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
3.4.2 Post-performance Silences—Bruckner/Mahler/Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris
The architecture surrounding a performance can generate many striking effects, especially where it affords the possibility for post-performance silences. Here is a story told by Sean Street, Professor Emeritus of Radio at Bournemouth University, in which he recalls his most powerful memory of silence.
INTERVIEW
NOTATION: none
MARKERS: contextual, behavioral, audible, architectural: These meta-silences are marked by the audience’s collective or ritual behavior; the last notes are almost inaudible; the conductor keeps his arms raised as an embodied marker for silence; the players hold instruments in position; the concert hall hides the sounds of the outside world; and the audience plays a role by sitting in silence; the acoustics resonate.
Sean Street personal recollection
In May 1967, I went to a concert at Notre Dame de Paris: in the last moments of the Bruckner Te Deum, the sound blazes out. And the building was an instrument: the building was joining in. And you only realized that when the music stopped.
At the end, there seemed to be this huge reverberation that seemed to go on and on and on […]. I remember us all sitting there before the applause. Everybody just sat stunned, listening to this sound fading into silence and the building, and out into the nooks and crannies far up above us, and far beyond us into the dark shadows we couldn’t see; the sound still filtering through—like mercury, like water.
And eventually, silence came, and we waited, and then… we didn’t want to break that silence, but we did, with applause, because it was sensational. And I wondered for years, “Was that as long as it was?”
The next time I really thought about it was the night Notre Dame burned. […] I just thought back to that moment, and I thought of that acoustic that I could see being destroyed in front of me.
And on a whim I went online and looked on eBay and looked to see if I could get a recording of that night—did it exist? Yes!
So I sat and timed the reverberation as it is on this record, which is probably not a true representation, not perhaps as strong as it would’ve been in the building itself. And it’s between four and five seconds. And then the silence. But it’s enough to remind me of that building contributing to the piece and the silence after it. (Street, in Livingston, 2017)
Intrigued, I bought the record in a second-hand shop, but as a result of the era and the difficulty of recording live in a cathedral, the audio is hissy and blurred. The reverberation time is nonetheless immense. Meanwhile, the flawed, noisy audio overlaps with my own recollections of taping in that space, truly a recording engineer’s nightmare.
The silence inside a great building after a performance is intensely physical. Is it the sense of awe at music that moves us to create silence ourselves? Note that the audience was collectively unwilling to break the silence. There is a notable shift in attention as the music fades away to ethereal silence. That shift in attention is key to observing silence—the participants (audience and performers) suddenly become aware of the room after the last note. Space and the memory of music are fused into one sensorial experience.
Silence brackets the ending of Bruckner’s Te Deum, as performed in the cathedral. The building is a container for certain silences, and most importantly, the architectural acoustic creates a build-up to the experience of silence just after the final “blazing” chords. Here there is no gesture, no performative silence, but framing is present and tangible. The silence is the end-frame (the right bookend) for the music; but the silence itself is also framed by the architecture, by the situation, and by the sounds around it (music before; applause after).
The audience is bodily affected by the framing of the music. Also, the audience is bodily affecting the silence. With a thousand people in the congregation, the reverberant energy is dampened. Hence, the silence experience is affected on multiple levels: by the music that preceded it; by the architecture that surrounds it; and by the physicality of the audience that listens to it. The markers are environmental, architectural, acoustic, social, and audible.
But this example does not have to be inside Notre Dame, and it does not have to be composed by Bruckner. The same post-performance effect, heightened by romantic symphonic music, can be experienced in many large halls with long reverberation times.
[…] conductors’ and musicians’ gestures are used to enhance the musical effect at the end of the work, often by exaggerating actual gestures needed to execute the final passage. In fact, in the case of the decrescendo, the conductor and the players may actually continue their motions (without producing sounds) to give the illusion of sounds continuing past where we can hear them. (Judkins, 1997, p. 46)
The post-performance silence is not notated. It is a meta-silence in the sense that it may be anticipated, but not predicted. The musicians may work towards this effect by creating illusions of sound past the point at which the audience can hear them. The conductor may hold his arms or baton outstretched to draw out the moment theatrically. Importantly for this type of silence, the audience itself is also participating, working at non-clapping, being silent in order to feel the silence. This group silence is experienced collectively by both the musicians and the audience.
A gigantic work on symphonic scale can lead to awesome silence. Here is an example from a review of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony as performed in Lucerne:
As the violins began the slow winding-down and decomposition of the final pages, the texture thinned to a spectral web. Several times, the music seemed almost to stutter to an exhausted halt. At last, the strings whispered the final phrase, almost inaudibly. And nothing happened. Abbado kept his arms raised, the players held their instruments in position. I almost forgot to breathe. Then, slowly, he lowered his hands and the musicians put down their instruments. And still nothing happened. The rapt audience sat in silence, unwilling to break the mood, for maybe two minutes—an eternity in the concert hall. At last the applause started and went on even longer than the silence. It was an extraordinary end to an extraordinary concert. (Gent, 2010)
The reviewer lists a host of visible and audible markers that summon the meta-silence: the last notes are almost inaudible; the conductor keeps his arms raised as a marker for silence; the players hold their instruments in position, still performing, yet no longer the notated score; the concert hall hides the sounds of the outside world; and the audience plays a role as well, by sitting in rapt silence. This suspension seems as if the group’s collective will (musicians, conductor, audience) holds time in their embodiment of silence; holding time fast so that it stops.