Subontnick / Bergsma / Eaton

 

Subotnick / Bergsma / Eaton

Morton Subotnick

Lamination 

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

Lukas Foss, Conductor

Turnabout VOX TV-S 34428

1971

William Bergsma

Violin Concerto

Edward Statkiewicz, Violin

Polish Radio and Television Orchestra

Zdzislav Szostak, Conductor

John Eaton

Concert Piece For Synket & Symphony Orchestra

Dallas Symphony Orchestra

Donald Johanos, Conductor

From the back cover: Lamination by Morton Subotnick (10:23 Min.)

When last Morton Subotnick and I met, he had just picked me up from a delightful coast-to-coast 747 fantasy, embellished with a $2.00 air hose version of the complete works of Pierre Boulez accompanied by Jean Paul Belmondo in a dashing 30's getup, driving fast and shooting hard. We were traveling in Subotnick's mini-bus camper to a cabin in the mountains surrounding Los Angeles when I said, "You know, Mort, I always seem to come to California at the end of a hard year." He replied, "That's because you always have a hard year." It was typical of his piercing, lucid perceptivity, a knowingness about people and people's actions that cuts across time and continents. If there are other "Structuralist" aspects of his music that manifest themselves more, fine, but to this writer it is that personability, that social perceptivity that shows in it the most. One can point to many of his multi-media or theatre works, such as Play! 4 (1965), created during his long association with visual artist, Anthony Martin, and Ritual Electronic Chamber Music (1968), a game piece which can be performed without audience, involving only a small group of "interested persons", to show that it's the live organic interaction between participants in pieces that is his prime concern.

Lamination is the participation of an orchestral body in what was to become Subotnick's prime medium, electronic music in which he succeeded in recreating a kind of orchestral texture over which he had complete control, though he exerted it only in carefully and exactly measured quantities. He composed three major works of this nature for Don Buchla's synthesizer equipment alone, Silver Apples of the Moon (1967), The Wild Bull (1968) and Touch (1969) and, most recently, one including visual per- formance, Sidewinder (1970). All of these pieces have undeniable instrumental qualities about them. When I heard some of the material in preparation for The Wild Bull a few years ago I remarked, "Hey, some of that sounds like the Berlioz Requiem." He laughed appreciatively. Lamination is important historically in this regard for the structure of the orchestral part imitates in timbre and texture those sounds that are created electronically. Indeed, many of them are electronic sounds that have been directly translated through orchestration. In perspective, one can see the orchestra slowly being dissolved in the impending spectre of flexibility in making electronic "Klangfarbenmusik". The listener should find it easy to hear the main structural principles of layering (as the title suggests), between the electronic and orchestral parts.

Morton Subotnick was born in 1933 and was known as one of the finest clarinetists in the country before becoming a founder of the San Francisco Tape Center, which launched his electronic music and multi-media career. He was later a Master Artist in the Multi-media Program at New York University where he maintained a studio and was one of the directors of the electric Ear series in multi-media. He now teaches at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. He has been one of the most in- fluential and productive of American composers working in electronics and multi-media.

Lukas Foss, of course, has been responsible for introducing many new American works and new faces, including this writer's and deserves credit for seeing fit to record such a work as Lamination.

Violin Concerto by William Bergsma (22:25 Min.)

William Bergsma's music is difficult to pidgeonhole. Strictly speaking, he does not follow the trends set by any of the early twentieth-century giants, such as Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinsky or Hindemith, nor has he been felt as a force in the avant garde. All of his work has been devoted to a furtherance of the tradition- al musical media. One can see in it strong emphasis on linearity. He is a lyricist and a contrapuntalist. His structures are Beethovenian in their economy of means and he shows marked interest in integrating contrasting timbres.

Bergsma was somewhat of a prodigy, He was born in 1921 and at the age of 16 wrote Paul Bunyan Suite for his high school orchestra which is still played by such groups. He studied at Stanford and at Eastman with Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers. He received a Guggenheim in 1946 and taught at Juilliard from 1946 to 1963 when he was appointed Director of the School of Music at the University of Washington in Seattle. Probably his most extensive work is his opera, The Wife of Martin Guerre. In it one senses a typical Bergsma concern, extreme attention to the balance between voice and orchestra, which manifests itself as well in the Violin Concerto (1965) in the careful relation he makes between the orchestral and solo lines.

Bergsma's caution against overextending himself with dramatic force shows in the reserved manner in which he treats anything virtuosic. He is never flashy, but always concerned with precise relations between individual sounds. One arresting tech- nique is his manner of treating the temporal spacing of harmonic elements. It provides pointed references in time, very cyclic, though in a style that is not primarily rhythmic in its emphasis. This, along with constant lyric and contrapuntal variations pro- vides deep structural strength in a music poetic in impact.

There is a long list of works to Bergsma's credit. Some important ones, besides the piece presented here and the opera, are his Second Quartet (1944), commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation, Tangents, a large work for piano, a Symphony, Music On a Quiet Theme for orchestra, The Fortunate Islands for string orchestra and his Toccata for the Sixth Day, commissioned for the inaugural week concert of the Juilliard Orchestra in 1962 during the week of dedication of Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.

DAVID ROSENBOOM

Mr. Bergsma's Violin Concerto was recorded under a grant from the Graduate School Research Fund of the University of Washington.

Concert Piece for Syn-Ket and Symphony Orchestra by John Eaton (13:20 Min.)

The first performance of this work was by the Berkshire Music Center Orchestra under the direction of Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood, August 9, 1967. It has since been performed by other groups including the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta.

In an article for the Electronic Music Review, Joel Chadabe suggests that the instrument should be reviewed as well as the composition in order to understand the total design. He goes on to say, "The Syn-Ket is a performable and portable electronic sound system designed and built by Paul Ketoff in Rome, Italy, for the American Academy in Rome. Basically, it consists of three sound systems (Eaton calls them 'combiners') racked one above the other... The Syn-Ket is performed by pushing buttons, turning dials, playing keyboards, depressing a volume pedal, and every now and then patching."

For the orchestration of the Concert Piece Eaton has divid- ed the orchestra into two sections, tuned a quarter-tone apart in pitch, which, the composer says, "allows me to bathe rejuvenes- cently in the ancient but still pure springs of microtonal melody". This tuning of the orchestra two sections (to quote Chadabe again) "permits a meeting on common ground with the tuning of the Syn-Ket, which is, of course, not played diatonically. With the quarter-tone tuning of clusters occasional legato phrases in the woodwinds and brass, strong shifts of register, and very sophisticated timbre changes, the orchestra enters the Syn-Ket sound world, which leaves Eaton free to mingle without fear of offending".

John Eaton was born in 1935 in Bryn Mawr, Pa. He received his A.B. and M.F.A. degrees from Princeton University where he studied composition with Milton Babbitt, Edward Cone, and Roger Sessions. He has been awarded three American Prix de Rome and two Guggenheim grants, a commission from the North German Radio, special awards from ASCAP, and a Fromm Foundation commission for this Concert Piece. (It is published by Malcolm Music, Ltd. [BMI]).

Mr. Eaton has composed works in every medium. Pieces of his have been played in concert and broadcast throughout the U.S., Italy, and Germany. The composer is also the soloist in this Concert Piece. – JOHN EATON

The Sound Of The Saucer-Finegan Orchestra

 

Horse Play

The Sound Of The Sauter-Finegan Orchestra

Especially Recommended For High-Fidelity Fans

RCA Victor LPM 1009 

1954

From the back cover: To the history of recorded sound, the orchestra led by Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan has made one of the most remarkable contributions. Not only have Eddie and Bill added considerably to the size and instrumentation of the traditional jazz orchestra; they have heightened color, produced new sounds, and evoked moods heretofore unconsidered in the usual pop music set-up.

The new music they have created is not strictly limited to records. Although the idea of the band was born in the minds of Eddie and Bill some years ago, and was carefully nurtured in the RCA Victor recording studios, the music they produce is not "gimmicked," nor is it sound-for-sound's-sake. At this writing (Summer, 1953), the band is enjoying a highly successful run through the middle west where these same dis- tinctive sounds are being eagerly applauded by an enthusiastic public. Long known among the musical cognoscenti as top-drawer arrangers for Benny Goodman, Ray McKinley, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, among others, Eddie and Bill had definite ideas from the outset about their eventual goal. "The music of our new band," they said, "can best be summed up in two words – COLOR and MOOD." But they also stated that "we are not starting out with any preconceived notion of style," and what the band has already cut on records, and is now performing in public, is the result of a steady progression of ideas based on the way they wanted the band to sound, and on the things they were most eager to say.

To obtain this color and mood, Sauter and Finegan immediately planned to augment the usual instrumentation of the jazz orchestra. They considered its scope too limited in the combination of brass, reeds and rhythm, and they proceeded to add, first, an enormously expanded percussion section including tympani, triangle, chimes, celesta and xylophone. As the need arose, they also added such "ten-cent store" items as recorders, kazoos and toy trumpets – not to mention just about everything that could be beaten or struck – anything, in fact, that would contribute to the sound for which they were striving.

The impact with which the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra has burst upon the pop music world is well illustrated in the fact that Howard Taubman, music editor of The New York Times, and a man more usually occupied with the classical aspect, made a recent trip to New Jersey's "Meadowbrook" to observe the band "that is putting some lively notions on popular music into practice.." Mr. Taubman, one of the country's leading music authorities, writing in The New York Times of July 5, 1953, labeled Sauter and Finegan "bandleaders with a creative approach." He went on to note the similarity between the music of the band and that of certain 19th century impressionists, and he concluded by saying that "it would not be surprising if they (Sauter-Finegan) led their listeners toward an easier accommodation with a lot of the longhair repertoire."

The current collection presents the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra in all of its amazing aspects: from the march-tempo of "Yankee Doodletown," through the riffs of "The Honey Jump," "Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee," "Now That I'm in Love" and "Stop Beatin' 'Round the Mulberry Bush." It remains to be said that another instrument has been added to the orchestra in the person of Joe Mooney, whose superbly evocative vocals are heard in the sophisticated settings of "Time to Dream," "Nina Never Knew" and "Love Is a Simple Thing."

"Child's Play" and "Horseplay," also included in this album, were originally issued by RCA Victor as the "Extended Play Suite," and exhibit Eddie and Bill at their wittiest and most inventive.

Child's Play

Horseplay

Time To Dream

The Honey Jump

Nina Never Knew

Love Is A Simple Thing

Tweedle Dum And Tweedle Dee

Stop Beatin' 'Round The Mulberry Bush

Now That I'm In Love

Yankee Doodletown

The Bermuda Triangle - Isao Tomita

 

The Harp Of The Ancient People With Songs Of Venus And Space Children

The Visionary Flight To The 1448 Nebular Group Of The Bootes

The Bermuda Triangle

A Musical Fantasy Of Science Fiction

Art Direction: J. J. Stelmach

Cover Illustration: Don Punchatz

RCA Records Red Seal ARL1-2885 STEREO

1979

From the inside (gatefold) cover: All of Tomita's albums are sonic encounters – composers' musical inventions transcribed into sound colors incapable of being generated by conventional instruments. Yes, Tomita imitates with his electronic devices, but with the infinity of resources at his command he can blend into the musical fabric glittering threads of such sounds of nature as humans whistling, the wind rustling, insects humming, waterfalls, rain-from the whisper of a dragonfly's wing to the violent sounds of worlds torn asunder. Projecting such sounds into the musical world of great composers brings our perception into closer touch with their imagery.

And now Tomita has created THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE. have no doubt that this is one of his greatest works.

Tomita weaves his own sonic inventions into excerpts of music by Prokofiev, Sibelius and John Williams to depict a science-fiction fantasy – a story at once plausible and imaginative, the details of which are largely elucidated in the mind when subjected to Tomita's sound. A storm rages in the ocean near Bermuda – the area of mysterious disappearances of many ships and aircraft, the dreaded Devil's Triangle. In the mist of the storm something approaches from the sky guided by an eerie signal from below the water. It is a craft from outer space – a UFO. The fantasy conjures up a giant pyramid built on the bottom of the sea by a super-civilized ancient people. They have contact with outer space and guide the UFO to the pyramid. The story unfolds through the moods of the music: Friendly encounter, exploration of the earth and sky, exchange of information, enjoyment of spatial cultures and finally revelation of the way to achieve a super dimension world. And we are left with sweet melody once more as the UFO departs into space-all of which we are drawn into and experience in our own fantasy, through the stimulus of sound.

Perhaps a new concept: Science Fiction in Sound. Through this can we overcome realistic daily life, our time and physical limitations and contact our fantasy-imagination? We can, and through that we can reach into limitless space, touch the super intellect, be any object or being and cast ourselves, all powerful, into the universe. – SAKYO KOMATSU Science-fiction author

For the past year I have struggled with a computer – a micro computer. I say "struggled" because a computer is beautifully precise, but I wanted to use it to produce musical results – in other words, as a musical instrument. How could this keyboard of only ten keys compare with that of a grand piano? But I came to realize that those ten keys could produce an almost limitless number of combinations, each of which is a signal that could determine a characteristic of sound: pitch, texture, attack time, duration, loudness. And the computer can be programmed to change any or all of these features with incredible speed.

The computer thus produces a sequence of signals that control the sound production of a synthesizer. It is something like millions of little hands rapidly changing all the synthesizer connections to produce a vast variety of sounds. My musical images must be coded by numbers to direct those hands to manipulate the synthesizer.

I build layers of sound by programming the computer. These are recorded one by one on separate tracks of a tape machine and finally all mixed together for the end result. I consider myself a sound animator, much the same as an animator of film cartoons.

I have used my computer in creating practically all the pieces contained in this album. It is made in Japan by Roland-Model MC-8 – and is perhaps the best in the world with regard to memory capacity and accuracy.

Although I cannot walk onto a stage and have the joy of struggling to perform my music before an audience. I struggle to select the right numbers on my computer to build a creative entity that displays my musical personality.

PYRAMID SOUND

This album is different from my others in that the master was recorded onto five tracks. Ideally, it should be heard through five speakers, four in the conventional rectangle and the fifth suspended above the center-thus a sonic pyramid. Although it is impossible to encode this onto a phonograph record, as much as possible of the five-channel effect has been incorporated into standard discs through the help of the engineering staff of Japan Victor.

A CODED MESSAGE

Each side of this record contains coded data in the form of certain sound effects. The message can be recovered if the electrical signal from the record is interfaced with the input of a micro computer programmed to the TARBEL System. – ISAO TOMITA

SIDE A

A SPACE SHIP LANDS EMITTING SILVERY LIGHT (2:22) Tomita: The Arrival of a UFO

ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES DESCEND (1:29) Prokofiev: "Romeo and Juliet" Suite No. 2- Montagues and Capulets"

A WORLD OF DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS (2:04) Sibelius: Valse triste

THE GIANT PYRAMID AND ITS ANCIENT PEOPLE (6:36) Prokofiev: Scythian Suite-The Adoration of Veles and Ala*

VENUS IN A SPACE UNIFORM SHINING IN FLUORESCENT LIGHT (5:15)
Williams: Close Encounters of the Third Kind+

SPACE CHILDREN IN THE UNDERGROUND KINGDOM CALLED AGHARTA (5:46)
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5: Second Movement- Allegro marcato*

THE EARTH-A HOLLOW VESSEL (4:38) Tomita: Dororo

SIDE B

THE SONG OF VENUS (3:52)
Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1: First Movement- Andantino

DAWN OVER THE TRIANGLE AND MYSTERIOUS ELECTRIC WAVES (2:22)
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 6: First Movement-
Allegro moderato
Tomita: Computer Data Signals

THE DAZZLING CYLINDER THAT CRASHED IN TUNGUSKA, SIBERIA (7:28)
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 6: First Movement – Allegro moderato

THE HARP OF THE ANCIENT PEOPLE WITH SONGS OF VENUS AND SPACE CHILDREN (7:51)
Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1: Third Movement- Moderato; Allegro moderato

THE VISIONARY FLIGHT TO THE 1448 NEBULAR GROUP OF THE BOOTES (3:53)
Tomita: Departure of the UFO
Prokofiev: Scythian Suite: The Adoration of Veles and Ala* 

Yamamoto: Vocoder

Voice Of Venus - Otto Cesana

 

Dreams

Voices Of Venus

Otto Cesana - His Chorus and Sextet

Columbia Records CL 971

1957

From the back cover: The voices of Venus are the voices of love, voices ever present in the dramatic and fascinating music of Otto Cesana. In his first collection, Ecstasy, Mr. Cesana presented a series of instrumental compositions using all the resources of a full concert orchestra to obtain the variety of emotional colorings and tonal sonorities required by his program. Here, however, he uses much smaller forces, obtaining much the same results in a very different way.

In this program, for example, he employs human voices singing actual lyrics, as contrast to his instrumental group, and within the lyrics themselves (written, like the music, by Otto Cesana) rhythm, repetition and internal rhymes are used to express the kind of emotional power expressed by repetition in orchestral writing. The result is unusually interesting, and offers a program of compelling fascination. The selections, moreover, have been designed to present a sort of impressionistic story of unrequited love; there is no story line as such, except insofar as shifts in moods supply a narrative thread, but the basic feeling throughout moves progressively forward to its logical climax.

For his earlier program, Mr. Cesana offered an explanation of his music that is worth repeating here, to place these compositions in their proper setting. "From jazz," he wrote, "and by that I mean jazz as it is played by small groups, I derived sincere sentiment; in fact, it is this naive but deep and honest feeling that is the life-blood of all real jazz. To the great harmonists such as Debussy and Wagner I owe a great deal of my harmonic dexterity; from Beethoven comes my knowledge of thematic development and some sound principles of musical form; and to Rimsky-Korsakov, that meticulous master of orchestration, I owe my knowledge of the orchestra. Of course for over-all sincerity and emotional intensity, I offer a very low bow to that monument of integrity, Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky." From that statement can be seen the sources of Mr. Cesana's inspiration, and for his rare combination of deep respect and admiration for the classics, combined with his equally deep respect and admiration for jazz. A student of the piano, organ, music theory and composition, he also possesses a basic knowledge of all major musical instruments, and uses them in his writing in fresh and unfamiliar ways. He has worked as composer and arranger for Hollywood, and has also done considerable work for radio. In 1941, he conducted a jazz concert in Town Hall in New York, playing his own music; among his large-scale works are six symphonies, four overtures, numerous suites and concertos for various instru- ments, as well as a wide variety of shorter works. His interest in the technical side of music-its orchestration, its composition, its theory – may be traced in four books he has written, "Modern Harmony," "Dance Arranging," "Modern Counterpoint," and "Voicing the Modern Dance Orchestra."

In this program, Mr. Cesana, his chorus and sextet present twelve of his most recent works, all characteristic in their expressive, romantic qualities. Our Romance Is Over is a charming ballad exploiting the contrasting colors of voices and orchestra, as does the somewhat faster I Can't Run Away from You. The next selection, Where Are You Now? is slow and reflective, contrasting with Twenty Days, a de- lightful waltz with a touch of humor. These are followed by the wistful all My Todays Are Tomorrows, and the sweet sentiment of Dreams.

The second half of the program begins dramatically with the opening of As Long as Love Remembers, a lovely new ballad. You Haunt Me comes next, and proves equally affecting, as it leads into I Fear the Night, a lush, flowing melody with the atmosphere of a nocturne. You're So Wonderful appears in an easier, lighter guise, reflecting hope, and Roses at Springtime, too, brings its promise of romance. The program concludes with You've Got Me, a colorful melody set in beguine tempo as a bright finale to Mr. Cesana's group of inventive and original new songs. 

Our Romance Is Over

I Can't Run Away From You

Where Are You Now?

Twenty Days

All My Todays Are Tomorrows

Dreams

As Long As Love Remembers

You Haunt Me

I Fear The Night

You're So Wonderful

Roses At Springtime

You've Got Me

One Upon A Dinosaur - Jane Murphy

 

The Plant Eaters

Once Upon A Dinosaur

Created by Jane Lawliss Murphy

Musical Arrangements: Dennis Buck

Drum Arrangements: Chris Bankey

Vocals: Bing Bingham, Bobby Cavanaugh, Sherry Leidt

Cover Design: Denise Shatter

Recored at Master Sound Astoria, NY

Engineer: Ben Rizzi

Assistant Engineer: Jill Warren

Printed at Michael Graphics, Inc.

Production Coordinator: Amy Laufer, Elaine Rauff

Produced by James Kimble

Kimbo Educational KIM 9083

1987

From the back cover: ABOUT THE AUTHOR – JANE LAWLISS MURPHY has been writing and perform- ing music for children ever since she was a child. Jane earned a B.S. in Education at SUNY Plattsburgh and has many years of experience teaching the early elementary grades.

Jane's songs and music have captured the hearts of parents, educators and librarians nationwide. Adults and children who have seen her perform, invariably leave her programs humming her tunes and singing the lyrics they've quickly learned. This is Janes' second album containing a collection of songs designed specifically for children. The first release, Songs For You And Me (KIM 8085), has received exceptional praise from both parents and teachers alike.

Fossil Rock

We Want To Learn About Dinosaurs

The Stegosaurus

My Pet Tyrannosaurus 

The Plant Eaters

Big Bad Al

Dinosaur Dance

The Brachiosaurus' Song

The Reptile Rap

Once Upon A Dinosaur

Ankylosaurus and Paleocincus

The Meat Eaters

Where Have They Gone?