The Sound of Silence
There was an article published last week about Yves Klein’s Monotone-Silence symphony in the New York Times. Klein is better known for his work with colour and paint, his ‘blue’ paintings are quite famous.
Yves Klein, Monochrome Painting, IKB190, 1959
In the article, direct reference is made to another famous ‘silent’ piece that I mentioned in class, John Cage’s 4’33”. Although the article notes:
Klein conceived of the idea for the symphony around 1947-48, the same years that John Cage, in New York, was formulating “4’33”,” a landmark work that involves a pianist not playing the piano but instead attuning an audience to the complexities of silence. Though there seems to be no evidence that Cage and Klein were aware of each other at the time or influenced each other later, Klein also came to view silence as the most important part of the musical work. “This is really my symphony,” he wrote, “and not the sounds during its performance.”
You can find several performances of this piece online, although it seems as though these videos don’t capture the experience of the piece. You might also take a look at this short clip of John Cage talking about silence:
Looking at this discussion of silence in ‘art music’, it’s perhaps worth pausing to think a little about the other ways in which silence is used in other genres of popular music. If Cage and Klein are drawing our attention to listening to silence – the theme of this week’s class – it is worth thinking about how this might differ from popular genres. Here’s a clip of Otis Redding singing “I’ve been loving you too long” performed live in 1967, in which he effectively uses pauses but not in a way seems very close to the ideas of Cage or Klein or Schafer.
Any other genres that make use of silences, pauses and breaks (i.e. the ‘drop’ in Hip Hop, various kinds of dance music)?
On listening: What I find interesting is the tension between John Cage’s interpretation of sound and Schafers’. They seem to agree in principle in having a preference for natural sound, and both draw attention to the need to listen more closely to the different elements that make sounds unique and beautiful.
However, the tension arises in their disagreeing on the environment that they prefer. Schafer clearly appreciates a hi-fi, natural environment. But Cage, in the interview, talks about how he can even appreciate the rise and fall in the sounds of traffic, which is distinctly a lo-fi environment.
It’s interesting that they agree on the way we need to pay attention to sound, but disagree on which sounds they think are worth listening to.
That being said, Cage doesn’t say outright that he would not appreciate a low-ambience environment, but he recognizes beauty in sounds that Schafer does not. It leads me to wonder, if I were to continue my path to being a better listener, if I might be able to find beauty in the city like Cage, since I grew up in Hong Kong. I wonder if what is considered ‘noise pollution’ might come to have a different meaning to me.
On silence in music: I think that silence in a song, a pause, makes the moment immediately following much more impactful -- ie. the use of the “drop” in dubstep. Other genres like pop rock also do this typically in the bridge of the song where there will be a tonal change (significant pause, acapella, or otherwise) to lead up to a powerful succeeding note.
In regards to music using silence as a “drop” beat, etc. It brought up a memory from a vacation I took this summer to Cancun where we met some fellow travellers from Brazil. The language barriers were incredibly difficult to translate back and forth in conversation but one thing I found so interesting is that when a songs beat was about to drop and that long withdrawn silence took place which all of us knew meant that the climax beat to the sound was about to happen, no matter how different us Canadians were than the Brazilians all of us joined in to the growing anticipation until that very second where the beat did drop and everyone went wild. Clearly this was in a club atmosphere, but I think it goes to show that no matter what cultural background, etc. silence means just about the same in every culture, whether it be the silence in a song before the part where everyone goes wild, or whether it be somewhere like in Japan where they take silence very critically and are encouraged to keep the country as quiet as possible by not shouting but talking quietly, not honking car horns, etc. Though different places around the world may stress silence more or less within their cultural routines, I think it is clear that silence is something that we each think about at some point in our daily lives (the awkward silence in conversations, silence in movies to see ones reaction,etc.)