Delian Society
Encyclopedia
The Delian Society, conceived by American composer Joseph Dillon Ford
, was founded on 23 January 2004 as an international community of composers, performers, scholars, recording engineers, music publishers, and amateurs dedicated to the revitalization of the great tonal
traditions in art music
. The Society takes its name from the Greek Island of Delos
, legendary birthplace of Apollo
, god of music
and light
.
Among the composers and artists holding membership in the Delian Society are the following:
The members of the Delian Society are committed to the creation, performance, study, and worldwide dissemination of new tonal art music in various forms and styles; collaborative support of artists working in other media who revisit and revalidate the great pre-modernist traditions of their respective disciplines; acknowledgement of outstanding contributions to tonal music through a noncompetitive awards program; and publication of relevant articles, reviews, program notes, and other writings.
Composer members of the Delian Society contribute new tonal music to the annual Delian Suite, a collaborative work created every May during the Delian Games and published online. They also are responsible for the world's first virtual new music festival, Nu Mu(sic!) Unlimited (31 October 2006), in which tonal composers and their non-tonal counterparts exchange roles. Those members who demonstrate outstanding support for the work of the Society are honored each year by election to the Order of the Cynthian Palm.
The Delian Society advocates freedom of musical expression, and although some of its members have expressed opposition to non-tonal music, others compose both tonal and non-tonal works. The Delian Society represents a movement away from twentieth-century modernism, whose advocates sought to break with the past and focus on novel, generally non-tonal forms of musical expression. As such, the aesthetic orientation of Delian composers, to the extent that they collectively embrace tonality as a means of ensuring intelligible musical communication, reflects the historicism evident in other art forms of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Joseph Dillon Ford
Joseph Dillon Ford is an American composer, author, and educator.He holds undergraduate degrees in music and graduate degrees in both musicology and landscape architecture...
, was founded on 23 January 2004 as an international community of composers, performers, scholars, recording engineers, music publishers, and amateurs dedicated to the revitalization of the great tonal
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
traditions in art music
Art music
Art music is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition...
. The Society takes its name from the Greek Island of Delos
Delos
The island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece...
, legendary birthplace of Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
, god of music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
and light
Light
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...
.
Among the composers and artists holding membership in the Delian Society are the following:
- Michael Conway BakerMichael Conway BakerMichael Conway Baker is a Canadian composer and music educator of American birth. He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1970 and has resided more or less continuously in the Vancouver area since....
- Elisabetta BrusaElisabetta BrusaElisabetta Olga Laura Brusa is an Italian composer.Brusa was born in Milan, and as a child wrote 32 piano pieces. At the Milan Conservatory she formally studied composition with Bruno Bettinelli, and Azio Corghi, graduating in 1980...
- Jean ChatillonJean ChatillonJean Chatillon is a Canadian composer.Chatillon was born of a family of musicians, in 1937, in Nicolet, Quebec. In 1951 he began to play piano and to compose. At first self-taught, then he undertook serious musical studies with the master Conrad Letendre in Montreal...
- Joseph Dillon FordJoseph Dillon FordJoseph Dillon Ford is an American composer, author, and educator.He holds undergraduate degrees in music and graduate degrees in both musicology and landscape architecture...
- Edward GoldEdward GoldEdward Gold , is an American pianist and composer.- Biography :Gold was born in Brooklyn and grew up in New York City. He attended public schools and majored in music at CCNY . He received his masters from Yale University School of Music where he studied with Ellsworth Grumman, Mel Powell and H....
- John Kenneth GrahamJohn Kenneth GrahamAmerican composer John Kenneth Graham , studied at Southeastern Louisiana University and Louisiana State University, writes orchestral tableaux of American legend and folklore. His primary emphasis is the symphony and sonata-allegro form, particularly development techniques and tonal expression...
- Anthony Linden JonesAnthony Linden JonesAnthony Linden Jones is a composer, conductor and performer living in the Hawkesbury region, on the north west fringe of Sydney....
- Warren Park
- Setrak SetrakianSetrak SetrakianSetrak Setrakian is a Lebanese-Armenian composer and pianist, the former Director of Ganatchian College of Music in Lebanon, and a Professor of Piano, Harmony and Composition....
- Gene Ward SmithGene Ward SmithGene Ward Smith is an American mathematician and music theorist. In mathematics he has worked in the areas of Galois theory and Moonshine theory. In music theory, he is noted for a number of innovations in the theory of musical tuning, such as the introduction of multilinear algebra and for being...
- Roman Turovsky-SavchukRoman Turovsky-SavchukRoman Turovsky-Savchuk is an American painter and lutenist-composer born in Ukraine.-Biography:Turovsky was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1961, when it was part of the Soviet Union. He studied art from an early age under his father, the painter Mikhail Turovsky and at the Shevchenko State Art School...
- Grant ColburnGrant ColburnGrant Colburn is an American harpsichordist, pianist and composer.He studied harpsichord with Igor Kipnis.He is the author of five published collections of baroque and renaissance harpsichord music as well as music for recorder/flute with continuo and unaccompanied cello or viola da gamba, of...
The members of the Delian Society are committed to the creation, performance, study, and worldwide dissemination of new tonal art music in various forms and styles; collaborative support of artists working in other media who revisit and revalidate the great pre-modernist traditions of their respective disciplines; acknowledgement of outstanding contributions to tonal music through a noncompetitive awards program; and publication of relevant articles, reviews, program notes, and other writings.
Composer members of the Delian Society contribute new tonal music to the annual Delian Suite, a collaborative work created every May during the Delian Games and published online. They also are responsible for the world's first virtual new music festival, Nu Mu(sic!) Unlimited (31 October 2006), in which tonal composers and their non-tonal counterparts exchange roles. Those members who demonstrate outstanding support for the work of the Society are honored each year by election to the Order of the Cynthian Palm.
The Delian Society advocates freedom of musical expression, and although some of its members have expressed opposition to non-tonal music, others compose both tonal and non-tonal works. The Delian Society represents a movement away from twentieth-century modernism, whose advocates sought to break with the past and focus on novel, generally non-tonal forms of musical expression. As such, the aesthetic orientation of Delian composers, to the extent that they collectively embrace tonality as a means of ensuring intelligible musical communication, reflects the historicism evident in other art forms of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.