And the sign said,
“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence”

- from “The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel

In this installment of WitW, I would like to discuss the use of silence as a compositional tool.  I don’t mean short, dramatic uses, such as the GP commonly found in classical music, but significant spans of time devoted to silence for compositional reasons.  To this end, we will explore three distinct approaches to silence by three different 20th/21st centuryAmerican composers.  Any discussion of silence as a compositional device, of course must begin with John Cage’s 4′33″.

4′33″ is the infamous piece of silent music, whose entire score consists of three movements of indeterminate length, each marked “tacet” (the movements are traditionally, but not necessarily, marked off by the performer in some way).  For Cage, any sound was music.  He is quoted as saying that he would rather listen to the sounds of traffic than to the symphonies of Beethoven (I’m paraphrasing from memory, although I’m pretty sure that’s the essence of it).    4′33”, therefore, is a framing device.  It sets a certain boundary, and says, “anything within this boundary is art, pay attention to it.” Consider the following images:

"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp

Some urinals

Both images are of urinals.  The first, however, is found in an art gallery, while the second image is from a public restroom.  While both objects are essentially similar, the context, or the framing, of these objects significantly impacts the way we think about these objects.  With the first, we may think of questions like “Is this really art?” or “If I pee in this, where would the pee go?” or “Would I get arrested if I tried to pee in it?” or “Why did I let Ty drag me to this modern art museum?” With the second, this is a context in which we (at least those of us who are male) are used to encountering urinals, and little thought is given to them (with the exception of special rules which apply to public urinals). Anyways, back to John Cage.  The brilliance of 4′33″ as a framing device is that any sounds that arise during these boundaries are unintentional, the sounds that are normally blocked out or ignored during “normal” performances.  It provides a new context for listeners to consider sounds which would normally be dismissed.

While a recording of 4′33″ is not necessary (one only needs a stopwatch to perform the piece in the comforts of one’s own home), I couldn’t resist linking to this performance, which I find particularly compelling.

Another interesting use of silence is found in the music of Morton Feldman.  Feldman once said that the most beautiful thing a sound ever does is decay.  In his works, the textures are often very sparse, so that you can appreciate the sound in its entirety, decay and all.  Feldman’s counterpart in the visual art world is Mark Rothko, who uses simple designs to invite the viewer to appreciate the subtleties of color and texture in the works. For an example of Feldman’s use of silence, check out this recording of “The King of Denmark” for solo percussionist:

denmark

In “The king of Denmark,” the sparse textures isolate individual sounds and allow the listener to appreciate their qualities more fully than they might in a more dense musical situation.

The final composer I will discuss in this post is Thomas DeLio.  In addition to being an influential composer, DeLio is also one of the foremost scholars in contemporary music, with a special interest in the music of Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Iannis Xenakis.  The most striking characteristic of DeLio’s music is his use of long periods of silence.  In a few of his pieces, the total duration of the silences is greater than the total duration of the musical material.  The reason for this is that DeLio approaches silences functionally in a way that is fundamentally different from that of Cage or Feldman.  For Cage, silence was a framing device to invite the unintended; for Feldman, it was a blank canvas on which individual sound colors are accented.  DeLio’s use, however, is to frustrate the listener’s memory.  The natural tendency of listeners is to process sounds by putting them in the context of sounds which proceed and follow them.  This is a natural process, and most music relies on this contextualization to create coherent musical ideas.  DeLio, however, attempts to isolate musical material by use of silences, so that each sound or gesture can be appreciated individually.  The listener hears a gesture, followed by a long span of silence, and by the time the next gesture occurs, the listener has forgotton what the preceding gesture had sounded like.  This music can seem strange and even unsettling to the casual listener; such long spans of silence are very uncommon in music, and create a certain amount of tension between the audience and performer.  To give you an example of DeLio’s music, here is a performance of this author performing DeLio’s wave/s for solo percussionist:

wave/s

This concludes my look at three different composers and how they use silence in unique ways.  I hope you have found this interesting and that it gives you another point of view as you approach contemporary music.  See you next time, when we’ll explore…something.  I don’t have a topic picked out, and I am open to suggestions. Peace.