Notes from Owl Recordings OWL-30:

PASSAGES OF THE BEAST (1978) 19:36 (Theodore Presser, ASCAP) 
1. Before Dawn; Awakening 
2. Night Song; Dance of Emergence

Morton Subotnick The composer supervised and mixed this premiere recording. The work, for clarinet and an electronic ghost score, was commissioned by the International Clarinet Society. Ramon Kireilis premiered the work at the 1978 International Clarinet Clinic held at the University of Toronto, Canada.

MORTON SUBOTNICK (b. 1933) has been acknowledged for over fifteen years as a pioneer in composing with electronics, beginning with several purely electronic works created expressly for the record medium. The first of these was Silver Apples of the Moon (1967); others include The Wild Bull (1968), Sidewinder (1971), 4 Butterflies (1973), and Until Spring (1975). Subotnick then began to explore the relationship between performers and technology in a series of "ghost" pieces for instruments and interactive electronics. In these compositions, the ghost score is a silent digital program which activates electronic modules to modify the instrumental sounds with regard to pitch, timbre, volume, and location of the sounds. Each work has its own digital program which controls a standardized ghost box. The ghost electronics were designed by Donald Buchla and built by John Payne according to the composer's specifications; funding was provided by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. There are fourteen ghost works (composed between 1977 and 1983), and, at present, Subotnick feels he has finished this series. While the ghost pieces have used electronics to modify instrumental sounds, it appears Subotnick's next compositional period will involve having instruments control computer generated sounds. Ascent into Air (1981) is the first work drawing on this new approach.

Subotnick attended the University of Denver and Mills College, studying under Leon Kirchner and Darius Milhaud. Currently on the faculty of The California Institute of the Arts, he has also been a visiting professor in composition at the University of Maryland, University of Pittsburgh, and Yale University. Among Subotnick's numerous grants and awards are three from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Composer Award. Nearly all of his major works involving electronics have been recorded, mainly with Nonesuch and Columbia. Subotnick states:

"The title Passages of the Beast refers to the rites of passage, of beastness to humanness, the passion of the beast and human awareness joined. The clarinet is treated as both a very old instrument (through a series of invented fingerings to get some of the non-diatonic qualities back into the technique) and a modern instrument, paralleling, more or less, the transition or passages from beast to human. The almost programmatic quality of the work is in keeping with the mainstream of my work for more than a decade. Passages, in particular, deals metaphorically with the evolution of the human spirit, and was one of a group of works which led up to the final (as of this writing) piece in the series, The Double Life of Amphibians, ' a ninety minute staged tone poem which received its world premiere at the 1984 Olympics  Arts Festival in Los Angeles."

Ramon Kireilis has been extensively involved with new music for clarinet for many years. He has premiered several works, some of which have been written for him; these composers include Morton Subotnick, Milos Stedron, Normand Lockwood, and Marvin Feinsmith. Since 1973, Kireilis has been a principal guiding force in the International Clarinet Society, a group that not only holds an annual composition contest, but also commissions new works. Subotnick's Passages of the Beast, premiered by Kireilis, resulted from one of these commissions. Kireilis received his bachelor's and master's degrees from North Texas State University, and his doctorate from the University of Michigan. He has taught at the University of Denver since 1967. Performing regularly as a soloist throughout Colorado as well as making numerous European appearances, Ramon Kireilis has also recorded clarinet quintets by Arthur Bliss and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor on Spectrum.


Notes from CRI SD 458:

MORTON SUBOTNICK,  PARALLEL LINES

Laurence Trott, piccolo soloist; members of the Buffalo Philharmonic and Buffalo Creative Associates; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor

MORTON SUBOTNICK (b. 1933, Los Angeles) is a pioneer in the field of electronic music as well as an innovator in works involving instruments and other media. He was the first composer to be commissioned to write an electronic composition expressly for phonograph records, Silver Apples of the Moon (Nonesuch, 1967), a work that was later choreographed by the Netherlands Ballet, Ballet Rambert of London and the Glen Tetley Dance Company. Subotnick was co-founder of the San Francisco Tape Music Center (now at Mills College) and was Music Director of Ann Halprin's Dance Company and the San Francisco Actor's Workshop. He served as Music Director of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre during its first season and was director of electronic music at the original Electric Circus on St. Mark's Place in New York City. Subotnick has held several faculty appointments, including Yale University, and was Composer-in-Residence in West Berlin under the auspices of the DAAD. Since 1970, he has chaired the composition department of the California Institute of the Arts.

PARALLEL LINES is one of Subotnick's "ghost" pieces for live soloist and electronics. The ghost series is a unique method of blending electronics with live performances so that the effect of the electronics is not audible unless the performer is making a sound. The electronic ghost score is a digital control system which activates an amplifier, a frequency shifter, and a location device. These process the instrumental sound according to the plan of each composition. The ghost electronics were made possible by a Creative Arts grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and were designed by Donald Buchla to the composer's specifications and constructed by John Payne at the California Institute of the Arts. Other ghost pieces include Last Dream or the Beast for singer and tape, Liquid Strata for piano, The Wild Beasts for trombone and piano, Passages of the Beast for clarinet, and Two Life Histories for male voice and clarinet. The composer writes:

"PARALLEL LINES was commissioned by Laurence Trott and the Piccolo Society. The title has to do with the way in which the 'ghost' electronics interact with the piccolo. In previous 'ghost' pieces the electronics were used to produce an acoustic environment within which the solo manifested itself, but in this case the 'ghost' score is a parallel composition to the piccolo solo. The ghost score amplifies and shifts the frequency of the original non-amplified piccolo sound. The two ('ghost' and original piccolo sounds), like a pair of parallel lines, can never touch, no matter how quickly or intricately they move.

"The work, a continuation of the butterfly-beast series, is divided into three large sections: (1) a perpetual-motion-like movement in which all parts play an equal role; (2) more visceral music, starting with the piccolo alone and leading to a pulsating 'crying out,' and (3) a return to the perpetual motion activity, but sweeter."


Notes from Nonesuch Records N-78012:

The Wild Beasts (1978)

Miles Anderson, trombone; Virko Baley, piano; and ghost electronics

Recorded March, 1981 at Evergreen Studios, Burbank, California

Engineer: Roger Mayer

Assistant engineers: Mike Hatcher, Steve Burger

The Wild Beasts (1978) is not a part of the Double Life series.  It was commissioned by Miles Anderson and Virko Baley and premiered by them at the Contemporary Music Festival at the California Institute of the Arts in 1979.  

The work was originally inspired by an exhibition of Le Fauvres paintings.  I was left with the impression that each subject was portrayed as "normal", but that we were seeing this subject through a strangely prismatic atmosphere...an atmosphere comprised of rare and possibly unearthly gasses...an atmosphere in which normal expectations of color and shape would not exist.  This was the visual counterpart to my ghost idea i.e...a traditional musical instrument played into an unusual and continually transforming atmosphere...an atmosphere in which the normal sound expectations would no longer exist.  Take, for example, the opening trombone solo.  With the whisper mute, the trombone sounds distant and dry...but this sound is caught in short bursts of amplification which zigzag in an unpredictable pattern across the proscenium space of stereo speakers.  If we skip to the piano cadenza toward the end of the work, we find that the atmosphere has changed...now the piano seems to be in a dense, undulating liquid atmosphere which causes the sound to continually shift in pitch, first on one side of the space and then on the other.  In fact, throughout each of the works, the environment is undergoing continuous transformation.  A transformation, however, dictated by the aesthetic/compositional needs of each work.  The formal/musical/emotional content of the music could speak directly to you...if not all at first...after a few listenings.  The ability of these works to speak directly is enormously enhanced by the brilliant performances of Miles Anderson and Virko Baley (The Wild Beasts) and Joel Krosnick (Axolotl) to whom (all three) I owe much for their spiritual as well as practical support in the making of these works. 

About the "ghost" score: The ghost score consists of two objects: a tape and a small package of electronics. The electronics consist of basic devices:

1. to locate the sound from left to right
2. to alter the frequency of the sound of the instrument up and/or down 100 cycles
3. to control the shape of the amplification

The tape contains high frequency audio signals which are not amplified and therefore not heard by the audience but, instead, are sent directly to the electonics and act as controls for the three modifying devices. The electronics have no sound of their own; they can only act upon the sound of the instrument as it plays, hence, a "ghost" score.

-Morton Subotnick


Morton Subotnick is a pioneer in the field of electronic music as well as an innovator in works involving instruments and other media. Born in Los Angeles in 1933, Subotnick, now on the faculty of California Institute of the Arts, includes among his teachers Leon Kirchner and Darius Milhaud. During his years in San Francisco he co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center (now at Mills College) and was Music Director of Ann Halprin's Dance Company and the San Francisco Actors' Workshop. He served as Music Director of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre during its first season and was director of electronic music at the original Electric Circus on St. Mark's Place in New York City. Subotnick's faculty appointments include Mills College and New York University and he has been visiting professor in composition at University of Maryland, University of Pittsburgh and Yale University.

Perhaps best known for his electronic works, he was the first composer to be commissioned to write an electronic composition expressly for the phonograph medium, SILVER APPLES OF THE MOON (Nonesuch H-71174, 1967) which has subsequently been choreographed by the Netherlands Ballet, Ballet Rambert of London and the Glen Tetley Dance Company. His other recordings include: THE WILD BULL (Nonesuch H-71208, 1968), SIDEWINDER (CBS, 1971) 4 BUTTERFLIES (CBS, 1974), UNTIL SPRING (CBS, 1976) and LIQUID STRATA (Town Hall Records, 1979, album title: "For Ralph Grierson") and A SKY OF CLOUDLESS SULPHUR/AFTER THE BUTTERFLY (Nonesuch N-78001,1980).