It's on the borderline of ironic that I'm making my very first blog here, a blog about general topics pertaining to music and percussion, about silence.
However, silence is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of music. For every symbol for a length of a note that we have (in Western music), we have an equivocal symbol that stands for the same length of time, but for this symbol to cue a certain length of silence. In this way, silence is, at the lowest possible level of appreciation, as important as the rest of the notes on the page.
Composers go to great length to notate not only the rests, but for wind players, where to take a breath, and where they don't indicate where a breath is to be taken, there exists great debate about where to take a breath. Does breathing create more drama anywhere but in music? When a performer takes a breath, it signifies a break in a previous thought and the start of a new thought and notifies the listener of landmarks. If a performer goes a significant amount of time without taking a breath, it gives the listener a profound sense of wonder and brief feelings of infinity and being perilous.
One of the most significant musical instances of silence is the grand pause (G.P.). It's not enough for the composer to write nothing in the score at that point- the composer also writes "G.P." above the measure, almost as if to tell the performers "I'm too good of a composer to write this for no good reason, and if even one of you plays in this damn rest I'll come out of the grave and hunt you down." The end of Holst's "Mars" isn't dramatic because the orchestra is playing at such a high volume. It's as dramatic as it is because there are those massive chasms of silence.
Before I did a recent competition, a friend of mine said that one of the best things that could happen to you in a competition was to have a memory slip, the reason being that the committee would wake up and listen. While it's every musician's worst nightmare to have a huge memory slip in a concerto, recital, audition, or solo performance, he had a point. If a committee hears a day full of flawless performances, a bit of silence could be enough to wake them out of their slumber and hear the rest of an otherwise awe-inspiring performance.
Of course, what would a blog about silence be without mention of John Cage's infamous piece, 4'33". Along with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, it is without a doubt one of the most famous pieces of the twentieth century. All because of a specified amount of silence.
So while it's a bit ironic that I'm starting off this entire thing with a post about silence, I really do think it's important to at least put forth some of these points. Not enough appreciation is given for the points in time where the performer is "taking it easy," for lack of a better way to put it.
