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
China Gates by John Adams is a piece that lives permanently in a static now-ness, with almost no beginning or end. There are no rests in this piece. It would be absurd to suggest that it includes quantifiable silence. Although sometimes the left hand has a short break from playing, that is only in order to be able to jump to another location on the keyboard. The right hand does not have one single rest in the entire piece.
One could speak of the silence behind the music in a piece like this, or one could also speak of inner silence.
The sound of music is not […] opposed, but rather parallel to silence. It is as though the sounds of music were being driven over the surface of silence. Music is silence, which in dreaming begins to sound. (Picard, 1952, p. 27)
What Swiss writer and philosopher Max Picard seems to be suggesting is that silence is a surface that gives rise to music as time moves across it. The music floats above the silence, pushed along by time. Flow, or inner peace, is extremely useful if the performer can use it to enable the rhythms. If, as the pianist, you can let your hands feel the rhythms, as one hand moves in fives and the other in sevens, and as long as you do not overthink it, then muscle memory will take over. This can lead to a form of inner peace for both performer and listener, a peace that is often associated with silence.