Morton Subotnick, "Ascent Into Air"
Notes from Nonesuch 78020-1:
SIDE ONE (24:07) Ascent Into Air (1981) from The Double Life of Amphibians for 10 instruments and Computer Generated Sound
CALARTS TWENTIETH CENTURY PLAYERS: conducted by Stephen Mosko; Ruth Dreier, Erika Duke, cellos; Theresa Tunnicliff, clarinet; James D. Rohrig, bass clarinet; Daniel L. Flags, trombone; James Paul Conner, bass trombone; Gaylord Orren Mowrey, Michael McCandless, pianos; Amy Mane Knoles, Rand Steiger, percussion; Peter Otto, Deborah Quinn, computer operators; Buchla 300 Programming Assistance: Rand Steiger; Recorded April 16,1982, at Wally Heider Studio, Los Angeles; Mixed November 4,1982, Sunset Sound Factory, Los Angeles
Ascent Into Air and A Fluttering of Wings [stay tuned] are the first and third parts of a larger work entitled The Double Life of Amphibians. The entire work is conceived as a staged tone poem.. .a music drama in three parts (Amphibians, Beasts, Angels). The title acts as a metaphor which is used to provide a model for the structure of the work as well as suggesting the nature of the musical materials. Briefly, the metaphor suggests that the "doubleness" of the amphibians, needing its past-present environment (the water) while reaching for a new present-future world (the air), is our "doubleness"...the past-present and present-future... that beast-spirit and angel-spirit in us all. Part I, Ascent Into Air and part II, The Last Dream of a Beast(unfinished at the time of writing these notes), deal with the duality implied in the metaphor, while part III, A Fluttering of Wings, acts as a resolution to the metaphoric dilemma.
Part I: AMPHIBIANS (Ascent Into Air) is for two cellos, clarinet, bass clarinet, trombone, bass trombone, two pianos, two percussion players and computer generated sounds (controlled by the intensity of the cellists' performance). The work starts as a dark and intense musical environment without articulation of rhythmic or melodic material (section D. This is followed by more dance-like materials which are more rhythmically and melodically articulated (section 2). The third section is a playful interchange between the pianos, percussion and computer sounds which flows into the fourth section which is more visceral and forceful... even violent...and, in turn, leads into the fifth and final section. The last section bears some resemblance to the opening, but transforms into an ethereal, floating chorale-like material.
The musicians are dramatically lit throughout Part I and a back drop gradually evolves... engulfing the musicians in a landscape of an imaginary, mythic people. The music-narrative moves from a water based unarticulated environment to a more articulated land based environment (the 'ascent into air').
Part II: BEASTS (The Last Dream of the Beast) will be a theatrical work... an electronic media drama in which both music and images will be visceral, clearly articulated, forceful and at times violent. THE BEAST (a creature caught between man and beast) believes a poetic theory that if one dies while dreaming, that dream becomes infinite. He fantasizes a beautiful 'beast woman' who, blind and armless, falls in love with him. The ending aria is their final love moment in which he dies in his sleep. Her ending lullaby acknowledges both the death and the eternal dream.
The cast will consist of a chorus of coupled singers, singing into each others' mouths, and a female soloist (Joan La Barbara). The actions of the characters will be captured and transformed and continually replayed so that by the end of the drama these frozen moments of struggle will mingle with the emergence of a new landscape while the final aria unfolds. The ending lullaby of the aria overlaps the opening of part III. The music narrative here is the beast-man struggle... i.e.... the evolving of the spirit and ecstasy
Ascent Into Air was composed in Berlin and Paris during 1980 and 1981. It was commissioned for IRCAM by Madam Pierre Schlumberger, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and was first performed by the Ensemble InterContemporain, Peter Eotvos, conductor, on January 18-21,1982.
Morton Subotnick, one of the acknowledged pioneers in the field of electronic music, is an innovator in works involving instruments and other media. Born in Los Angeles in 1933, Subotnick studied under Leon Kirchner and Darius Milhaud. During his earlier years in San Francisco, he co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center (now at Mills College) and was Music Director of Ann Halprins' Dance Company and the San Francisco Actor's Workshop. Later, while in New York City, he was Music Director of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre during its first season, director of electronic music at the original Electric Circus on St. Mark's' Place, and Artist-in-Residence at the New York University School of the Arts. On the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts, Subotnick's other faculty appointments have included Mills College and, as visiting professor in composition, the University of Maryland, University of Pittsburgh and Yale University. He tours extensively as a lecturer and composer/performer.
Well-known for his electronic works, Subotnick was the first composer to be commissioned to write an electronic composition expressly for the phonograph medium, Silver Apples of the Moon (1967).This now classic work and The Wild Bull have been choreographed by leading dance companies throughout the world and remain in permanent repertory.
Included among Subotnick's numerous grants and awards are three from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim fellowship, Meet the Composer and ASCAP awards, two Rockefeller Foundation grants to develop the "ghost" electronics, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Composer Award, the Brandeis Creative Arts Award in Music, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Künstler Programm award (DAAD) as composer-in-residence in West Berlin.
THE CALARTS TWENTIETH CENTURY PLAYERS
The CalArts Twentieth Century Players, conducted by composer Stephen Mosko, was founded in 1977 by Morton Subotnick at the School of Music of California Institute of the Arts. The ensemble consists primarily of graduate students and was created to give these students ample opportunity to perform the music of the 20th Century on a highly professional level. In addition, it serves the CalArts composition students as an immediately available instrument with which to check their ideas and works within the performing reality. The ensemble has quickly reached an outstanding level of performance and repertoire which has made it an important body in the new music scene of Southern California.
In addition to appearances at the CalArts Contemporary Music Festival, the ensemble has also performed at the Schoenberg Institute, Los Angeles, the Ojai Festival, the Chicago Contemporary Music Concert series and the 1982 Holland Festival in Amsterdam. The Twentieth Century Players has recorded Mr. Subotnick's 'After the Butterfly" on Nonesuch.
SIDE ONE (24:07) Ascent Into Air (1981) from The Double Life of Amphibians for 10 instruments and Computer Generated Sound
CALARTS TWENTIETH CENTURY PLAYERS: conducted by Stephen Mosko; Ruth Dreier, Erika Duke, cellos; Theresa Tunnicliff, clarinet; James D. Rohrig, bass clarinet; Daniel L. Flags, trombone; James Paul Conner, bass trombone; Gaylord Orren Mowrey, Michael McCandless, pianos; Amy Mane Knoles, Rand Steiger, percussion; Peter Otto, Deborah Quinn, computer operators; Buchla 300 Programming Assistance: Rand Steiger; Recorded April 16,1982, at Wally Heider Studio, Los Angeles; Mixed November 4,1982, Sunset Sound Factory, Los Angeles
Ascent Into Air and A Fluttering of Wings [stay tuned] are the first and third parts of a larger work entitled The Double Life of Amphibians. The entire work is conceived as a staged tone poem.. .a music drama in three parts (Amphibians, Beasts, Angels). The title acts as a metaphor which is used to provide a model for the structure of the work as well as suggesting the nature of the musical materials. Briefly, the metaphor suggests that the "doubleness" of the amphibians, needing its past-present environment (the water) while reaching for a new present-future world (the air), is our "doubleness"...the past-present and present-future... that beast-spirit and angel-spirit in us all. Part I, Ascent Into Air and part II, The Last Dream of a Beast(unfinished at the time of writing these notes), deal with the duality implied in the metaphor, while part III, A Fluttering of Wings, acts as a resolution to the metaphoric dilemma.
Part I: AMPHIBIANS (Ascent Into Air) is for two cellos, clarinet, bass clarinet, trombone, bass trombone, two pianos, two percussion players and computer generated sounds (controlled by the intensity of the cellists' performance). The work starts as a dark and intense musical environment without articulation of rhythmic or melodic material (section D. This is followed by more dance-like materials which are more rhythmically and melodically articulated (section 2). The third section is a playful interchange between the pianos, percussion and computer sounds which flows into the fourth section which is more visceral and forceful... even violent...and, in turn, leads into the fifth and final section. The last section bears some resemblance to the opening, but transforms into an ethereal, floating chorale-like material.
The musicians are dramatically lit throughout Part I and a back drop gradually evolves... engulfing the musicians in a landscape of an imaginary, mythic people. The music-narrative moves from a water based unarticulated environment to a more articulated land based environment (the 'ascent into air').
Part II: BEASTS (The Last Dream of the Beast) will be a theatrical work... an electronic media drama in which both music and images will be visceral, clearly articulated, forceful and at times violent. THE BEAST (a creature caught between man and beast) believes a poetic theory that if one dies while dreaming, that dream becomes infinite. He fantasizes a beautiful 'beast woman' who, blind and armless, falls in love with him. The ending aria is their final love moment in which he dies in his sleep. Her ending lullaby acknowledges both the death and the eternal dream.
The cast will consist of a chorus of coupled singers, singing into each others' mouths, and a female soloist (Joan La Barbara). The actions of the characters will be captured and transformed and continually replayed so that by the end of the drama these frozen moments of struggle will mingle with the emergence of a new landscape while the final aria unfolds. The ending lullaby of the aria overlaps the opening of part III. The music narrative here is the beast-man struggle... i.e.... the evolving of the spirit and ecstasy
Ascent Into Air was composed in Berlin and Paris during 1980 and 1981. It was commissioned for IRCAM by Madam Pierre Schlumberger, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and was first performed by the Ensemble InterContemporain, Peter Eotvos, conductor, on January 18-21,1982.
Morton Subotnick, one of the acknowledged pioneers in the field of electronic music, is an innovator in works involving instruments and other media. Born in Los Angeles in 1933, Subotnick studied under Leon Kirchner and Darius Milhaud. During his earlier years in San Francisco, he co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center (now at Mills College) and was Music Director of Ann Halprins' Dance Company and the San Francisco Actor's Workshop. Later, while in New York City, he was Music Director of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre during its first season, director of electronic music at the original Electric Circus on St. Mark's' Place, and Artist-in-Residence at the New York University School of the Arts. On the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts, Subotnick's other faculty appointments have included Mills College and, as visiting professor in composition, the University of Maryland, University of Pittsburgh and Yale University. He tours extensively as a lecturer and composer/performer.
Well-known for his electronic works, Subotnick was the first composer to be commissioned to write an electronic composition expressly for the phonograph medium, Silver Apples of the Moon (1967).This now classic work and The Wild Bull have been choreographed by leading dance companies throughout the world and remain in permanent repertory.
Included among Subotnick's numerous grants and awards are three from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim fellowship, Meet the Composer and ASCAP awards, two Rockefeller Foundation grants to develop the "ghost" electronics, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Composer Award, the Brandeis Creative Arts Award in Music, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Künstler Programm award (DAAD) as composer-in-residence in West Berlin.
THE CALARTS TWENTIETH CENTURY PLAYERS
The CalArts Twentieth Century Players, conducted by composer Stephen Mosko, was founded in 1977 by Morton Subotnick at the School of Music of California Institute of the Arts. The ensemble consists primarily of graduate students and was created to give these students ample opportunity to perform the music of the 20th Century on a highly professional level. In addition, it serves the CalArts composition students as an immediately available instrument with which to check their ideas and works within the performing reality. The ensemble has quickly reached an outstanding level of performance and repertoire which has made it an important body in the new music scene of Southern California.
In addition to appearances at the CalArts Contemporary Music Festival, the ensemble has also performed at the Schoenberg Institute, Los Angeles, the Ojai Festival, the Chicago Contemporary Music Concert series and the 1982 Holland Festival in Amsterdam. The Twentieth Century Players has recorded Mr. Subotnick's 'After the Butterfly" on Nonesuch.
Labels: jodru, Morton Subotnick
posted by jodru at 16:22
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home