Home 1. Introduction 2. Markers 3. Archive 4. Audible Markers 5. Visible Markers 6. Notational Markers 7. Conclusion
2.1. Introduction 2.2. Markers 2.3. Framing 2.4 Eloquence 2.5. Dimensions
2.1 Introduction
Chapter 1 suggested a vocabulary for manifestations of silence, drawing from English, Latin, French, Chinese, and Japanese terms, but also from diverse fields, including acoustics, architecture, and linguistics. It posited the existence of markers that serve as cues to engaging with silence.
Performed musical silence can be eloquent, meaning that it can communicate in more dimensions than only duration: memory and anticipation, feeling and emotion, listening attitudes, connections with the audience or the environment, and more. Performers can use embodiments such as gestures, postures, or facial expressions to communicate this multidimensionality. I propose that these embodiments can be described as markers of eloquent silence.
This second chapter will propose and explain the term marker to further the understanding of musical silences in performance.
Radiating outwards from my own practice as a pianist, this chapter will consider the on-stage interpretation of silence notation from a performer’s perspective. This text may carry an “I voice” rooted in my practice as a pianist, thereby centering the research in process-based and reflexive material that comes primarily from my performance practice. It is a conscious decision to focus on the performer, but this does not leave out the composer or the listener. Within the field of classically composed music, the composer is essential to the creation of rests which lead to performed silences, and the listener is essential to the reception, validating any eloquence created by the performer.
This research thus implicitly includes the triptych of composer, performer, and listener. All three roles are complementary and often necessary for performed silences: creator, interpreter, and receiver. However, the main focus will be on the interpreter’s embodied role as the central link in the creation and understanding of performed silence.
This chapter will suggest more specific ways to describe and understand performed silence through markers. It will suggest some potential markers for silences and briefly explore how markers can arise. While the most obvious markers originate with the performer, markers that arise from audience behavior, from symbols, or from architectural context will also be evoked. In order to situate the idea of markers, I will draw on relevant texts of several scholars in musicology and sound art. Juliana Hodkinson has studied the notation and history of rests and their implications; Richard Littlefield has written about framing as a way of understanding musical silence and about silence as a tool for framing; Elizabeth Margulis has suggested a multidimensionality of silence to describe the communicative and emotional perception of silences; Salomé Voegelin has called for a separation of silence from the visual, encouraging me to re-examine musical connections between the audible and the visible. I will engage with these texts in a way that is relevant for the case studies in subsequent chapters.
My systematic approach to different aspects of performing silence offers an understanding of this important but neglected aspect of music-making. My overview and differentiation of approaches elucidate tacit knowledge, thus enabling performing artists to engage with silence in a more conscious way. This may open new listening possibilities for audiences as well as artistic possibilities for composers and interpreters.