Il Silenzio: pezzo caratteristico e descrittivo (stile moderno) (1896) by "Samuel", a pseudonym, probably Edgardo Del Valle de Paz [ it]; published in the Year 1. Vol. 1. Nº11. Supplement of the journal La Nuova Musica.

A conductor is one of classical music’s most recognizable figures. Many people who have never actually been to an orchestral concert have an image of what one looks like. But rarely does such a well-known profession attract so many questions: ‘Surely orchestras can play perfectly well without you? Do you really make any difference to the performance?’This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. We all have our own views as to what is essential. But humans are fundamentally social animals and only through cooperation have we been able to meet the many challenges these last couple of hundred thousand years. The very concept of social distance is anathema to who we are as a species. The economic benefits of the arts are obvious to anyone without a preconditioned agenda, but it is the human value of shared creative experiences that needs to be equally proclaimed and protected. Musicians are key workers in more ways than one. 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. The researchers’ companion study looked at a more natural form of silence – the rests and pauses written into Bach’s melodies. Previous studies on this topic tended to artificially cut out notes from a melody, leaving unexpected silence. But Marion and DiLiberto wanted to study the structured silences that naturally crop up in musical structures.

You’ll often see H bars used to indicate that the musician shouldn’t play for multiple bars which is known as multirests. These similarities allowed the team to produce a unifying theory on how we predict music: the brain produces a signal prior to hearing a note that is then subtracted from the activity produced when the note is actually heard. In the absence of the note, such as when a pause occurs in music or when one is simply imagining the music, subtraction isn’t possible. This, the authors outline in their discussion, explains why the polarity of the signal is reversed in these moments of silence. The Heart Sutra – https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/letters/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translationOf all the notions most likely to rile more conservative critics, the idea of composing music with no sound may be the most provocative. But can silence ever make a valuable artistic statement? If not, why are people still willing to pay good money for the chance to rest their ears?

In this invaluable book, [Mark Wigglesworth] writes, with immense insight, in often rather beautiful prose, for the general and specialist reader, about the nature of conducting. It is not merely a very clever book, revealing a depth of learning lightly displayed, but a very wise one, whose appeal moves beyond the world of music. He knows what a conductor is and does and has eloquently penned with contagious honesty what this wonderful profession is all about. There is really no comment to make about this quote other than how terrific it is to see in print one of the real challenges of performing.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] 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. I like the above quote as one version of coping with the dilemma of being influenced by what others have done. These differences, however, happened in such a predictable fashion that the researchers were able to identify the heard melody just by analyzing the EEG signals produced during the imagery sessions.

Conductors are used to being silent musicians. Unlike instrumentalists and singers, we cannot make music on our own. Conducting is not about waving our arms around and expecting to be followed. It is about connecting with a community, a community of musicians and a community of listeners. Take those communities away, and the purpose of the role, debatable at the best of times perhaps, is non-existent. Whiting, Steven Moore (1999). Satie the Bohemian: From Cabaret to Concert Hall. New York: Oxford University Press. p.81n. ISBN 9780191584527.

Mark Wigglesworth enjoys an enviable career of orchestral concerts and opera performances. 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. Tracy McMullen describes Oliveros and Cage’s differing engagements with Eastern spirituality in her essay Subject, Object, Improv: John Cage, Pauline Oliveros and Eastern (Western) Philosophy in Music. Cage, she says, had a “preference for the mind and sublime over the body to connect it to his Protestant-informed religiosity”, despite a lifelong engagement with Zen Buddhism. She adds, “Cage took the Zen exhortation of selflessness and placed it in a Kantian, modernist context—one that was eminently authoritarian.” (18) Reylon tells me, “There is so much we can learn from silence, both personally and collectively. Silence is deeply linked with a state of listening. Going beyond a physical definition that excludes those who are d/Deaf, I believe listening involves openness, receptiveness, and presence. Maybe silence is presence.” (25) For this, I consider the Chinese word jing, a close translation for “silence” which means quiet, calm or still.