74TH SEASON 

OF CONCERTS

NOVEMBER 22, 2015 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Roy Lichtenstein, Bull II, 1973, National Gallery of Art,

Washington, Gift of Gemini G.E.L. and the Artist

PROGRAM

3:30 • West Building, West Garden Court

Presented in honor of Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L.

National Gallery of Art New Music Ensemble 

Steve Antosca, artistic advisor

Morton Subotnick, guest artist, Buchla

Lina Bahn, violin

Lisa Celia, flute

E. Michael Richards, guest artist, clarinet

Morton Subotnick (b. 1933)

From Silver Apples of the Moon to A Sky of Cloudless Sulfur* (2015)

’Washington premiere performance
The Musicians

National Gallery of Art New Music Ensemble

Formed in 2010 to present new music in the vibrant architectural environments of the

National Gallery of Art, the Gallery's resident New Music Ensemble has offered critically

acclaimed concerts that feature strategic placement of musicians throughout the spaces

and utilize computer-controlled transformations and spatialization of sound. The group's

2011 tribute to the Gallery's seventieth anniversary, staged in the West Building's Rotunda,

was hailed by the Washington Post as "a spectacular, wonderfully provocative" concert,

which transformed the Rotunda into "an immense temple of sound, presenting a program

of theatrical new works that married humans with computers, and ancient myths with

contemporary aesthetics."

Steve Antosca

Composer Steve Antosca has received awards and commissions for new works from the

American Composers Forum, Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, Bourges

International Competitions, Chamber Music America, Fromm Foundation at Harvard 

University, Johansen International Competition, Kennedy Center, Maryland State Arts

Council, McKim Foundation at the Library of Congress, Meet the Composer, National

Endowment for the Arts, and Randy Hostetler Living Room Music Fund. Recipient in 2011

of the National Academy of Music's International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition, Antosca has a master's degree in computer music composition from the Peabody

Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Formerly the artistic director of VERGE ensemble, with which he performed numerous times at the National Gallery and at the Corcoran 

Gallery of Art, Antosca was a codirector of the 2012 John Cage Centennial Festival Washington, DC. In 2015, Antosca was appointed curator for New Music-in-Residence at the

American University Museum in the Katzen Arts Center. Since 2010, Antosca has created 

programs for the National Gallery of Art New Music Ensemble, and was the Gallery's

composer-in-residence in the fall of 2013, for which he composed his work HABITAT, for

performance in the East Building Atrium, and my end is my beginning, commissioned by

Chamber Music America.

Morton Subotnick

Morton Subotnick is one of the pioneers in the development of electronic music and an

innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer

music systems. Subotnick's most famous work, Silver Apples of the Moon (1966 -1967), was 

commissioned by Nonesuch Records, and marked the first time an original large-scale

composition had been created specifically for the disc medium — a conscious acknowledgment that the home stereo system constituted a present-day form of chamber music. It

has become a modern classic, and in 2009 was entered into the National Recording Registry

at the Library of Congress. Only four hundred recordings throughout the entire history of

recorded music have been chosen for this archive.

4 * National Gallery of Art

In the early 1960s, Subotnick taught at Mills College, and with Ramon Sender

cofounded the San Francisco Tape Music Center. During this period he collaborated with

Anna Halprin in two works (the 3 legged stool and Parades and Changes) and was music

director of the Actors Workshop. It was also during this period that Subotnick worked with

Don Buchla on what became the Buchla ioo, the first analog synthesizer.

In 1966, Subotnick went to New York with the Actor's Workshop to become the first

music director of the Lincoln Center Rep Company in the Vivian Beaumont Theater at

Lincoln Center. He became an artist in residence at the newly formed Tisch School of the

Arts at New York University. During this period he helped develop and became artistic

director of the Electric Circus and the Electric Ear. This was also the time of the creation of

Silver Apples of the Moon, The Wild Bull, and Touch.

In 1969, Subotnick, along with a team of artists, created the California Institute of

the Arts. He served as Associate Dean of the music school for four years and then became 

the head of the composition program where he created a new media program that introduced interactive technology and multimedia into the curriculum. Subotnick is now pioneering works to offer musical creative tools to young children. He is the author of a series of

CDs for children and an online K-6 ear-training and musical-creativity curriculum.

Subotnick's awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, several Rockefeller and

Meet the Composer grants, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Composer Award,

a Brandeis Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award (SEAMUS at Dartmouth), an ASCAP:

John Cage Award, and an ACO: Lifetime Achievement award. He was composer in

residence at Deutscher Akademisher Austauschdienst Kunstlerprogramm (DAAD), in

Berlin, and received an Honorary Doctorate from the California Institute of the Arts in

Los Angeles. Subotnick tours extensively throughout the United States and Europe as a

lecturer, composer, and performer.

74th Season * 5
Program Notes

Starting in the late 1950s, with my work on a sound/music score for a production of King

Lear, I became infatuated with the notion of composing music as a studio art. I was convinced that an imminent technology explosion would offer, for the first time in history, an

alternative to the centuries-old, three-person model of the solitary composer, alone at a

desk writing music with pen and paper, the performer reading and performing the music 

on an instrument, and the audience listening to that music in an auditorium. This was the

dream that prompted Ramon Sender and me to search for someone to create an electronic

music easel; that someone became Don Buchla, resulting in the design and building of the

first "Buchla Box," the first analog synthesizer.

I began my life's work of creating a new music in a technologically impacted world;

a world yet to come. The dream was realized in a series of works starting with Silver Apples

of the Moon and ending with A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur; my version of a new "chamber

music," music created specifically for the turntable and intended to be heard in the privacy

of one's home. I also worked on studio art's anti-matter twin — public performance music

that depended on spontaneity; the performance would somehow invoke the techniques and

aesthetics of musical studio art. I went through numerous approaches, and, as technology

became more sophisticated, I ended up with an approach that finally feels right. For each

season of performances, I create a new hybrid Ableton-Buchla "instrument" loaded with

prepared samples from all my previous works and performances, as well as new materials

developed specifically for the new season; this allows me to transform the samples while

performing brand new sound gestures, creating a new and ongoing palette for performances; The work always has the same title, From Silver Apples of the Moon to A Sky of Cloudless

Sulphur. In this version I have created new material especially for the three instrumentalists

from the National Gallery of Art New Music Ensemble.

Program notes are based on materials provided by the composer.

The National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble wishes to thank the University of Maryland,

Baltimore County, for providing rehearsals assistance for this performance.

6 ’ National Gallery of Art

events of the Seventy- General InformationUpcoming

Fourth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

National Gallery of Art Orchestra

Gillian Anderson, guest conductor

Cine-concert featuring Way Down East

Copresented with the Department of Film

November 29, Sunday, 2:00

East Building Auditorium

Mark O'Connor

An Appalachian Christmas

December 6, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Howard University's Afro Blue

Community Caroling

December 12, Saturday, 1:30 and 2:30

West Building Rotunda

DC Youth Orchestra

Community Caroling

December 13, Sunday, 1:30 and 2:30

West Building, East Garden Court

Admission to the National Gallery of Art

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed.

Please be sure that all portable electronic

devices are turned off.

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to the

National Gallery of Art through The Circle.

Reserved seating is available in recognition

of their support. Please contact the

development office at (202) 842-6450 or

circle@nga.gov for more information.

www.nga.gov

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The department of music produced these

program notes. Copyright © 2015 Board of

Trustees, National Gallery ofArt, Washington

Cover Heinrich von Forster, The Music Room

of Archduchess Margarete, Princess of Saxony,

in Schloss Ambras (detail), 1870s, National

Gallery of Art, Washington

Back cover West Building, East Garden Court,

National Gallery of Art, Gallery Archives

© Dennis Brack/Black Star