The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters

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Whiting, Steven Moore (1999). Satie the Bohemian: From Cabaret to Concert Hall. New York: Oxford University Press. p.81n. ISBN 9780191584527.

Samuel was attempting a different means of writing one of his humorous critiques on musical society, mainly in Florence. All the techniques used are well developed and extremely diversified for a piece having no pitch and with a skill that only Erik Satie could match at that time. He highlights and questions every compositional cliché that was in vogue during the period among traditional Italian composers and the growth of modernist avant-garde arts, using humor as a mechanism of critique". [3] Dramatic Pause Of Silence To Signify The End Of The Album And Beginning Of Additional Songs Included On The CD To Make People Feel Better About Buying The CD Instead Of The Vinyl Version" by Kid606 on Who Still Kill Sound?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. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian In this piece by the band Garbage, the whole band cuts out around the 0:03 second mark and the 0:14 second mark, creating a small beat of silence each time. Everyone is searching for their own way through this maze of uncertainty and although the world may be unified by a single crisis, we are separated by the uniqueness of our own particular circumstances. 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. The danger is that with so much noise coming out of our fractured society, sometimes the only way to hear ourselves think is to stop listening altogether. Yet we do that at our peril. What is the sequel to the dystopian nightmare of Edvard Munch’s The Scream? By listening less might we lose the capacity to listen at all? Live music forces us to listen. It encourages us to listen better. And maintaining this ability, desiring it even, is essential to the survival of the human race. Live music is a celebration of listening, and a celebration of togetherness. We need to do all we can to encourage its full return. In these ways, a silent (or near-silent) piece may do everything that a traditional score would do: it can be a political statement, cause us to contemplate death and grief, and provoke us to question ourselves and our feelings. But does it really count as music?

Dr. Shen, Chian Theng – The Enlightenment Of Bodhisattva Kuan-Yin (Avalokiteshvara) Part I, Delivered at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii February 26, 1982

We are nevertheless very pleased to have reached agreement with Mr Batt and accept his donation in good spirit." What does a conductor do? It may be a favourite joke among the musicians in an orchestra, but Wigglesworth wants to find a more thoughtful answer. Avoiding jargon, he analyses what he has discovered during 30 years in the job.’ Financial Times, Books of the Year I don’t believe musicians have ever been complacent. On an individual level we are fully aware of the precariousness of the positions we hold within our profession. 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. Perhaps the privilege of music has been taken for granted. By everyone. Only by taking it away do we realise how essential it is. In Ocean of Sound, David Toop dismisses the idea that 4’33’’ was inspired by Zen Buddhism, highlighting the impact of Cage’s experience in the anechoic chamber on the genesis of his idea. I would argue that there’s no need to choose.