Musicke Silentium pt. 1

I think the idea that music and silence are distinct and opposing entities is faulty. Rather they are two facets of a continuum that are inseparable, but lacking a unifying name. Much the same way that death is a part of life, light exists with dark and so on. And I don’t mean this in an avant-garde-blow-your-mind way. Silence could be the opposite of music (from a certain viewpoint), but that does not make it an opposing force. Unfortunately, people talk about an “absence of music,” or about “filling in the void,” which makes it sound like music is and silence is not. Those who compose with this frame of mind will achieve different results from those who use silence much the same way they use “music.” If music is the composer’s creation and silence is an emptiness, then silence will be his enemy. He will see it as the abyssal plane that surrounds music. Eternal nothingness on either side of a piece. You should not fight silence and attempt to force music in between it. There is no beginning or end to either music or silence. There may be an end to a song, but the music is far from over. Silence does not simply cease to exist when the first chord is played. If silence is nothing, then how does one create music? How can something be created from nothing? One must work together with silence and music to shape the continuum around us. Silence cannot be nothingness, for it too can be used like music—“notice the use of double basses to reinforce this passage” compared to “his use of silence before the return of the second theme.” When instruments “drop out” of a section, they are not suddenly an “anti-music.” Their silence does not oppose, does not obscure the music of the other players. No one says “I can’t stand the lack of violins in this passage. It grates on me.” One might say “this section feels empty with the brass gone” but she is mistaking the use of silence as an enemy to the music. A good composer will know when to use silence just as well as when to use other techniques. Knowing when to play and when not to play are equally important.

"All music emerges from silence, to which sooner or later it must return. At its simplest we may conceive of music as the relationship between sounds and the silence that surrounds them. Yet silence is an imaginary state in which all sounds are absent, akin perhaps to the infinity of time and space that surrounds us. We cannot ever hear utter silence, nor can we fully imagine such concepts as infinity and eternity. When we create music, we express life. But the source of music is silence, which is the ground of our musical being, the fundamental note of life. How we live depends on our relationship with death, how we make music depends on our relationship with silence" ~Arvo Pärt