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
Introduction to the Noisy Archive
This archive attempts to depict some of the great variety and complexity involved in performing silences. It is a starting point for those interested in musical silences, presenting a flexible and constantly evolving search for an understanding of performed silences. In Chapter 1, I covered existing terms for silences. In Chapter 2, I discussed potential markers for studying performed silence. This archive will give a more detailed idea of the various markers, as I have defined them in Chapter 2, through concrete examples from my practice. These examples will illuminate the use and kinds of visible and audible markers, the potential multidimensionality of performed silences, and the role of silence as both connector and separator, which I conceptualize with the terms “not/knot.” The archive will also testify to the incredible heterogeny of performed silences and their resistance to taxonomies, for the silences offer no easy synthesis. This archive is a noisy archive. It is noisy in the sense of being unpredictable and irregular, like a staticky television signal or an intermittent radio transmission from outer space. It departs in all directions.
However, not everything could be included: silence news, silencing, sociological silence, public silence, scientific silence, silence technologies, silencing as a weapon, silence as a political tool, interstellar silence, the pandemic silences—these are examples of directions in which this research could have departed. To write specifically about performed silences, I had to silence a great number of related silences.
Moreover, I had to make choices about which repertoire to include. I studied silences and absences in rock music, bebop, heavy metal, air-guitar competitions, Merce Cunningham’s choreography, Samuel Beckett’s texts, and the Sankai Juku dance company. In the end, most of the works in the archive are pieces that I have a personal and tactile connection with, ones for which my hands know each nuance. My approach1 to each silence begins with playing, so I did not include topics for which I had insufficient experiential data (see below, however).
This personal approach is fundamentally aligned with the tenets of artistic research: research that is conducted through the creative act of making and critically examining that making. Such an approach can contribute insights to the scholarly discourse on silence within the realm of musicology and performance studies as well as to practical knowledge for composers and performers.
How to Use the Archive
Each example in the archive focuses on a particular aspect of performed silence, presenting a type of silence, a marker, a knot or a not, a specific notation, or a performative problem—concepts explored and explained in Chapters 1 and 2. For each of the examples, I have created at least one miniature video essay, in which I address—from a pianist’s point of view—how the silence should or could be performed and what types of experience a particular way of performing might engender for the performer and the audience.
Even if they are made at different moments in the research process, the videos represent a creative research method as well as an experimental artistic output, such that the video essays in the overall research project were a combination of:
-
a source from which research questions emerged;
-
experiments and test cases; and
-
illustrations of arguments.
The videos were filmed in my practice studio, an acoustically imperfect room. The artifacts of real life often intrude, such as the sounds of traffic and birds and clanking radiators. These videos are speculative, exploratory, and personal. They are themselves launching points for further questioning and study. The videos are accompanied by supporting text and media, which may include scores, screenshots, personal anecdotes (“intermissions”), and links to related performances.
As discussed in Chapter 2, eloquent silences enable the performer to communicate with the listener. This chapter draws together a wide variety of examples of performed silence in which the performer communicates silence in different eloquent ways.
For convenience, this chapter differentiates these silences into five parts. Each part contains related examples of performed silences, which are loosely grouped by their commonalities. The grouping, in which I am deliberately stretching the definition of silence, is based on notation, ranging from precisely-notated to non-notated silences.
-
3.1. Integrated silences (silences that are fully notated and integrated into a musical score)
-
3.2. Inherent silences (absence art, or “conceptual” works made of silence)
-
3.3. Silent discourse (hidden voices, partially notated, often with textual explanations)
-
3.4. Meta-silences arising from the work or its context (non-notated audience silences arising from rituals, context, and behaviors; that frame or shape our experience)
-
3.5. Silencings (non-notated social, cultural, or political silences)
Jean Barraqué: piano sonata
Samuel Beckett
Pierre Boulez: Notations and the Third Piano Sonata
John Cage: Songbooks, Ryoanji, and Waiting
Contact Improvisation (& physical movement practices)
Tan Dun: Circle with Four Trios, Conductor, and Audience
Morton Feldman
Ron Ford: Open for accordion and assistant