The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters

Product Information

In a pair of studies published in the Journal of Neuroscience, ENS researchers, including Marion and Dr. Giovanni DiLiberto used electroencephalography (EEG), an electrophysiological technique that measures electrical signals from the brain via electrodes placed on the surface of the scalp, to measure brain signals taken from 21 trained musicians. The musicians were recorded when listening to periods of silence within melodies taken from the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and when imagining Bach’s melodies while sitting in silence. Twenty-four blank measures. Earlier title: "Great sorrows are mute: incoherent funeral march". The composer instructed: "Great sorrows being mute, the performers should occupy themselves with the sole task of counting the bars, instead of indulging in the kind of indecent row that destroys the august character of the best obsequies." [4]

Tracy McMullen describes Oliveros and Cage’s differing engagements with Eastern spirituality in her essay Subject, Object, Improv: John Cage, Pauline Oliveros and Eastern (Western) Philosophy in Music. Cage, she says, had a “preference for the mind and sublime over the body to connect it to his Protestant-informed religiosity”, despite a lifelong engagement with Zen Buddhism. She adds, “Cage took the Zen exhortation of selflessness and placed it in a Kantian, modernist context—one that was eminently authoritarian.” (18) Il Silenzio: pezzo caratteristico e descrittivo (stile moderno) (1896) by "Samuel", a pseudonym, probably Edgardo Del Valle de Paz [ it]; published in the Year 1. Vol. 1. Nº11. Supplement of the journal La Nuova Musica.The book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of how music’s transformative power works at every level, and it has the potential to change your perception of what is happening when you attend a live performance.

It is so wonderful to be able to read a beautifully written and constructed book which exactlyinforms the reader what a conductor is with disarming accuracy and humility and with a touch of humour when needed. Of all the notions most likely to rile more conservative critics, the idea of composing music with no sound may be the most provocative. But can silence ever make a valuable artistic statement? If not, why are people still willing to pay good money for the chance to rest their ears?That which, within our present-day music, most nearly approaches the essential of the art, is the Rest and the Hold (Pause). Consummate players, improvisers, know how to employ these instruments of expression in loftier and ampler measure. The tense silence between two movements— in itself music, in this environment—leaves wider scope for divination than the more determinate, but therefore less elastic, sound. To celebrate this, the musician Reylon will perform 4’33’’ on the yangqin, or hammered dulcimer, at London’s LSO St Luke. In his book A Song for One or Two: Music and the Concept of Art in Early China, the musicologist Kenneth DeWoskin tells the story of Han Dynasty musician called Music Master Chuang, whose transcribes “mysterious music” with his qin resting on his lap: “He may have strummed responsively to the airborne tones as they came to him; more likely, however, his qin resonated responsively to the sounds as they came…It was a kind of hearing aid rather than a performing instrument.”(4) Extract From The Compassion & Humanity Of Margaret Thatcher", on the Cherry Red Records compilation Pillows and Prayers 2 (1984)

This truly underlines the complicated business of performing what a composer wrote honestly and is the constant challenge we as performers face. Rosemary Brown Psyches Again!, a 1982 Enharmonic Records LP by David DeBoor Canfield. (Side one contains parodies of works supposedly taken down by British psychic Rosemary Brown from deceased composers. Side two is silent and contains an Introduction by Marcel Marceau and a "discussion" by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johannes Brahms on the musical merits of Rosemary's Brown's efforts.) Dr. Shen, Chian Theng – The Enlightenment Of Bodhisattva Kuan-Yin (Avalokiteshvara) Part I, Delivered at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii February 26, 1982The wide range of accessibility that Wigglesworth creates makes this book truly unique and incomparable to other books of its kind. It provides a clear view into what it takes to be a conductor and all that this very demanding and multi-faceted role encompasses. Wigglesworth’s statements about the art of conducting and the need for self-reflection apply across the board to people of all professions. “… Despite all the good and bad that comes our way, the most significant criticisms are the ones we give ourselves.” Wigglesworth’s writing is quotable and valuable – beyond that of a “how-to” guide and comparable to a sort of spiritual text, making you not want to put this book down. Many of his quotes resonate beyond just a job description of a conductor. He writes, “It is a knowledge, understanding, and love for music that justifies your right to lead its advocacy.” Wigglesworth digs deeper than just the visible surface of gesture that conducting entails and describes the art in a truly admirable and extremely effective and insightful way. After Paul Hindemith read this, he suggested a work consisting of nothing but pauses and fermatas in 1916. [2] Classical compositions [ edit ] This experience sits comfortably with the more philosophical aspects of qin theory, and with Cage’s intentions for 4’33’’. Later in life, Cage still recalled the sounds that were heard during the premiere, including the sound of the wind outside, and the sound of people walking out of the concert hall. In his book Listen to This, Alex Ross describes Cage’s life as ruled by the thought that “all sounds are music”. “He wanted to discard inherited structures,” says Ross, “open doors to the exterior world.” (13) Cage famously believed that “there is no such thing as silence”, a belief underlined by his experience in Harvard University’s anechoic chamber, a soundproof room where, according to the writer David Toop, he heard “the high singing note of his nervous system and the deep pulsing of his blood”.(14) The Misinterpretation of Silence and its Disastrous Consequences" by Type O Negative on Slow, Deep and Hard (1991)