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
In order to better understand markers and their use in creating eloquent silences, it is important to ask briefly what is communicated by silence. How does that communication of silence lead to complex perceptual experiences? In my research question, I evoked the multiple dimensions of silence in composed music: What might those dimensions be? Musicologist Elizabeth Margulis’s analysis of silences in classical music has been essential in directing my research due to her model of silence dimensions. She postulates that musical rests are unidimensional acoustically(a rest indicates only duration) but multidimensional perceptually (the performed rest has duration, function, and emotion). Often, the performer communicates these multiple dimensions of perception to the listener. In Margulis’s vision, the audience and performer perceive the dimensions of silence based on their information about what is happening, their relationship to the music being performed, the performer’s embodiments of silence, the context, the space, and their own state of mind. So, what are those possible perceptual dimensions of silence?
Margulis posits that performed silence has at least three dimensions: duration, function, and emotion (Margulis, 2007, p. 246). I suggest that her concept of silence dimensions might be rephrased as follows: Dimensions might include temporality (pulse, speed, duration), function (such as accentuation, expectation, remembrance, listening), and emotion. Emotions, or possibly affects, constitute an almost limitless list of the communicative possibilities of silence. As subtle as these perceptions are, they are fertile ground for musicians. However, in addition to Margulis’ dimensions, another one could be mentioned: directionality, a potential function of silence that could communicate harmonic, rhythmic, melodic, or polyphonic motion. Especially in tonal music, the context of harmony and rhythm plays an important role in the perception of silence. Not every silence offers the possibility of engaging with all different dimensions. But they also invite creative combinations. One silence at the piano could be exquisitely promising or disturbingly muted. Another silence might have a strong sense of location, while another could carry tragic or tense emotion. One silence might communicate more about listening. As composer Luigi Nono suggested, silence can be poetic, full of fancy-free.1 It is not only silence by itself that leads to a physical or mental reaction in the audience. It is the set of very specific, singular circumstances in which many multimodal silences are participating, which directly act on the receiver’s nervous system.
How do musicians describe the emotions of silence? Based on my experiences in teaching and performing, this is a non-exhaustive list of emotions potentially communicated through the multidimensionality of silence: Abrupt, anxious, awesome, arresting, breathless, brusque, calming, choppy, closing (inward) or closing (finalizing), concluding, confronting, deafening, destabilizing, disconnecting, disturbing, droopingly full (Margulis), eager, endless, final, full of fancy free (Nono), humorous, intemporally sung (Nono), interruptive, intimate, inward, ironic, irregular, leading, liminal, loud, meditative, menacing, muted, opening outward, pastoral, peaceful, penetrating, pregnant (Scruton) promising, prophetic, quieting, random, refreshing, relative, relaxed, regretful, with sharp sudden ecstasies (Nono), surprising, suspended, suspenseful, tense, too short, with tranquil breaths (Nono), tragic, unexpected, with unutterable thoughts (Nono)…
This fluid list of perceptions suggests overlaps between functions of silence and communicated emotion, and has been invaluable in illuminating a large diversity of silence examples via the lens of multidimensionality. Silence perceptions are essential to my teaching practice. I continue to use and refine this list with my students as I invite them to research new engagements with the dimensions of silence.
Attempts to qualify the dimensions of silence are not limited to music. There are strong parallels between the perceptual dimensions of musical silence and spoken silence. In his book Silence, Speaking, and Language, cultural theorist Paul Goodman explains:
Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, ‘This… this…’; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos. (Goodman, 1971, p. 14)
In music, visual cues such as performative stance and bodily gestures often indicate these dimensions (“kinds and grades”). As with speech, the circumstance in which the silence is performed is of crucial importance. This contextual information is part of Margulis’s multidimensionality, which will, at least for now, remain—as Busoni suggested—elastic.