Thomas DeLio: Selected Compositions 1991-2013
and Thomas DeLio space / image / word / sound
Fanfare Magazine: Issue 37:3 Jan/Feb 2014
reviewed by Art Lange
Thomas DeLio: Selected Compositions 1991-2013 including Belle-Isle I-IV (2003; tape), transients / images (2006; percussion, piano), …transients (2011; tape), Though (1993; piano solo), XXXIII - XXVII (2007; tape), as though (1994; percussion solo), as though / of (1999; tape ), between (1991; flute, piano, 3 percussionists) , z,rb (2000; tape), Center (1999; solo voice), Center / s (2000; tape), Than (1991; orchestra), ,c,el,f (2001; tape), that light (1989/2009; solo soprano) , Song: “aengus” (2013, tape), Zilahn (2004; tape) NEUMA CD 450-108.
Thomas DeLio: space / image / word / sound: Song: Foxrock near Dublin… , et avant / image, …zwischen den Worten (Schwimmhäute, Redewände), - qu’un espace / sépare, amounts. to., “sam”, “aengus” NEUMA DVD 450-201.
In the Introduction to his book Circumscribing The Open Universe (University Press of America, 1984), Thomas DeLio makes the case that in contrast to the conventional type of “closed” art in which the artist has a singular point of view to express and creates a work (or object) that fulfills that vision and requires the audience to understand its experience of the artwork from the artist’s perspective (for example, by following Goethe’s first principle of criticism, that is, questioning “What is the artist or work of art trying to do?”), there is a manner of artistic creativity—found in, among others, the work of composers John Cage and Christian Wolff, poet Charles Olson, and visual artist Robert Irwin—that redirects the idea of form to that of an “open structure” which allows the audience to become aware of the experience itself, and the way they relate to the materials at hand, as a process dependent upon their own individual perception. DeLio writes, “A structure is open if it presents no single fixed view of reality but instead reinforces those variable conditions under which each unique consciousness becomes manifest.” He then cites D.H. Lawrence, who anticipated such a re-focusing of form as the product of an “immediate present” which reflects “the sheer appreciation of the instant moment, life surging itself into utterance at its very well-head.”
To this end, since 1970 DeLio has worked toward a distinct style of composition that rejects the use of development, variation, continuity, and hierarchical relationships—which is not to say that aspects of these may not be part of the individual listener’s perception of his music. But DeLio’s intention is to create music that focuses the listener’s attention on various sequences of minute musical events separated by passages of silence, in the moment, and not necessarily as part of a larger whole. In his words, “I always try to avoid constructing transitions linking individual events, anything that might convey a sense of continuity and connection. I want everything to feel segmented, halted, separated. Only the direct perception of the moment seems important to me.” In their own ways, composers like Stockhausen, Cage, and Feldman have created music that attempts to be in and of the moment, but none of it sounds anything like that which fills this particular CD and DVD.
The music itself can be divided into three formats: pieces using live performers with acoustic instruments and/or voice; tape compositions of “pure” electronic origin (which explains the lack of performers for several of the pieces in the headnote listing above); and tape compositions which primarily utilize, and often manipulate, voices and instruments. I make a distinction between the two types of tape composition because DeLio is uncommonly well-versed in modern poetry (as his imaginative titles indicate), and his setting of texts by, in these instances, Cid Corman, A.R. Ammons, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Celan, and most frequently P. Inman, involve not merely accompaniments to the words, but their fragmentation, distortion, disorientation, and near-total recontextualization. (Full disclosure: in 1978, I included poetry by P. (then Peter) Inman in the small press magazine I published and edited, Brilliant Corners: a magazine of the arts.) Nevertheless, in each of these formats the basic features are the same—starkness, concision, and concentration to the point of microscopic detail. Characteristically, a piece will consist of brief events (less phrases than gestures) made up of several seconds of small, mostly quiet, sounds—buzzes, clicks, indistinct pitches, the sonic debris of activity—isolated by longer patches of silence. How many events there are determine the length of the piece; most are in the three- to eight-minute range. On occasion, there will be abrupt jolts of color or texture—a flute trill, a harsh electronic rasp, a sudden disembodied voice. DeLio prefers percussion instruments because of the ambiguity between their pitched and unpitched qualities, and draws attention to the instant of their attack—a hard mallet on a marimba, the whisk of a brush, the rattle of maracas, the pop of a drum head. The extended silences both resolve and intensify the tension of the moment.
A few of the works stand out. Center (1999) and that light (1989/2009), setting the Japanese-influenced nature poems of Ammons and Corman respectively, find the soprano soloists negotiating large, angular interval leaps and whispered sibilants, breaking up the words, repeating syllables, and abstracting the poetry’s original verbal music under DeLio’s extreme conditions. Though (1993) is a condensed essay for solo piano—a brief flurry of notes, contrasting intense gestures of range and dynamics, concluding with a surprising episode of bare octaves. “A novel in a sigh,” indeed. The three-minute Than (1991) translates DeLio’s concerns into orchestral proportions—denser textures, a broader palette of colors, sporadic activity, as if Schoenberg’s Five Pieces, op. 16, were plotted according to a Feldman graph score. In comparison, the 30-minute “aengus” (2013) is DeLio’s Das Lied von der Erde; a tape-manipulated counterpoint of words, voices, instruments, and subterranean electronics. Here, and moreso in Song: “Foxrock near Dublin…” (2005), amounts. to. (2002), and “sam” (2010), the non-syntactical, fragmented, and collaged poetry of P. Inman is voiced in flat, uninflected tones, reduced, excerpted, and at times layered into an Ivesian chorus of complexity, emphasizing and multiplying the text’s “acoherence”—a term suggested by poet and literary and music critic Richard Kostelanetz to correspond with atonality in music.
Previous Fanfare critics have had favorable responses to DeLio’s music. Mike Silverton, in Fanfare 16:1, decided Against the silence was “a beautiful work,” and in Fanfare 19:5 praised a Neuma recording of six of his pieces as “wonderful, palliative stuff for these sound-soaked times.” Robert Kirzinger, in Fanfare 21:6, called DeLio “a provocative musical thinker” and acknowledged “his uniqueness appeals to me,” even though he felt two of his text-based tape pieces were “not particularly effective.” From these earlier recordings, only one performance, the solo piano Though, seems to have been recycled; the solo percussion piece as though is revisited, but appears in a new performance by a different player. It should be noted that the DVD is, for the most part, devoid of images, the exception being “sam” (a non-specific tribute to Beckett, I wonder?), which presents us with an assortment of visual columns of word fragments, clusters of letters, and drawings derived from word fragments, dots, and erasures. Chosen, I assume, because of the extended playing time, the DVD offers each work in two types of sound reproduction, surround sound or quad (again, “sam” is the lone exception) and stereo. All things considered, I’d start with the CD, a well-filled, more diverse program, and an ear-opening introduction to DeLio’s unconventional sensibility. The overly literal minded may not appreciate the mystery and eccentricity of DeLio’s sound world, but as with any uncharted territory, there are wondrous strange discoveries to be made there.