In the late 1960s, Morton Subotnick’s groundbreaking electronic work Silver Apples of the Moon was both a bestselling classical record and an underground nightclub sensation, since acknowledged as an influence by Frank Zappa and Four Tet alike. But back in 1958, the very first big public presentation of his work did not go quite so smoothly. He’d written a piece for two people playing a single piano and Subotnick was convinced it was “really fresh”. The audience less so. By the third movement they were already growing restless. The players on stage practically had to stare them down. At the end, the crowd rose in a fury, screaming at the stage. The pianists ran for their lives.
Subotnick had just graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California, and his former lecturer, the exiled French composer Darius Milhaud, had helped to arrange the concert. Feeling sick to his stomach, Subotnick spies Milhaud in his seat with tears in his eyes and apologises for what he presumes to be his teacher’s disappointment. “No, my dear,” Milhaud reassures him. “Those are tears of joy. It reminds me of the old days.”
