The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters

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There are times when I feel a book should be written about the good and bad of listening to recordings of works that you are preparing or studying. Cage’s influences in Eastern mysticism are well-discussed, if often overlooked in appraisals of 4’33’’ cultural impact. Part of the moment, part of the performance … an audience at London’s Royal Festival Hall in March 2019 listening to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

All these reactions are mediated via our brain, which has its own suite of responses to musical stimuli. In 1960, in the only documented performance of the symphony during Klein’s lifetime, ten musicians participated in performing the piece. Performers/listeners are to rub their fingers against pieces of fur interpreting the texture of the fur as they may within their heads. Nevertheless, to be reminded as a whole generation of what it really means to make music for a live audience could be one of the benefits of this isolating time. A joke in Manchester might not go down so well in Munich and what could be considered a light touch in Paris might well be thought of as superficial in St Petersburg.As such, he decided to show his audience that the sounds they heard in everyday life were, in fact, music. McMullen opens her essay with a musing that perhaps explains why - other than the fact she was a woman - Oliveros’ reputation remains somewhat underground. Consequently, it is essential that the conductor’s body is so trained that whatever bit a player sees gives the same accurate message.

If nothing else, the noisy debate that has followed these compositions shows that you don’t need to create a racket to be heard; sometimes it’s the quietest statements that cause the greatest commotion. So I will succumb to the temptation and choose some quotes from his book which underline how accurate he is when talking about what a conductor really is.His honest exposure to his thoughts, fears, misgivings and concerns as well as his dedication to and understanding of the business of being a conductor are beautifully expressed. This introspection is familiar, of course, whenever we participate in a moment’s silence to remember the dead.

Through musical projects, Tangram seeks to ‘cross the China-West divide, and explore the richness of diasporic experience’. And with antisocial media raising the power of the individual over that of the group and giving mainstream platforms to extreme minority views, it can be hard to separate what is individual from what is communal. For example, “It is a privilege to be on a journey that never ends, that constantly asks unanswerable questions, and musicians are lucky to always have a reason to make the next performance better. This entry is slightly cheating because Yves Klein’s symphonic piece does not contain complete silence. Openness and shared authorship being a proponent of her work, her influences feel easier to access and discover.The auditory cortex – which processes sound – is still abuzz during periods of silence, perhaps imagining and replaying sounds and snippets of songs we already know. In other words, summing two signals of an inverse polarity would result in a diminished, almost null, signal which is the main primary role of a predictive signal. Besides framing ambient sounds, a silent composition may therefore incite us to pay more attention to our mind’s wanderings – a blank backdrop against which our thoughts and feelings are thrown into greater relief. Meanwhile, my own experience of Deep Listening has had a surprising effect on my interactions with people around me. In one video, Cheng performs Wild Geese Descending on Sandbank, a guqin piece noted for its use of faint or inaudible notes, reflecting the real movement of geese disappearing on the horizon.

Of all the notions most likely to rile more conservative critics, the idea of composing music with no sound may be the most provocative. He added: "I am pleased to say that Cage's publishers have finally been persuaded their case was, to say the least, optimistic. silent; notated in great rhythmic detail, employing bizarre time signatures and intricate rhythmic patterns.We need audiences because without anyone listening, the music doesn’t exist – merely proverbial trees falling unheard in the distant forest. The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan, released by punk label Stiff Records, was a blank vinyl, with grooves but no music on each side – an ironic alternative to more traditional protest songs.