What is the history of silence in music?

[Guest]

As a musical ignoramus, I'm inclined to think of silence as simply an effect which is used in music; pauses for dramatic or comic effect. Beethoven uses silence in the opening of one of his string quartets, I'm sure he does, though I can't name it. A pair of peremptory chords followed by a pause. Were the pauses in the rondo finale of D959 piano sonata Brendel's or did Schubert score those moments where hesitancy and self-doubt seem almost to lead to the music's disintegration?

But some composers in more recent decades seem to treat silence as something more comprehensive or enduring than a brief effect in the flow of music. Is there a tradition of using silence in music that leads to this modern treatment of silence as integral to music?

What is the history of silence in music?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But some composers in more recent decades seem to treat silence as something more comprehensive or enduring than a brief effect in the flow of music.

Ah, yes: the 1850s and Wagner's Tristan Prelude!

Teasing slightly, but I think the use of silence as Music begins with this piece. In some Renaissance religious works, the overall effect is sometimes to emerge from and disappear into silence as a sort of metaphor of human life coming from and returning to dust, and Monteverdi uses silence as a "sound" (?) - as Orfeo is told of his wife's death and the chorus (and the audience) holds its breath awaiting his response (and what a response: one of the supreme moments of understatement in Opera). You're right; the Viennese Classics used silence mainly as a dramatic pause - the first Movement of the Jupiter Symphony is full of them - but Haydn in particular knew how to stretch out silences often beyond what the audience might expect. The Beethoven I think you mean is Op 59, no 2, where the intent is dramatic, catching the audience attention and cutting off their chatter. But later in the Movement the silent bars become structural: the way he uses the audience's expectation of a silent bar to sustain the first violin's held F#, "colouring" the silence - and I think it's this way of showing the different types of silence that intrigued the Romantics and those contemporary composers who are attracted to the paradoxical phenomenon of a variety of "absence". Debussy, Webern form a link to Feldman and Cage, and thence to Scelsi, (Aldo) Clementi, Sciarrino and - most recently - Richard Barrett, who uses such extremes of silence in his Dark Matter pieces that the Music becomes more a dramatic pause between the silences. (Sounds nonsense written like this, but makes sense when you hear the Music: and is appropriate in connection with the overall subject matter - apologies for the pun.)

It's a way of demonstrating that there is no real thing as silence: that silence (like the "colour" white or the "number" zero) is actually another way of hearing or of enpowering the listener to hear what "isn't there". The Music of expectation, of remembrance, of ourselves.

Best Wishes.

[MrGongGong]

That's well put fernyhough
just adding (again?) that , of course, the IDEA of silence is most important
Trevor Wishart once said that "musical structures are about ideas"
4:33" = 273 seconds which is intrinsically linked to the idea of "absolute" Zero, there can't be an absolute Zero (-273º K) as there can't be an "absolute" silence

this book is (not perfect by any means) interesting

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zero-Decibels-Quest-Absolute-Silence/dp/1416599592

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Professor John Paynter wrote an interesting book "Sound and Silence", basically to encourage better listening and composing in education. There's an interesting chapter on "ear-cleaning".

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

just adding (again?) that , of course, the IDEA of silence is most important

[MrGongGong]

Professor John Paynter wrote an interesting book "Sound and Silence", basically to encourage better listening and composing in education. There's an interesting chapter on "ear-cleaning".

I think you mean R Murray Schaefer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Murray_Schafer

Genius IMV as was John Paynter
and "Sound and Silence" is an essential text

[Bryn]

Professor John Paynter wrote an interesting book "Sound and Silence", basically to encourage better listening and composing in education. There's an interesting chapter on "ear-cleaning".

Good heavens, you and me both citing John Paynter the very same morning. What's the chances of that, eh?

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?3773-You-heard-it-first&p=100367#post100367

[Boilk]

Silence in Bruckner's symphonies is very important, more so than any prior (possibly latter) symphonist. In Bruckner's case it stems from the silence (or actual cessation of playing) organists need whilst changing stops.

This also gives rise to Bruckner's "jump cut" orchestral technique being far bolder than Beethoven's.

[amateur51]

As a musical ignoramus, I'm inclined to think of silence as simply an effect which is used in music; pauses for dramatic or comic effect. Beethoven uses silence in the opening of one of his string quartets, I'm sure he does, though I can't name it. A pair of peremptory chords followed by a pause. Were the pauses in the rondo finale of D959 piano sonata Brendel's or did Schubert score those moments where hesitancy and self-doubt seem almost to lead to the music's disintegration?

But some composers in more recent decades seem to treat silence as something more comprehensive or enduring than a brief effect in the flow of music. Is there a tradition of using silence in music that leads to this modern treatment of silence as integral to music?

What is the history of silence in music?

Not beinmg a practyical nor a theoretical musician, I can't help you with Brendel's performance of D.958, hackneyvi but I did go to some of his masterclasses in the early 1970s where he talked a lot about the importance of 'air around the notes' and 'accented silences'. He has always tended to hold silences a bit longer than most pianists in my experience

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Silence in Bruckner's symphonies is very important

- I should've mentioned Bruckner.

more so than any prior ... symphonist.

There isn't a "thumbs down" icon! Haydn (as so often) anticipated this and Mozart's Jupiter uses the "Dramatic Pause" to make the structural "divisions" clear in the First Movement.

In Bruckner's case it stems from the silence (or actual cessation of playing) organists need whilst changing stops.

Yes, but he was also aware of the resonance that fills the Cathedral at these points and exploits this effect in the Symphonies: not so much silence as the fading of climactic sound.

This also gives rise to Bruckner's "jump cut" orchestral technique being far bolder than Beethoven's.

I don't know what this means, sorry.

Best Wishes.

[Chris Newman]

Silence in Bruckner's symphonies is very important, more so than any prior (possibly latter) symphonist. In Bruckner's case it stems from the silence (or actual cessation of playing) organists need whilst changing stops.

This also gives rise to Bruckner's "jump cut" orchestral technique being far bolder than Beethoven's.

Hector Berlioz liked to exploit this very effect as well.

[jayne lee wilson]

Don't think anyone's yet mentioned that Great Artist of the Silent World - Luigi Nono.

Fragmente-Stille for String Quartet is a true study of music-in-silence; and silence is almost woven into the remarkable epic Prometeo... most dramatic and starkest of all, no hay caminos, hay que caminar, creates a bleak landscape from silence against long-drawn single notes, percussive outbursts, sudden screams from brass, surreal tinkling fragments of birdsong...

Post-nuclear, living in and with the webscape - either everything matters - or nothing does.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Jayne is absolutely right - and bash me over the head with a bagful of beetroots for omitting Nono from my "list": the link between Scelsi and Sciarrino and greater even than they! The late works she mentions (and there are others: the Second Polish Diary, A Pierre etc etc) beautifully and convincingly demonstrate the eloquence of silence, framing the Music that appears from them: audible thought, almost. A "bleak landscape" sounds uninviting, but "bleak" as in Moorland or Fen - not "pretty" but with a cold, intense beauty.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Good heavens, you and me both citing John Paynter the very same morning. What's the chances of that, eh?

[Ferretfancy]

Amazing silences can sometimes be very brief. Two come to mind, the first is the momentary pause before that magical falling phrase which ushers in the last few paragraphs of Ein Heldenleben, nobody made that pause tell more wonderfully than Karajan in his first DG recording. Another is the short pause before the last chords at the end of Petrushka ( 1911 version) one of the great endings in music preceded by a moment's silence.