Biographical Note
Morton Subotnick is a composer and lecturer known for his innovative work in developing synthesizers, sound processors, and software that facilitated human interaction with computers and revolutionized electronic music. Subotnick was born in Los Angeles on April 14, 1933, and grew up playing clarinet. After serving in the Army, he joined the Denver Symphony while attending the University of Denver, where he majored in English literature and graduated in 1958. Later that year, he began graduate school at Mills College, where he completed his studies in 1960 with a Master of Arts degree. In 1961, Subotnick co-founded the San Francisco Tape Center and became Music Director for the Anna Halprin Dance Company, a position he held until 1966.
In the early 1960s, Subotnick began incorporating multimedia into his works; examples include the light show in Theatre Piece after Sonnet 47 of Petrarch (1961-1963), Play! no. 3 for pianist/mime, tape, and film, and his collaborations with Anthony Martin, Elias Romera, and engineer Donald Buchla at the Electric Circus discotheque in New York City (1966-1967). In 1965, he stopped playing clarinet to focus solely on composition. As an artist in residence at the Tisch School for the Arts (1966-1969), Subotnick collaborated with Buchla to create a voltage-controlled synthesizer that operated independently of an acoustic instrument and eliminated the need for tape splicing. A control tape containing voltages of recorded sound were fed through the synthesizer and altered the sound, which could further be manipulated using a touch plate keyboard that Buchla developed. Subotnick later used the Buchla Series 100 modular analog synthesizer to compose Silver Apples of the Moon during his residency at New York University in 1967. Silver Apples of the Moon was the first large-scale electronic piece commissioned by a record label specifically for vinyl LP. Subotnick subsequently composed Wild Bull (1968) and Touch (1969) for the LP format. The technology was hugely influential, evolving with the emergence of the CD-ROM and computer software.
After completing his residency at Tisch, Subotnick moved to California and co-founded the California Institute of the Arts. He served as Associate Dean until 1973, when he resigned to serve as the head of CalArt's composition program. During the 1970s, Subotnick and Buchla developed a "ghost box" that alters the sound of acoustic instruments in live settings with electronics controlled by tape, patch, or digital storage media. Subotnick composed a dozen "ghost pieces," the notes and performance instructions for which are in the Workbooks subseries and Performance Files series. In 1976, he wrote Before the Butterfly for orchestra and seven amplified instruments to celebrate the United States bicentennial; it was premiered by the New York Philharmonic. Other major works with electronic processing and multimedia are The Double Life of Amphibians (1984), for instrumentalists, singers, and computer; the operas Hungers (1987) and Jacob's Room (1993); and Intimate Intensity (1997), a media poem for two singers, dancer, computer, laser discs, and lights. In 1994, Subotnick released All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis , one of the first pieces written exclusively for the CD-ROM format. Since the 1990s, he has developed the CD-ROM series, "Making Music" (1995), its sequels, "Making More Music," (1997), and "Hearing Music," (2004), as well as an iPad app called "Pitch Painter" (2012) to help children learn about music. In addition to composing and teaching, Subotnick has actively promoted contemporary music throughout his career by organizing numerous new music festivals.
Subotnick's honors include a Rockefeller Grant (1966); Guggenheim Fellowship (1975); Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Music (1979); Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Kunsterprogramm (DAAD) grant (1981); Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Society for Electro-acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) (1998) and Qwartz d'Honoree (2012); and the ASCAP Concert Music Award (2000), among others.