Writing Silence

[imaginarycanary]

Geez is it freezing in here! I can't concentrate when my hands are cold. . . not on work anyway. Instead, after updating a review on Paul Celan's Collected Works, I started thinking about my current assignment for Truong Tran's poetry workshop. He suggested that I write into my pieces on Schumann a dark silence. Since yesterday, I have been

Comments

[frankiecchs]

Hmmm, a dark silence into music. That definitely is a mind twister. Heh, I'm going to be thinking about this the rest of the day.

[imaginarycanary]

I'm thinking Rachmaninoff. . . he seemed darkly silent. LOL

[opaquetruth]

Death was the first thing that came to mind when I read "dark silence." From Wiki: "Robert Schumann died in middle age; for the last two years of his life, after an attempted suicide, he was confined to a mental institution at his own request." Nothing says dark silence like time in a mental institution or death. I'm not sure how to write death into music besides perhaps a funeral piece. I like the previous commenter's idea of using rests, of course, that too, would be difficult to write. We can talk about this more later if you have time. :) Listen to some Schumann. I suggest Andante and Variations.

[imaginarycanary]

Rests would probably be the easiest part. White space would do to convey the meaning as well as would interruptions in words. As MJ put it, when rests appear in music, there isn't really silence (at least, not to the player). Rather there is still counting, still planning for the noise, still the rule of the metronome. In fact, rests are probably, when seen in this light, more anti-silence than silence. Dynamics must be played against one another using the silences for emphasis. . . Rather, what I think I will struggle with is the sound of the poem. Making it sound like a minor key instead of a major. Perhaps certain letter and vowel sounds are more indicative of a minor key, and silence, than others.

[opaquetruth]

Indeed.