Home 1. Introduction 2. Markers 3. Archive 4. Audible Markers 5. Visible Markers 6. Notational Markers 7. Conclusion
3.1. Integrated Silences 3.2. Inherent Silences 3.3. Silent Discourse 3.4. Meta-Silences 3.5. Silencings
Frederick Chopin frequently emphasized yearning and nostalgia, and especially so in his ninth nocturne. The example is entirely unbarred, suggesting the tempo rubato freedoms of a cadenza. The successive pauses seem to summon longing, yearning, nostalgia, surprise, anguish, despair, or regret. This intense compression of emotions into a few rests is made possible by the complexity of the note passages in between and the tensions already set up in the exposition. In this fragment, the note passages between the silences are characterized by intense use of chromaticism, anticipation, or suspension in the melodic runs and unstable chords.
Figure 1: excerpt from the ending of the ninth nocturne (Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne: 1965)
American novelist Amor Towles writes of a (fictional) performance of the ending of this nocturne in Moscow:
Whatever personal sense of heartache Chopin had hoped to express through this little composition—whether it had been prompted by a loss of love, or simply the sweet anguish one feels when witnessing a mist on a meadow in the morning—it was right there […] one hundred years after the composer’s death. (Towles, 2016, p. 326)
Each rest offers evidence for the multidimensionality of performed silence. The rests seem to function as pregnant silence, anticipatory silence, surprise silence, and breathing. The first two fermata rests imply a beat and are almost accented in their performance. The results could describe heartache, loss, or sweet anguish. But they also serve a breathing, interrupting function, as if the melody were sung, and the singer had to catch their breath.
The first rest on the last line implies a function of drawing out, pulling, or extending. The last rest creeps in with finality, announcing the end of the composition. This is my interpretation, one of many possibilities. Each of Chopin’s silences in this coda seems to summon a different type of nostalgia, knotting and weaving the phrases together. Similarly, the silences seem anticipated and prepared by the notes.