The Wild Bull

Morton Subotnick - The Wild Bull

From the liner notes:

Morton Subotnick was born April 14, 1933 in Los Angeles, California. He earned his undergraduate degree in English Literature from the University of Denver and his Master of Arts in Composition from Mills College, where he studied with Leon Kirchner and Darius Milhaud. While in California, Subotnick co-founded the Mills College Performing Group and the San Francisco Tape Music Center. At this time he held posts as Assistant Professor of Music at Mills Colllege and Musical Director of Ann Halprin's Dancers' Workshop Company. since 1960, Morton Subotnick has been working with tape, and his present involvement with mixed media includes the theatrical. He was Musical Director of the Repertory Theater at New York's Lincoln Center during its first season, and since the Fall of 1966 has been involved with the Intermedia Program at the School of Arts at New York University. (The purpose of this program is to bring together artists who specialize in various media - film, theater, tape, etc.). Subotnick is also Director of Electronic Music at the Electric Circus. Prominent among his electronic-music works is Silver Apples of the Moon, composed in 1967 for Nonesuch Records on a commission from Nonesuch directed specifically to the LP record medium - the first in Nonesuch's continuing commission series. Both Silver Apples and The Wild Bull (also a Nonesuch commission) were composed on the modular electronic music system originally built for Morton Subotnick by Donald Buchla at the San Francisco Tape Music Center.

Liner notes by Morton Subotnick:

The first side of this record was almost complete when I came across "The Wild Bull". I was very impressed by the poem and quickly began to feel an affinity between the poem and the composition I was working on ... in fact, the first three notes of the work seemed to me a kind of human/wild-bull moan ... and later I added a human breathing sound to one of the notes. There was never an attempt to "portray" the poem (I don't think music is about that), but at the same time it became harder and harder to disassociate myself from the pathos and restrained cry of personal loss which spoke to me from such a distant point in time. The state of mind which the poem evoked became intimately tangled with the state of mind my own composition was evoking in me. To title the work after the poem seemed natural and to offer the poem seems equally natural.

Tracklisting:

Side One

1. The Wild Bull part 1 {12:47}

Side Two

1. The Wild Bull part 2 {14:32}

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