Monday, March 12, 2018

Morton Subotnick: The Key to Songs/Return

A native of Los Angeles, Morton Subotnick is a remarkable composer who works with electronics in highly compelling and very interesting ways.  Subotnick is best known for his 1968 work, Silver Apples of the Moon, which was celebrated in Los Angeles recently on the 50th anniversary of the landmark piece.  While attention is rightly being given to Silver Apples as a seminal piece of electronic music, this post looks at  Subotnick's mid-1980s works, The Key to Songs and Return —A Triumph of Reason, which are amazing works, released on New Albion Records, which has released so much great modern music, utilizing YCAMS, the Yamaha Computer Assisted Music System, with the latter completely generated through that means, while the former utilizes that with acoustic instrumentation.

The Key to Songs comprises, the liners recount, "music for an imaginary ballet" based on a pictorial collage novel by surrealist painter Max Ernst, with one of the chapters labeled "The Key to Songs."
Subotnick uses two pianos, marimba, xylophone, vibraphone, viola and cello along with YCAMS to generate a dramatic and often frenetic score that mimics Ernst's collages, which are said to be dramatic, often erotic and playing with the line between reality and fantasy.  Based solely on listening to the music, the latter point is notable in that telling acoustic from electronic instrumentation can be somewhat challenging.  The composer even wrote instructions for the musicians to exaggerate their movements so audiences could tell the difference.  The piece is dynamic and hypnotic.


Return was a commission to mark the appearance of Halley's Comet in February 1986 (it had last been seen in April 1910 and is predicted to return in July 2061).  Comets were believed in ancient days to the harbinger of ruin and destruction on one hand and the auspicious indicator of great benefit on the other.  Edmund Halley, in 1705, determined that a comet seen twenty-three years before would return about every 75 years.  Subotnick's score "depicts the comet's passage through time" and the first part reflecting the era to 1758 when the comet's return was given Halley's name and the second for the period after that and to the future.  The computer-generated music reflects music heard in the mid-1700s, specifically the work of Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti and then quiet, contemplative passages alternate with the dymanic, intense bursts of sound marking the onset of the comet and "the triumph of reason" in Halley's work.  In the second part, he evokes 18th and 19th century music (Mozart and Liszt), then ragtime for 1910, and electronic sounds for the current and future periods.

Computer and electronic music is often denounced for being cold and emotionless, but here are two fascinating recordings that show how these types can be skillfully blended with acoustic instruments to provide richness or depth or, on its own, created to bring a richness and diversity that belies that criticism.  This recording is an ear-opening exploration into the possibillites of electronic music as evocative in ways it is accused of not being.


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