It's fascinating to see that the silence has been used as a dramatic tool for several hundred years. Then in the last 60 years, pieces of music have contained more expansive silences, it seems. I haven't been able to "join the dots" so that I can see some kind of culture of silence that the later 20th and then 21st century pieces directly expand on. Silence seems perhaps to explode in more recent music? To jostle for position music? Or to deflate music's conventional effects? Is that so?
Thinking about silence today, I can see that there can be silence before and after music, during and within it. Most of the silences seem to be either those of relaxation or tension, when something's gathered or released. Is that fair? Some silences are fixed in rests or bars; some are conventions before or after - those sloughed moments before a piece is played or after it; some are inexact durations - between movements.
But why should there not be other silences? And what else might they be? What intentional uses are silences put to in other forms of communication?
Are there musical silences of anger? Of accusation? Teasing silences? (Are there silences "of western mountains?" Silences "of northern moonlight"?)
The silence of impatience? Of peace (the Moonlight interlude of Britten's Four sea Interludes seems distinctly to be this sort of silence).
Oh!
- on Armistice Day, following the Last Post there's a two minute silence preceding the Reveille. Music and timed silence have a tradition almost a century old in this country, then! A history that began when John Cage was only a little boy.
Are there other examples of silence in our culture that we can connect to music?
Thinking about silence today, I can see that there can be silence before and after music, during and within it. Most of the silences seem to be either those of relaxation or tension, when something's gathered or released. Is that fair? Some silences are fixed in rests or bars; some are conventions before or after - those sloughed moments before a piece is played or after it; some are inexact durations - between movements.
But why should there not be other silences? And what else might they be? What intentional uses are silences put to in other forms of communication?
Are there musical silences of anger? Of accusation? Teasing silences? (Are there silences "of western mountains?" Silences "of northern moonlight"?)
The silence of impatience? Of peace (the Moonlight interlude of Britten's Four sea Interludes seems distinctly to be this sort of silence).
Oh!
- on Armistice Day, following the Last Post there's a two minute silence preceding the Reveille. Music and timed silence have a tradition almost a century old in this country, then! A history that began when John Cage was only a little boy. Are there other examples of silence in our culture that we can connect to music?
It may be a coincidence but I believe that the universe may be sitting at around 2.73 K.
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