Analog Audio
Event Type
Music
Origin
KPFA
Identifier
G.SUB.MOR.01
Program Length
31 min
Dates
| broadcast
| 402 | created
Description
Created on the Buchla Electronic Music System and recorded in quadraphonic sound, “Touch” by Morton Subotnick, is another early electronic music masterpiece by the pioneering American composer. Before the age of microcomputers and digital synthesizers, Subotnick was making engaging works of purely electronic sounds in a style somewhat similar to his better known European colleagues such as Karlheinz Stockhausen. While not quite as frenetic as Stockhausen’s “Kontakte”, nor perhaps as complex as Subotnick’s earlier work for the Buchla, “Silver Apples of the Moon,” “Touch” still clearly challenges the preconceptions of what was considered music at the dawn of the Information Age. Like “Silver Apples,” “Touch” was composed with the LP record in mind, as it was divided into two parts, one for each side of the album, and was always primarily meant to be listened to as a stereo recording rather than performed live. With the advent of full digital technology such early compositions might seem to some as almost primitive, but this would be an erroneous assumption, as these earlier works were often based on a better understanding of music then much of what passes for electronica today.
Genres
Electro-Acoustic / Electronic
Musical Selections
Touch (1969) / Morton Subotnick
Subjects
Electronic music
Acknowledgment
Funding for the preservation of this program made possible through a grant by Save America’s Treasures, a program of the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.