buchla Synthesizer (now at the Library of Congress). He then helped to develop the Electric Circus and the Electric Ear, and became their artistic director. At the same time he created ''[[Silver Apples of the Moon (Morton Subotnick album)|Silver Apples of the Moon]]'', ''The Wild Bull'', and ''Touch''.

==''Silver Apples of the Moon''==
Early electronic music was made using wave generators and tape-manipulated sounds. Subotnick was among the first composers to work with electronic instrument designer [[Don Buchla]]. Buchla's modular voltage-controlled synthesizer, which he called the Electric Music Box and which was constructed partly based on suggestions by Subotnick and Sender,<ref>{{cite web|url = http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2014/04/16/morton-subotnick-explains-his-buchla-modular-synthesizer-setup/|website=Synthtopia.com|date= April 16, 2014 |title = Morton Subotnick Explains His Buchla Modular Synthesizer Setup}}</ref> was both more flexible and easier to use, and its sequencing ability was integral to Subotnick's music.

In the late 1960s, a time when much United States' academic "avant-gardist" electronic music was highly abstract, (largely concerned with pitch and timbre, where (metric) rhythm might be an afterthought or of no consequence, and simple patterned structures were largely avoided), Subotnick broke with this direction by including sections with metric rhythms – those based on pulses and beats. Both ''[[Silver Apples of the Moon (Morton Subotnick album)|Silver Apples of the Moon]]'' and 1968's ''The Wild Bull'' (another Nonesuch-commissioned work for tape; they have since been combined on a Wergo CD<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.allmusic.com/album/silver-apples-of-the-moon-for-electronic-music-synthesizer-mw0000145769|title=Silver Apples of the Moon for Electronic Music Synthesizer - Morton Subotnick &#124; Songs, Reviews, Credits &#124; AllMusic|website=[[AllMusic]]}}</ref>) have been choreographed by dance companies around the world.

In 1969 Subotnick was invited to be part of a team of artists to move to Los Angeles to plan a new school. [[Mel Powell]] as Dean, Subotnick as Associate Dean, and a team of four other pairs of artists carved out a new path of music education and created the now famous [[California Institute of the Arts]]. Subotnick remained Associate Dean of the music school for 4 years and then, resigning from that position, became the head of the composition program where, a few years later, he created a new media program that introduced interactive technology and multimedia into the curriculum. In 1978 Subotnick, with [[Roger Reynolds]] and [[Bernard Rands]], produced 5 annual internationally acclaimed new music festivals.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Morton Subotnick |url=https://www.americanacademy.de/person/morton-subotnick/ |access-date=2024-06-15 |website=American Academy in Berlin |language=en-US}}</ref>

==Approach to music==
Where previous electronic music had used non-traditional structures, Subotnick's electronic compositions are structured more like the classical music for acoustic instruments with which audiences are familiar, but with nontraditional timbres and pitch manipulations no orchestra could produce. He has also written for acoustic instruments, and he has studied with [[Darius Milhaud]] and [[Leon Kirchner]] at [[Mills College]] in [[Oakland, California]].

In addition to music in the electronic medium, Subotnick has written for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, theater and multimedia productions. His "staged tone poem” ''The Double Life of Amphibians'', a collaboration with director Lee Breuer and visual artist Irving Petlin, utilizing live interaction between singers, instrumentalists and computer, was premiered at the 1984 Olympics Arts Festival in Los Angeles.

The concert version of ''Jacob’s Room'', a mono drama commissioned by Betty Freeman for the Kronos Quartet and singer Joan La Barbara, received its premiere in San Francisco in 1985. Jacob's Room, Subotnick's multimedia opera chamber opera (directed by Herbert Blau with video imagery by Steina and Woody Vasulka, featuring Joan La Barbara), received its premiere in Philadelphia in April 1993 under the auspices of The American Music Theater Festival. ''The Key To Songs'', for chamber orchestra and computer, was premiered at the 1985 Aspen Music Festival. ''Return'', commissioned to celebrate the return of Halley's Comet, premiered with an accompanying sky show in the planetarium of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles in 1986. Subotnick's recent works—among them ''Jacob's Room'', ''The Key to Songs'', ''Hunger'', ''In Two Worlds'', ''And the Butterflies Begin to Sing'' and ''A Desert Flowers''—utilize computerized sound generation, specially designed software [[InterActor|Interactor]] and "intelligent" computer controls which allow the performers to interact with the computer technology.<ref>{{cite web|url = http://thequietus.com/articles/19418-morton-subotnick-interview |work =The Quietus|date= December 10, 2015 |title =A Wild Composer: Morton Subotnick Interviewed |first = Robert|last = Barry}}</ref>

''All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis'' (1994) was an interactive concert work and a CD-ROM (perhaps the first of its kind), ''Making Music'' (1995), ''Making More Music'' (1998) were his first works for children, and an interactive 'Media Poem', ''Intimate Immensity'', premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival in NY (1997). The European premiere (1998) was in Karlsruhe, Germany. A string quartet with CDROM, ''Echoes from the Silent Call of Girona'' (1998), was premiered in Los Angeles by Southwest Chamber Music.

Subotnick was commissioned to complete a larger version of the opera, ''Jacobs Room''. This premiered in 2010 at the Bregenz Festival in Austria.

Subotnick is developing tools for young children to create music. He has authored a series of six CDROMs for children, mounted a children's website and he is developing a related school program. Subotnick's Pitch Painter for iPad and iPhone (not available on App Store) is a musical finger painting app which presents a new intuitive way for kids to create music.

Subotnick is working with the Library of Congress as they are preparing an archival presentation of his electronic works. He tours extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe as a lecturer and composer/performer. Morton Subotnick is published by Schott Music. Students of his include [[Ingram Marshall]], [[Mark Coniglio]], [[Carl Stone]], [[Rhys Chatham]], [[Charlemagne Palestine]], [[Ann Millikan]], [[Nicholas Frances Chase]], Brian Evans, [[Julia Stilman-Lasansky]], [[John King (record producer)|John King]], [[Lois V Vierk]], [[Betty Ann Wong]], and [[Jeremy Zuckerman]].

==Personal life==
Subotnick is married to [[Joan La Barbara]], a singer and composer. Subotnick's older son, [[Steven Subotnick]], is an animator; his younger son, Jacob Subotnick, is a sound designer and his daughter, Tamara Winer, is a psychiatric social worker.

==Awards==
* [[Guggenheim Fellowship]]
* Rockefeller Grants (3)
* Meet the Composer (2)
* American Academy of Arts and Letters Composer Award
* Brandies Award
* Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Künstlerprogramm (DAAD), Composer in Residence in Berlin
* Lifetime Achievement Award (SEAMUS at Dartmouth)
* ASCAP: John Cage Award
* ACO: Lifetime Achievement
* Honorary Doctorate from the California Institute of the Arts
<ref>{{cite web|url = http://www.mortonsubotnick.com/about.html#awards|title = About Morton Subotnick: Awards|website=Morotnsubotnick.com}}</ref>

==Selected works==
*''Sonata'' for viola and piano (1959–60) <ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.mortonsubotnick.com/timeline.html|title=Morton Subotnick::Timeline|website=Mortonsubotnick.com}}</ref>
*''[[Silver Apples of the Moon (Morton Subotnick album)|Silver Apples of the Moon]]'' ([[National Recording Registry]] inductee) (1967) <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.wnyc.org/story/108693-silver-apples-of-the-moon/|title=Morton Subotnick: Silver Apples of the Moon &#124; Studio 360|website=Wnyc.org}}</ref>
*''The Wild Bull'' (1968)
*''Touch'' (1969)
*''Sidewinder'' (1971)
*''Four Butterflies'' (1973)
*''Until Spring'' (1975)
*''A Sky of Cloudless Sulfur'' (1978)
*''Axolotl'' (1981)
*''A Fluttering of Wings'' (1981)
*''An Arsenal of Defense'' for solo viola and "electronic ghost score" (1982)
*''Trembling'' (1983)
*''The Key to Songs'' (1985)
*''Jacob's Room'' (1986)
*''and the butterflies begin to sing'' (1988)
*''All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis'' (1991)
*''Echoes from the Silent Call of Girona'' (1998)
*''Gestures'' (1999–2001)
*''Then Now and Forever'' (2008)
*''The Other Piano'' (2007)
*''Jacob's Room Opera'' (2010)
*''From Silver Apples of the Moon to A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur'' (2009 – 2013)
*''Jacob's Room Monodrama'' (2013)
<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.discogs.com/artist/32196-Morton-Subotnick|title=Morton Subotnick|website=Discogs.com}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Archival records|title=Morton Subotnick papers|location= [[Library of Congress]]|description_URL=https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/eadmus.mu022014}}
{{Commons category|Morton Subotnick}}
*[http://www.mortonsubotnick.com/ MortonSubotnick.com]
*[http://www.creatingmusic.com/ Morton Subotnick's Creating Music]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20040430185910/http://music.calarts.edu/faculty/msubotnick.html CalArts Faculty: Morton Subotnick]
*[http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/essay_gann11.html ''From Moog to Mark II, to MIDI to MAX''] By Kyle Gann for American Public Media
*[http://www.vasulka.org/archive/Artists7/Subotnick,Morton/interview-WSV.pdf Interview]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20131025063936/http://ias.umn.edu/2007/02/01/subotnick-morton/ Interview with Peter Shea at the University of Minnesota]

===Listening===
*[http://dublab.com/archive/morton-subotnick-interview-live-at-dublab-111309/ Interview with Dublab]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20190501122026/https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/morton-subotnick Interview with RedBull Music Academy]
*[http://mmp.planetary.org/artis/subom/subom70.htm Mars Millennium Project 2030: Artist: Morton Subotnick]
*[http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/rafiles/interviews/interview_subotnick.ram Morton Subotnick interview]
*{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20060211190839/http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/composer.pl?comp=37 Art of the States: Morton Subotnick]}} ''Echoes from the Silent Call of Girona'' (1998)
*[https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/morton-subotnick Morton Subotnick Interview] NAMM Oral History Library (2005)

{{Electronic music}}
{{PulitzerPrize Music Finalists 1980–1990}}
{{SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Subotnick, Morton}}
[[Category:1933 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:20th-century American classical composers]]
[[Category:21st-century American classical composers]]
[[Category:American electronic musicians]]
[[Category:Electroacoustic music composers]]
[[Category:Avant-garde keyboardists]]
[[Category:Nonesuch Records artists]]
[[Category:Tisch School of the Arts faculty]]
[[Category:University of Denver alumni]]
[[Category:Electronic composers]]
[[Category:Mills College faculty]]
[[Category:Pupils of Darius Milhaud]]
[[Category:Pupils of Robert Erickson]]
[[Category:Pupils of Leon Kirchner]]
[[Category:Sub Rosa Records artists]]