{"id":49403,"date":"2019-10-02T22:02:56","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T03:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=49403"},"modified":"2019-10-10T06:39:21","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T11:39:21","slug":"silence-in-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/02\/silence-in-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Silence in Music"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Music critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim has an interesting piece in today’s New York Times<\/em>, concerning silence in music. It is called “How Silence Makes the Music”<\/a> and she takes us through historical examples, most of which are illustrated with snippets from classical recordings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She writes the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As social beings, we are hard-wired to interpret breaks in the flow of human communication. We recognize the pregnant pause, the stunned silence, the expectant hush. A one-beat delay on an answer can reveal hesitation or hurt, or play us for laughs. A closer listen shows musical silence to be just as eloquent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I don’t think anyone can argue against this observation. The reason I bring it up in this forum, however, is that I think sometimes we sin against the artful use of silence in liturgy — in music and in the ritual itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, I am not talking about advocating silence in order to minimize or to exclude<\/em> congregational song and spoken responses in the liturgy, but rather the use of silence that complements<\/em> sound and completes it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence has a role in music of all kinds. As da Fonseca-Wollheim observes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Japanese music, the term \u201cma\u201d suggests the space in between sounds that a performer must master. Debussy wrote that the music is not in the notes, but in the spaces between them. In a similar vein, Miles Davis said, \u201cIt\u2019s not the notes you play; it\u2019s the notes you don\u2019t play.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Attention to “the notes you don’t play” can benefit liturgy as well. Yet we don’t always make room for it, or appreciate how important this feature is. Here are a few examples of how we sometimes get it wrong:<\/p>\n\n\n\n