Recordings

Thomas DeLio, a composer familiar to many Computer Music Journal readers, released two new recordings in 2013 through Neuma Records. Selected Compositions (1991–2013) is an audio CD that collects 16 of the composer’s acoustic and electroacoustic pieces from a span of more than 20 years. space/image/word/sound is a multi-channel audio and video DVD that focuses on DeLio’s more recent music—two acoustic and five electroacoustic works, composed between 2002 and 2013. Taken together these releases provide a broad survey of the composer’s music since the early 1990s and a close look at his more recent work. Further, these recordings represent a reinvigoration of Neuma Records, which had been dormant since 2007. Now distributed by Albany Music Distributors, Neuma has several new projects slated for release. Given this company’s commitment to contemporary music, this renewed activity is surely welcome news for the electroacoustic music community.

Selected Compositions (1991–2013) provides an excellent overview of more than two decades of DeLio’s recent music. Commenting on his creative work the composer has written,

typically, my compositions are constructed from discrete segments of music which, though they coexist as a group, never become fixed with respect to one another through hierarchical relationships; in this respect my pieces are never organic. I strive for this condition in order to avoid as much as possible the expression of subjective priorities from which such hierarchies are engendered. In addition, 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.

To this end, his music is often composed of rich, intricate sound events that are separated by varying, sometimes significant, amounts of silence.

This aesthetic and creative impetus can be clearly heard on several acoustic and electroacoustic works from this disc, including between for flute, piano, and three percussionists, Than for orchestra, Though for piano, as though for solo percussion; and five pieces for tape: z,rb, ,c,el,f, Belle-Isle I-IV, Zilahn, and XXXIII-XXVII. Like compositional studies, these works tend toward short durations, ranging from approximately 2 to 6 minutes in length. In each work one encounters individual sound events that challenge perception in one way or another. Some examples include: subtle moments of static hovering quietly at the threshold of audibility; noisy and inharmonic timbres locked into a continuous flux; highly active, multifaceted instrumental textures in which individual components alternately gain prominence and are hidden; and a variety of other compelling sonic gestures. Shorter works such as z,rb and ,c,el,f, both of which are just under 2 minutes long, tend to feature a diverse array of sound events, whereas in some of the longer compositions such as Though and Belle-Isle I-IV one finds sounds and textures that recur, though in fragmented, non-linear ways. The composer writes, “I find myself less and less interested in creating states of order or disorder … I am more interested in the gray area that separates them,” and in a broad sense this notion is reflected in these works.

The compact disc features three of what DeLio refers to as “deconstructions”: “electronic composition[s] based upon a recorded performance of one of my own earlier instrumental works.” Appropriately, each electroacoustic deconstruction is preceded by the acoustic piece from which it was derived. as though composed in 1994 and as though/of composed in 1999 constitute the oldest such pair on the disc. Regarding the percussion work, the composer states that he “was very interested in drawing attention to the distinction between pitched and non-pitched sound.” In this piece one primarily hears noisy events such as a snare drum roll or gestures across multiple tom toms that strongly contrast with the single...