Expressing Ourselves in Silence
In the beginning, there was silence. The Earth was formed and there was nothing but Adam and Eve. The Garden of Eden must have been a tranquil place where the silence was only broken for speech that was absolutely necessary. Adam and Eve, apparently, didn’t feel the need to fill every second with their voices or even with music and the silence was all they must have known. God walked with them in the Garden and He didn’t even talk that much. The human race grew, became more creative, and music was born. Humans took the silence and filled it with creativity. Music, speech, art, passion, songs of praise, and songs of joy filled the air. Silence became a canvas on which to paint an aural picture and along with that aural picture came reverence for the times when that art wasn’t being created…the silence that was left in its wake.
Over the centuries music became a formalized discipline. In the renaissance, musicians from every court in the great houses of Europe produced music to meet the needs of their masters. Every great city had a conservatory for educating its musicians, and at every concert the men wore their finest wigs and the ladies their finest dresses. After every movement of a great work the silence was to allow for the musicians to transition from one movement to the next. Only at the end of the piece could the audience show their appreciation with applause. Not only have music been formalized, but silence had been formalized as well. People wanted to fill the void with their own voices, with their own music, but society frowned on it.
Music stayed “formal” for another couple hundred years and in the process silence became a formality and not a desire. No one spoke at the dinner table, as that was impolite. No one spoke a word in the libraries of academia because that might break the concentration of the great minds therein. Ladies spoke softly so as to not disturb the men, as if to mimic silence. Even Tennis (the port of kings) took up silence as a formality in demanding it between every point and before every service. Later golf took up silence in the same way before every stroke of the club so that the player would not be distracted. What had been man’s original joy had become something that Aristocrats used to keep their environment “prim and proper”.
On the other side of the world there were tales of Buddhist Monks who meditated in isolation for years and years. Silence was their only companion as they sought Enlightenment, and it was never broken. Silence was not a formality; it was a place where they could express their thoughts to God. What one society needed to keep “order” another used to reach a spiritual calling, and so goes the schism between “silence for the sake of silence” and “silence for the sake of the soul.” Buddhists needed the silence to meet their spiritual needs while the aristocrats of Europe needed silence so that they would not be bothered. Silence wasn’t feeding souls in the high courts: it was choking them, and the silence that was revered stayed in place for many years to come.
From Beethoven, to Tchaikovsky, to Brahms, to Mahler, to Shostakovich and in between every composer of the ages wrote music with this revered silence in mind. Each one knowing that there would be silence between each movement of a Symphony and silence before and after every work that fell from their pen to the staff. Then Delta Blues men influenced a whole generation of performers who started this trend that never died called “Rock and Roll”.
Elvis Presley was the first Rock and Roller and he was the first superstar in this new world of music. The new face of music that was Rock and Roll brought with it all of the elements of the Masters: Chords, melody, harmony, rhythm, progressions from one chord to another, and even silence. However, it left one thing behind…it left behind formalized silence.
Elvis would step on stage to perform and a thousand screaming girls would erupt in shrieks that wouldn’t even accompany the procession of a King through the town square. As the shrieks continued Elvis wouldn’t wait for silence before he performed, he would simply start singing. Silence was no longer formal. Silence was returned to the people as a place where they could become part of the music. Anytime we listen to old recordings of Elvis or the Beatles we hear the throngs of screaming fans and we internalize those sounds as a part of the music.
Go one step farther and listen to what people are saying when they are screaming at these concerts. Now that silence is no longer formal people outside of the music want to become a part of the music and interject their own feelings into the performance. Listen to a performance of a Drum Corps and you can hear all kinds of things being said from the crowd to the corps. Music stopped being a one-way street.
Go to a Rock and Roll concert with a group that has tens of thousands of devotees. The lead singer will sing his/her heart out all night. At times the singer will stop singing, not so that they can enjoy the silence, but so that the crowd can join in the song. Now music is a two-way street, music no longer is this sacred deity that is only released through the musicians, but it also released through the audience back to the musicians.
New composers became aware that silence had lost its “deity” status and began efforts to show us how much life there is in “silence” and that “true silence” (or an absolute lack of sound) is unattainable. John Cage wrote 4’3” as a response to his desire for everything around us to be perceived as music. In 4’33” the performer is instructed not to perform their instrument and to simply allow the sounds of the environment to control the “music”. If someone were to stand up and recite “Leave of Grass” or propose to his girlfriend or confess his or her innermost secrets then that would be the music. The audience has control over the music, and Silence had completely lost its power over the masses.
Silence became a tool for emotional expression and not just a place for a singer to breathe or for an instrumentalist to get a break. Music could reach its emotional peak in silence. Music that so moves an audience member could cause them to scream out of sheer joy in the silence. Silence became the people’s place to join in the art. You can’t draw your own mark on a Picasso and you can’t write your own footnotes in “War and Peace”, but you can put your own mark on a recorded performance where you belong to the audience.
“Silence for the sake of the soul” left the Garden, left the Buddhist temples of Asia and came full circle. Silence became a place to release the pent up emotions from a long day, or to release the emotions that are stirred by the song coming from the stage. Silence was not only returned to the people, but it became a place where the soul could be fed. When Sir Paul hears the screams of adoring fans coming from the crowd perhaps his soul is fed as well.
>Written by d/visible contributor Patton Hunnicutt.
Images Provided by: Flickr.com
