Silence... It's role in Music.
Every student has taken home art work from class, and had it put on the fridge at home. Ask yourself, how long did it last? One month, a year...? Yet when it was made that picture was very important to you wasn't it? Now consider that same picture framed, and behind glass. It might now last for years, or perhaps decades. It has gained longevity, and its importance to you respected by being protected by its framing. Similarly, your music making should be framed...in silence. By silence I don't mean a bit of relative quiet from your classmates before you begin, but by a profound silence.
By profound I mean full of meaning.
Listen to the profound silence at the end of 'Threnody to the victims of Hiroshima' (on the graphic score page on this site). The silence at the end is profound because it evokes our own response to it. In our mind we may be scared, or thought-full, or even numb... but we experience silence as a gesture in the music, even after the piece has 'concluded'. Take the example of Beethoven's famous motif at the beginning of his 5th. Symphony...da da da dahhh! If one does not hear profound silence between each sounding of this motif, (by coughing, talking or ringtone for example), the musical expressiveness of the motif is lost.
All of your musical performances should then be framed in silence. Once the audience has settled, wait for this profound silence to happen before you begin to play. Use as a model the silence that falls over an orchestra and audience once the conductor's baton (stick) is raised. Watch an experienced pop performer draw an audience's focus towards listening to a ballad after a raucous dance tune. If you demand silence for your self and your music, almost any audience will instinctively respond.
Silence is used to not only frame a performance. It is also used to delineate the division between one sound and another. These are ironically called rests, but the musician should not rest during them, but consider the significance that silence plays between notes in the expression of ideas and feelings through sound. Again I use language for an analogy: without punctuation our meaning is easily misunderstood:
Say the following sentence out loud:"A woman without her man is nothing"
Punctuate this in two different ways: "A woman, without her man, is nothing"
"A woman: without her, man is nothing"
The glib description of music as being a 'universal language' is misrepresenting how music works. It would be better to say: Languages are music.
By profound I mean full of meaning.
Listen to the profound silence at the end of 'Threnody to the victims of Hiroshima' (on the graphic score page on this site). The silence at the end is profound because it evokes our own response to it. In our mind we may be scared, or thought-full, or even numb... but we experience silence as a gesture in the music, even after the piece has 'concluded'. Take the example of Beethoven's famous motif at the beginning of his 5th. Symphony...da da da dahhh! If one does not hear profound silence between each sounding of this motif, (by coughing, talking or ringtone for example), the musical expressiveness of the motif is lost.
All of your musical performances should then be framed in silence. Once the audience has settled, wait for this profound silence to happen before you begin to play. Use as a model the silence that falls over an orchestra and audience once the conductor's baton (stick) is raised. Watch an experienced pop performer draw an audience's focus towards listening to a ballad after a raucous dance tune. If you demand silence for your self and your music, almost any audience will instinctively respond.
Silence is used to not only frame a performance. It is also used to delineate the division between one sound and another. These are ironically called rests, but the musician should not rest during them, but consider the significance that silence plays between notes in the expression of ideas and feelings through sound. Again I use language for an analogy: without punctuation our meaning is easily misunderstood:
Say the following sentence out loud:"A woman without her man is nothing"
Punctuate this in two different ways: "A woman, without her man, is nothing"
"A woman: without her, man is nothing"
The glib description of music as being a 'universal language' is misrepresenting how music works. It would be better to say: Languages are music.