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Phthong

from Foundations by Thom Blum

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Phthong, for 10 vocalists and percussion (1978), was composed while I was studying formal language and linguistics. I had become fascinated with a couple of things, the diachronic nature of language (how it evolves over time), and the process by which we learn to comprehend a language, especially at that moment when we stop our internal translations and instead think directly in our new tongue.

“Phthong” stems from the Greek “phthongos” meaning “sounds”. The piece organizes vocal phonemes based on some of their sonic properties or, to use a term from linguistics, their “distinctive features”. Phonemic groupings and the desired transformations between them guide the utterances made by the vocalists, as prescribed in the score. Similar notions (i.e., groupings and transformations) are applied to generate the percussion parts as well. In all there are 42 “grouped events”, or measures. Some overlap and others are sequential. The progression of these groupings over approximately ten minutes forms the piece. The improvisational nature of the piece means it will never be the same twice. The performance included in this collection was recorded live on May 24, 1980 at Jetwave Gallery, San Francisco, California.

© 1978 Thom Blum (ASCAP)

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from Foundations, released January 2, 2021

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Thom Blum San Francisco, California

Thom Blum has been composing electroacoustic music since 1974.

Recent performances and installations include "[You Are [Here] You [Are] You Here]", a sound installation established in 2022 in the Prelinger Library in San Francisco, and "Telescopic 1 (zoom out)" at the San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2024. ... more

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