Moon Landing Concert

During the summer of 1969, Salvatore Martirano and his former student, experimental composer David Rosenboom performed a Moon Landing Concert that was taking place simultaneously with the Apollo 11 spaceflight. The performance took place in Gregory Hall Auditorium and was accompanied by multiple monitors showing the first “moon-walk” made in July 1969 by the U.S. astronauts.

The original piece performed by Martirano and Rosenboom – titled B.C. – A.D. – employed chaotic frequency dividers that allowed creating a complex texture of simultaneously ordered and indeterminate electronic sounds.

The recording was recovered with the help of Sal’s son, John Martirano, and was released in 2012 on double-CD “Roundup Two” of David Rosenboom’s work.

Up to that “summer of electronic experimentation” Salvatore Martirano had already developed his interest in electronic circuitry and was in process of conceiving what was to become the SalMar Construction (1972). David Rosenboom, who was already involved in the practice of building electronic music instruments, and Martirano designed two identical systems generating musical patterns (exemplifying nonlinear dynamical behavior) to use for the live moon walk performance.

Other concert events featured composers Edwin London conducting Pierrot Lunaire of A. Schoenberg and Charles Hamm who made an arrangement of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Overture to Il mondo della luna that was played by all musicians with instruments they didn’t learn to play. Films of Ron Nameth, Carl Volkers’s “Interpretations from the History of Recorded Sound”, and dance performances were also on the program.