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Music is more than a casual leisure, an art or the new way to increase the benefits of a company. It is all of that and even more. The music industry is a rich ecosystem in which everyone and everything has a specific place. From the composer to the listener, from psychology to spirituality, from art to science, get insights on each field of music, learning about craft or history, about human behavior or consciousness. A place is also given to ethical questions.
MUSICAL CULTURE IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS
MUSIC AND THE POWER OF HEALTHY SILENCE
Being attentive to sounds, do you want to experience the airiness of music? Try the YMusic search engine, your free personal assistant (it includes musical criteria to select music), and discover new sounds!
Silence and the airiness of music
Silence as a space in music
Talking about the airiness of contemporary music, composer John Cage mentions contemporary composer Edgar Varèse as an example of a composer that makes listeners aware of how they hear, having the ability to change the way they think about music. Contemporary music composers often create music that people may listen to without the necessity of relationships. These pieces may be reproduced, they do not include improvisations, however they sound unique.
How can it happen? Because they do not follow the classical model: the idea of a repetitive structure is less present and sounds found in these compositions are not substitutes for other sounds: they are unique and they are not symbols for other sounds. Also, the links between musical notes and rests is original in each composition, each one letting the music breathe when the music needs to breathe.
Perceiving the nature of each sound
Liberated from structures, music listeners may perceive more easily the texture, the color and each element that constitutes a particular sound. They may differentiate all these elements and also discern their individual periodicity, when they are produced more regularly. It is audible in the work of Steve Reich for example: amongst contemporary music composers, he is the one who in some ways reintroduced the idea of a regular structure. Listening to ‘Music for 18 Musicians’, a listener may perceive a timbre that is unique, and also a structure that sounds new while including regularity.
Whatever the nature of each musical sound is, its beauty lies in the fact that it has a nature and that this nature can be enjoyed as pure form and sound as well as be combined with other sounds to produce a meaning. In fact, there is a debate amongst music composers: some want to say that music is nothing without sound, other ones say that sound is just basic material that has no value without a rigid structure.
This binary opposition is nuanced according to composers and critics, however it reflects two main ways of seeing the relationship between sound and music. There are those who think that music reflects nothing other than itself and those who believe that music represents human realities like social attitudes, politics, tastes, aesthetics or historical situations. Actually, some pieces of music claim to be something more than themselves, while other ones must be linked to specific contexts; but at the end of the day, only music stays: ‘Peter and the Wolf’ by Prokofiev, for instance, was written to support an educational program promoted by the Communist party in Russia during the 1930s, but is often today presented to children that do not know anything about these circumstances and are just happy to enjoy that wonderful musical storytelling.
Does the fact Western music listeners live in societies that have a strong taste for data and analytics make clear the need to listen to music in other ways than those which tend to use music as a tool to enhance logic? In that case, without neglecting intellectual faculties, maybe it is not bad to listen to sounds for themselves.
At a convenient time for you, do you want to find more music that presents characteristics you love while being unique? Try the YMusic search engine, your free personal assistant (it includes musical criteria to select music), and let novelty emerge!
Silence for better listening
People expect a lot from listening, hoping that listening can be more than listening. It is often in that sense that they talk of ‘inner listening’, trying to give a meaning to speech, sounds and music. However it is possible to love sounds just for what they are. Sounds do not need to be psychological or anything else.
Philosopher Immanuel Kant said that two things do not need to be anything but themselves: love and music. Music being constituted of musical notes and rests, silence is part of music. For composers, the most interesting music may be music that is not composed yet, and it emerges from silence. In that sense, perhaps, listening is more than listening. And then it is the same for the listener: ‘inner listening’ may emerge from the silence they made in their mind, making room for something new.
Silence to make the uniqueness of music appear
When listeners really try to empty their mind, they create a new personal space where a new piece of music may take up some room. One memory drives out another one, and it is the same for a piece of music. Appearing after the collapse of the preceding one, a piece of music may be fully appreciated, occupying a specific position in time and space as well as in the mind of the listener. Two pieces of music may be similar, but they are never the same.
What people like is welcome in their life and what they do not like is an intrusion, whatever it is, sounds, images, etc. Sometimes, it may happen that people are indifferent to things they hear or see, but in any case, an attitude towards the environment is chosen. For music, when people love it, they are searching for more and more pieces that present the characteristics they love, a certain proportion of silence, for instance.
Music does not interrupt the listener
Brand marketer Seth Godin contrasts ‘interruption marketing’ and ‘permission marketing’. Interruption marketing as he defines it is something that, instead of finding what is convenient for people and what is the best moment to get in touch, somehow yells out an undifferentiated message at the wrong time. In contrast, permission marketing strives to know what message is suitable for each customer and when it must be delivered.
Music is like marketing: some pieces of music are ‘interruption music’, unwanted by listeners (produced by a mobile phone on the beach or in the underground) and seen as noise, other ones may be ‘permission music’, the piece that will lead them to a new delightful moment: in that case, the listener is choosing the ‘what’ and the ‘when’.
Silence as a part of music
Do you want to find more music that may help you to explore your inner self? Try the YMusic search engine, your free personal assistant (it includes musical criteria to select music), and explore different types of musical silence across various music genres!
The true meaning of silence in music
Music composers, asked what the most important effect in music is, sometimes answer that it is silence. In fact, like humans, music needs to breathe. Without any rests, it may be short of air. Music composers generally use silence to create a sense of expectation amongst listeners and increase their zeal in the forecasting of what is to come. In the mind of listeners, silence may be a way to predict what will happen next, but it may be experienced in another way, as a soundless extension of the memory of music: in that case silence is the bridge that propagates a message that has ended, before the emergence of the next one.
Claude Debussy once wrote a lieder dedicated to silence, in which music and silence are attracted to each other. Miles Davis dedicated a studio album to silence. Later, Depeche Mode, a well-known pop group, composed ‘Enjoy the Silence’. These pieces of music do not attribute a preponderant role to musical silence. They talk about silence. In contrast, John Cage once published “4’33””, which is not considered as a piece of music, but as an essay presenting the nature of music. So it seems that music may talk about silence, but not be totally silent.
Tempo, frequency, and the inner silence of the listener
At the crossroads of opposites like ‘silence’ and ‘music’, notions like ‘serenity’ or ‘inner self’ may emerge. In the various styles of music, which ones could be appropriate in order to reach a mental state approaching serenity? It is not mainly about genres, but about qualities like tempo and frequencies, in relationship with the quality of music listening. Even outside the circle of professional musicians, people often agree on the fact that music with a specific tempo and frequency has the ability to alleviate the stress of listeners.
What are the tempo and frequency that may calm a music listener? The well-known frequency 432 hertz, associated with a slow tempo, is apparently, for lots of people, more peaceful than a piece of heavy metal, but others write that when they are stressed, they do not want to listen to anything but heavy metal! So, there are different views on this subject; however it is certain that it concerns all music listeners wanting to silence their mind in order to reach higher states (like serenity for instance). Amongst the various music genres, minimalism and contemporary music, that is partly atonal, are two that have a particular relationship to musical silence and because of this, they may be interesting in the exploration of the inner self. Yet these genres are not for everyone.
Music and silence to reach serenity?
Do you want be attentive to what happens in a piece of music? Try the YMusic search engine, your free personal assistant (it includes musical criteria to select music), and let both musical notes and rests speak and convey their message!
Does music intrinsically relate to silence ?
What is the general purpose of silence?
In the field of acoustics, silence is generally defined as the absence of sound, but it also refers to sounds of low intensity. More broadly, when it comes to communication, silence is associated with the expectation of otherness, in various frameworks, religious and cultural ones for example: listeners may wait for the divine as well as for a musical star. In fact, most of the time, people are talking to themselves, but when they are silent, they may be attentive to what happens outside of their personal space: music, people, the universe.
Talking about silence, poet Paul Goodman, a music composer, identifies nine types of silence, each one having its importance. There is the sober silence of animals, there is a human silence which corresponds to a state of apathy, plus the human silence that helps the soul to be more aware of things. There is also a musical silence; it is the silence which goes together with human activity. Then there is what Goodman calls nonspeaking: as speaking, nonspeaking is a way of being in the world. There is a peaceful silence: it happens when people unite together or with the cosmos. Less positive are the silence linked to self-recrimination or resentment and baffled silence.
How music composers may relate to silence
Naming musical silence and saying it is the companion of human activity can sound strange. Everyone knows that a sheet music is an alternation of musical notes and rests, rests being useful to structure a whole piece of music or create effects, but is silence more? It depends on composers and listeners. For example, Beethoven lived an important part of his life in silence just because of his deafness. Thus silence was important for him: it became a focal point related to eternity, being attractive and beautiful, supporting him when he was composing music.
Another composer, John Cage, dedicated a musical piece to silence: 4’33” during which nothing happens, the audience being invited to listen to the sounds of the environment. That piece met with a hostile reception: the public did not understand that ode to silence. Perhaps 4’33” is more an essay related to the nature of music than a composition. In any case, it seems 4’33” gave listeners an open space in whichto express themselves, liberating them from their expectations, therefore introducing them to the spiritual dimension of music.
Generally, composers as well as listeners love silence because it helps them to focus on what they are doing or to have a rest. Silence in fact is highly related to rest, peace and the ability to take care of the self and, in music itself, it provides precious insights to give meaning to all its elements.
Does music intrinsically relate to silence ?