Reviewed by Colin Clarke
DELIO Trois Visages: et avant / image; et absence; qu’un espace / sépare. limn I-VI. by parch reading. wave / s. Spüren. Sherds. ”decker”. Against the silence … George Pope (fl); Airi Yoshioka (vln); Stacey Mastrian (sop); Morris Palter (perc); Akros Perc Collective; U of Maryland College Park Perc Ens; U of Maryland Baltimore County Perc Ens; U of New Mexico Perc Ens; Lee Hinkle, Christopher Shultis (dirs); etc. NEUMA 450-120 (78:49)
Music that operates on the edge of silence: Thomas DeLio’s world is an elusive, refractive one. My colleague Mike Silverton, writing in Fanfare 16:1 back in 1992 talks of DeLio’s relationship with silence in the piece Against the Silence (written 1985/6, for percussion and four-channel computer-generated tape). Silences can isolate events, pushing them away from each other so we hear them as sonic islands. Reviewer Robert Kirzinger comments on this concept on a Capstone release reviewed in Fanfare 21:6 in which DeLio’s music is coupled with that of James Dashow.
The present release presents pieces from 1986 to 2017. The Trois Visages have three separate compositions dates: 2013, 2016 and 2005 respectively but they all set the same text by Mallarmé. The three movements may be performed separately or as a group. One can see the parallel between the Mallarmé text (an unfinished poem written as a memorial to the poet’s son Anatole, who died at age eight and first published in 1961 as Pour un tombeau d’Anatole) and Delio’s music. The booklet quotes Paul Auster, the first translator of Mallarmé’s poem: an “example of isolated words able to span the enormous mental spaces that lie between them.” DeLio has the soloist or the percussionist speak fragments of the text (both French and English are used: only in the third movement on the disc, “d’un espace / sépare,” do we hear the text complete). Each movement is performed by different performers here, hence the detailing in the title. The violin of Airi Yoshioka in “et absence” is particularly impressive, delicate, hesitant and yet undisturbed by sudden percussion interruptions or comments (the piece is scored for violin and six percussionists); at the close of this piece the violin, for a moment, becomes a percussion instrument itself, with the instruction “con legno battuto”. It is in the third piece that the idea of silence as separator, as isolator, is heard at its most striking. There is a long pause, after which a burst of activity introduces the soprano’s statement of the full text for the first time, a significant, culminatory moment. Soprano Stacey Mastrian has the perfect, crystal clear voice for this, her pitching absolutely sure.
The short electroacoustic limn pieces aims to demonstrate “sound wiped clean,” perhaps another view on silence. Within a frame, sounds can exist, albeit fleetingly. The limn punctuate the other pieces, beginning with by parch reading, which uses as source material readings of poetry by P. Inman that DeLio had used in his second opera/installation. The poem /”sam”/ is the source text. Readings, with generated echoes and silvery electronic haloes create a somewhat magical other space, a fascinating experience. A text by Inman is also used for “decker,” an electroacoustic work based on the poet’s readings of his own text which musically sometimes distorts and and dissolves the words electronically, taking a unit of meaning (a word) and morphing it into a unit of sound.
An offshoot from a previous work entitled Transparent Wave, wave / s is an elaboration of an original marimba solo for what is now a spread of percussion sonorities. DeLio describes this as a “miniature concerto for marimba and percussion ensemble” but all played by one performer. The overlap between sound and silence is the crux of the matter here; the work operates as an invitation to both experience and to evaluate this nexus. Both Spüren and Sherds are electroacoustic, the latter dedicated to the composer Wes Fuller, a friend of the composer’s and also pioneer in American electroacoustic music. The high-pitched sounds of Spüren are, in fact, highly beautiful, while Sherds acts as an examination of what the composer describes as “wet” (reverberated) and “dry” (non-reverberated) sounds.
The earliest piece on this disc is Against the silence and was the first piece in which DeLio had brought his ideas about the framing, or distancing, functions of silence to light. Throughout the disc, the music allows the listener to enter into a silence that always has a different feel, a different vibration, depending on a multitude of parameters: whether one has just heard a sound, whether one is expecting a sound or indeed whether one is wondering whether another sound will come. As listeners, there is almost a necessity for meditation here: almost by definition, this music cannot be listened to in a state of impatience (although it might be conceivable that the music would itself transform that state in the listener through the listening process into another, more accepting, state).
This music demands the utmost dedication and concentration from its performers, too, and this it receives in abundance. One can hear that every performer involved was totally committed to DeLio’s individual vision. An expansive booklet completes the high standards here. Some of the music on this disc is available in 5.0 surround sound on a Neuma DVD: spatialization is very important to DeLio, but the medium of the compact disc, it is acknowledged in the notes, enables a wider dissemination. Expect to be challenged; expect to be rewarded.
Five stars: As listeners, expect to be challenged; expect to be rewarded.