3/10/2024 0 Comments The absence of bar lines in musicBy assigning the primacy of the musical parameters to duration, Cage not only opens music to silence, but to all sounds of any quality or pitch. The attention to silence aids in uncovering musical structure since this can only be determined by duration (see above). Already, however, silence is not just a negativity to Cage. There is no linear progression it is more like layers overlapping one another.)Īt first, Cage conceives of silence in a traditional way, as the absence of sound, or as minimal sound activity. For example, he may drop some of his ideas while reactivating others from the past. In any given time period, Cage may work in various ways. (One comment: Unlike De Visscher, I do not regard these stages as a chronological development, but as an analytical tool. These three notions will be elaborated upon below. The stages are a structural notion of silence, a spatial notion, and silence as the absence of any intention or purposiveness (cf. In his article, 'So etwas wie Stille gibt es nicht', Eric de Visscher distinguishes three stages that may serve to mark out Cage's developing thoughts on silence. During the course of Cage's life, his thoughts on silence have undergone some changes, including the way it appears throughout his compositions. A central role of the concept of silence. 'There can be no right making of music that does not structure itself from the very roots of sound and silence - lengths of time' (Cage in Kostelanetz, p.81-2). The underlying structure of music is rhythmic. From this, Cage finds that the underlying structure of music can no longer be based on harmony and tonality (Beethoven), or on the twelve-tone system (Schönberg). Silence cannot be heard in terms of pitch or harmony: it is heard in terms of time length', Cage states in a lecture on Satie (Kostelanetz, p.81). 'If you consider that sound is characterized by its pitch, its loudness, its timbre, and its duration, and that silence that is the opposite and, therefore, the necessary partner of sound, is characterized only by its duration, you will be drawn to the conclusion that, of the four characteristics of the material of music, duration, that is, time length, is the most fundamental. The only parameter of sound that is shared by silence is duration. His point of departure is the simple, but crucial observation that the materials of music consist of sounds and silence that to compose is to articulate these two. 'We should listen to the silence with the same attention that we give to the sounds', writes Cage. More familiar, perhaps, is the way in which Cage has concerned himself with the relation between music and silence. In Cage and Noise, I investigate the way in which John Cage deconstructs the borders between music and noise. (Psychologist Silvia Ostertag during a masterclass of cellist Pablo Casals). It was a tone in which all tones resounded while at the same time it contained all the silence.
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