View Full Version : What is the history of silence in music?
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
15-11-11, 11:24
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
15-11-11, 11:35
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
15-11-11, 11:39
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
15-11-11, 11:41
just adding (again?) that , of course, the IDEA of silence is most important
:ok:
MrGongGong
15-11-11, 11:44
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
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
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.
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 :smiley:
ferneyhoughgeliebte
15-11-11, 13:36
Silence in Bruckner's symphonies is very important
:ok: - 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
15-11-11, 15:21
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
15-11-11, 18:52
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
15-11-11, 19:21
:ok: :ok: :ok:
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
15-11-11, 21:15
Good heavens, you and me both citing John Paynter the very same morning. What's the chances of that, eh?
:winkeye:
Ferretfancy
15-11-11, 22:10
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.
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! :blush: - 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?
:ok: :ok: :ok:
... and there are others: the Second Polish Diary ...
My first Nono tonight - Quando stanno morendo: Diarrio Polacco No 2 - on the marvellous (free) Spotify.
PS: With some virtuoso coughing and sneezing from the audience at the start of part 2.
Are some silences destructive?
old khayyam
25-11-11, 15:06
Most of the silences seem to be either those of relaxation or tension
Indeed, HV, lets get metaphysical: Without silence there cannot be music. Without silence there cannot be a note. Music, specifically rhythm, has been defined as the tension between the notes. In musical terms, silence may be defined as a dynamic. Without dynamic tension there can be no music in its true sense. Music can not be defined as a series of notes. A series of notes is just someone practicing a scale. Once a meaning, a purpose, has been added, a relationship forms between the notes. That relationship is what we refer to as music. Silence is not merely a drop in audibility between the notes, a gap where we wait for the next note. The silence is the music.
It therefore follows that the greater the music, the more silence it will contain (novelty pieces notwithstanding).
SFactor123
16-07-12, 13:00
Never knew about silence in a song, now I know.
Serial_Apologist
16-07-12, 17:10
Never knew about silence in a song, now I know.
How far did you have to come to leave that message, SFactor123? Did it take you long?
MrGongGong
16-07-12, 17:16
Indeed, HV, lets get metaphysical: Without silence there cannot be music. Without silence there cannot be a note. Music, specifically rhythm, has been defined as the tension between the notes. In musical terms, silence may be defined as a dynamic. Without dynamic tension there can be no music in its true sense. Music can not be defined as a series of notes. A series of notes is just someone practicing a scale. Once a meaning, a purpose, has been added, a relationship forms between the notes. That relationship is what we refer to as music. Silence is not merely a drop in audibility between the notes, a gap where we wait for the next note. The silence is the music.
It therefore follows that the greater the music, the more silence it will contain (novelty pieces notwithstanding).
This IS music
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQc2bWWu7i-jnVd-Mm1hTLY8tmWbNyBVFjS3680KdpZbKDGuYQtDQ
and 4.33" is NOT a "novelty piece"
:biggrin:
... the idea of "absolute" Zero, there can't be an absolute Zero (-273º K) ............
Just a wee morsel of scientific pedantry here: -273 degrees Centigrade if you please. That's 0 degrees Kelvin, that's why it's "zero".:yawn: It may be a coincidence but I believe that the universe may be sitting at around 2.73 K.
MrGongGong
16-07-12, 19:00
Just a wee morsel of scientific pedantry here: -273 degrees Centigrade if you please. That's 0 degrees Kelvin, that's why it's "zero".:yawn: It may be a coincidence but I believe that the universe may be sitting at around 2.73 K.
Sorry
you are , of course, entirely correct :ela:
Sorry
you are , of course, entirely correct :ela:
Mea culpa, not quite, I believe that "degrees" Kelvin is in fact not correct either, it's just Kelvin. :blush:
anyway, probably not in Budapest, which is in another country and they do things differently there.
MrGongGong
16-07-12, 20:40
Mea culpa, not quite, I believe that "degrees" Kelvin is in fact not correct either, it's just Kelvin. :blush:
anyway, probably not in Budapest, which is in another country and they do things differently there.
indeed they do
and its a shame that all our Szechenyi Baths have gone (with a couple of notable exceptions)
The extraordinary and very long-lived Catalan composer FEDERICO MOMPOU ( 1893-1987) wrote four volumes of piano pieces entitled
'Musica Callada' - based on the mystical poetry of Saint John of the Cross, the translation of the title being 'Silent Music' or 'The Music of Silence'.
There is always Handel's "Silent Worship" from Tolomeo?
Just a wee morsel of scientific pedantry here: -273 degrees Centigrade if you please. That's 0 degrees Kelvin, that's why it's "zero".:yawn: It may be a coincidence but I believe that the universe may be sitting at around 2.73 K.
More pedantry; Celsius, not Centigrade...
More pedantry; Celsius, not Centigrade...
Touché!! :blush: You can't get away with anything here can you?!
french frank
17-07-12, 10:08
How far did you have to come to leave that message, SFactor123? Did it take you long?Quite a long distance! I'm afraid SFactor123 is doomed to remain silent. Five messages in quick succession saying nothing and an irrelevant commercial website entered as homepage mean, 'Goodbye'... :erm:
This IS music
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQc2bWWu7i-jnVd-Mm1hTLY8tmWbNyBVFjS3680KdpZbKDGuYQtDQ
and 4.33" is NOT a "novelty piece"
:biggrin:
Don't know - I've never heard it!:whistle:
Don't know - I've never heard it!:whistle:
Perhaps you mean, rather, you have never listened to it?
MrGongGong
17-07-12, 11:15
Perhaps you mean, rather, you have never listened to it?
:winkeye:
I was trying to find a recipe (see foody thread) that would go with this classic
maybe some 25 year old Talisker (which Worby insists was Cage's favourite whisky) ?
:winkeye:
I was trying to find a recipe (see foody thread) that would go with this classic
maybe some 25 year old Talisker (which Worby insists was Cage's favourite whisky) ?
Something for the hip flask, late night Prom August 14th, then:
http://www.royalmilewhiskies.com/images/products/1000000001393_l.jpg
It appears that 10 Year Talisker is on offer at Sainsbury's until 24th this month. At £27.59 it's a must, surely? (That's a 70ml bottle, not the hip gift pack illustrated.) FOr the 25 Year, Waitrose looks the best price:
http://www.waitrosewine.com/230406397/Product.aspx?source=gs
ferneyhoughgeliebte
17-07-12, 12:12
I was trying to find a recipe (see foody thread) that would go with this classic
It would have to involve a medley of freshly-picked wild mushrooms.
maybe some 25 year old Talisker (which Worby insists was Cage's favourite whisky) ?
Fond of Guiness, too.
It would have to involve a medley of freshly-picked wild mushrooms.
Fond of Guiness, too.
Though not in later years when he was totally devoted to macrobiotics.
Serial_Apologist
17-07-12, 15:30
Though not in later years when he was totally devoted to macrobiotics.
Which wouldn't have left mushroom...
Fungi at a party, I bet
Wheels of Cheese
24-07-12, 23:26
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.
Just listened to it on youtube. Lordy, that's a thing...
jayne lee wilson
25-07-12, 00:06
15/11/11 to 24/07/12... a truly appreciating, Nono-esque timeless timescale...
and, economically, the world is on the brink of something nuclear... always on the brink...
verismissimo
25-07-12, 00:09
Bach uses "silence" dramatically in many of his organ works. :smiley:
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