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
I enjoy performing this humorous gestured performance for hands, arms, face, and body, including the baffling punchline of one sound. That sound is a sigh (“Aaaah”), five-sixths of the way through the piece, one that highlights the ongoing silence of the absent orchestra and the possibly frustrated condition of the solo conductor.
Figure 7: Anders Jallén, Solokonsert (Jallén, 1973)
While I am performing it, the audience seems to become the orchestra, uncertain or embarrassed that I am addressing them. Although I am facing them, I am, in fact, imagining an orchestra in my mind or reflecting (on that orchestra?).
Apparently, I am summoning silence; but not necessarily! Once, an audience member began to sing along, figuring that all these energetic cues were a call to action. I was astonished and delighted as this created a new line of thought—that the piece, intended for silence, might instead cause music to arise spontaneously. The audience member assumed they should be the musician and hence became one. My silence, illustrated by my embodiments, called forth sound. This was a wonderful moment, as the listener became the creator. Silence rarely summons sound so directly.
In his Solokonsert, Jallén echoes Schnebel’s composition Nostalgie (1962) and multiple works of Mauricio Kagel. Jallén also foreshadows Tan Dun’s Circle with Four Trios, Conductor, and Audience (1992), in which the leader conducts the musicians and audience in moments of silence. All of these works involve silent but highly embodied conducting. In these compositions, practicing the conducting means thinking like a choreographer. Without sounded notes, without musicians to respond, communication is entirely different. Time and gesture become the two most important ingredients for the interpreter. Craenen’s evaluation of Nostalgie could apply equally well to Solokonsert:
Nostalgie presents a subject immersed in his or her own musical imagination. This allows an equally personal imaginary music to resound in the minds of each individual audience member. (Craenen, 2014, p. 50)
There is a paradox: the gestures are for sounds/counting, calling forth imaginary sounds in the mind of the audience, whereas the notation is for silence. The visually noisy but audibly silent embodiments should communicate to the audience potential soundings or, even better, potential silences. An unfollowed conductor or an orchestra-less conductor are both made silent.