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
2.3 Markers and Framing
To better understand the potential of markers, a discussion of silence and framing is useful. The silences before and after the music can be considered to frame the artwork itself, thereby locating it and marking its borders. Silences surround the artwork, and in Western Classical music, they have come to be an integral part of concerts (as foretold by Busoni; see Chapter 1). These silences are not notated. They are ritualized and part of cultural and social conventions. Musicologist Richard C. Littlefield has examined silences as framing elements for the music work itself:
In music, the internal environment is a virtual world of another temporal quality—a world we could not access without the silence(s) of the frames […] At minimum, such a project should construct categories that account for the lack(s) within music that allow us to hear framing as both necessary and contingent at the same time. (Littlefield, 1996, p. 7)
Littlefield’s model, influenced by composer Edward Cone, describes the situation of many classical and modern compositions: before the music starts and after it has ended, there is silence. However, as both Littlefield and Cone acknowledge, some of the silence immediately before a composition is a part of the work, not of the frame. In other words, framing is a complex issue; frames suggest clarity and absoluteness but are often open and fluid. Hodkinson also discusses this porosity of the frame in her analysis of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which begins with a famous rest:
A painting, of course, conventionally has four sides, whereas temporal artworks have two: the beginning and the end. The silent downbeat at the beginning of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (1808) is one example […] However, the symphonic silent downbeat is part of the work, not of the frame. The conductor performs it as part of the composed score; the work/score is already happening, even though we do not hear anything yet. This is a frame that participates in the work itself—metrically, gesturally, structurally and motivically—and cannot be separated from the work. The silence of decorum, on the other hand, is a convention that might change over time, can be overridden, and is external to the identity of the work itself. Thus, it is still possible to draw clear distinctions between inner and outer, internal and external, frame and framed. (Hodkinson, 2007, p. 32)
She suggests a conceptual differentiation between internal frames (those composed into the artwork, like the silent downbeat) and external frames (the silence of decorum). Exploring this very idea, French composer Pierre Boulez created a notational symbol for the silence that comes at the end of the artwork. He used this in his third piano sonata, a work that specifically explores framing and the edges of the artwork via an open form and unusual notation.
Boulez’s symbol indicates both the end of the artwork and the beginning of what follows: it is a visualization of an otherwise invisible frame. And it is an acknowledgment of the contingency of that frame, its porousness.
Frames are necessary to separate art from non-art. But the frame itself is, in fact, undecidable: an indispensable element of an artwork, but still not really belonging to it. Porosity arises because that which needs to be excluded is, by definition always already included on the inside, always already a part of it. As Cobussen writes, “The border between music and silence is neither discrete nor absolute” (Cobussen, 2024, p. 7).1
Besides the silences that precede and follow a composition, Littlefield recognizes other silences as well (thereby expanding Cone’s ideas), for example, unplayable notes or pitches that are vertically too high or too low to be heard by humans.
To this, Littlefield adds a second kind of verticality:
The highest and lowest pitches establish borders that confine a piece of music to a certain registral space. Unlike the silence that occurs at the limits of human hearing capacity, the highs and lows produced by the piece itself are constrained by conventions of musical style and genre, and by the physical and mechanical limitations of instruments and/or voices used. In this case, the work itself acknowledges or compensates for its own framing silences, which the highest and lowest pitches ‘fend off.’ Another reversal of function takes place: instead of the imposition of frame from the ‘outside’ (silence, lowered lights, conductor’s gesture, etc.), the framing occurs from the ‘inside,’ by the work itself. (Littlefield, 1996, p. 6)
Besides describing silences as markers that disconnect a musical work from “the real world,” there are many other possibilities by which the beginning or the end of a piece of music can be indicated: applause, the audience’s silence, an opening or closing curtain, lighting turned on or off, or combinations of the above.2 Littlefield adds:
Of course silence is not the only musical frame. […] Certain types of introductions and postludes can have framing effects […] More abstractly, a composer’s signature can frame a work, by delimiting audience expectations, establishing ownership, and separating it from works of other composers. Discourse about music can frame its reception. When literary genres […] are used to frame musicological arguments, they can produce auras of authority and reality, respectively. (Littlefield, 1996, p. 9)
Considering silence as a frame is highly relevant to my own research. However, there is an important difference with my approach: whereas Littlefield and Cobussen mainly write about silences that are framing the music, my project is, in fact, about framing silences. By noticing different silences, I put a frame around them. Nevertheless, Littlefield’s framing elements also resemble my markers, and the ambiguities he evokes—Where is the frame? Where is the silence? What is the role of the audience?—are quite similar to the questions that arise around my ideas on markers for silence, just as a frame’s porosity shares similarities with the way I present silence as both a separator and a connector. Markers might indicate a before and an after, or an inside and an outside, but they also indicate and enhance the edge condition of the artwork, existing neither outside nor inside, and simultaneously both inside and outside (see Chapter 1 for my reflections on the not/knot). Littlefield has focused on silence as a frame, that is, as a knot/not between music and non-music, an either/neither belonging to the inside (the notes) or the outside (the not-notes). I will return to his theories later, for they also offer a useful perspective in analyzing Cage’s 4’33”.