Morton Subotnick

Long at the vanguard of American electronic music, composer Morton Subnotnick also pioneered the rise of multi-media performance through his extensive work in connection with interactive computer systems. Born in Los Angeles on April 14, 1933, he attended the University of Denver before earning his master's at Mills College in Oakland, California, where he studied composition under Darius Milhaud and Leon Kirchner. (From 1959 to 1966, Subnotnick himself taught at Mills as well.) His earliest major work was 1959's Sound Blocks, the first of his compositions to focus on the relationship between musical, visual and verbal components; much of Subnotnick's subsequent oeuvre pursued the same ideas, with later pieces like the multi-part Play! and 1965's Lamination I including films, lighting effects, pre-taped material and other media elements.



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