The Value of Music and the Value of Silence

Abstract

At the time of the Florentine Camerata and the rise of Opera, in my opinion, music had the same value as silence today. In the quieter society back then, listening to music was as special as listening to the silence today. For many human beings around the world, achieving this is almost impossible.

How does this value exchange affect in the minds of composers today?

I would like to present and explain two works of mine focusing on silence. One of them, the serie “Still-Leben mit Stille” (Still life with silence), is intended to contemplation focusing on the graphic value of the silence in music. In this series, different topics are analyzed (I.e. “Is it possible to do “Poli-Phony” with silence? Do we need different terminology for today´s new silence values in music, like “Polisiopy”?).

The second work is the opera “The Rest is Silence”. Written after Shakespeare´s quotation, the musical rest is obviously silence. This opera is very similar to those created by the time of the Florentine Camerata (mythological theme, instrumentation, etc.), only adapted to the new values of our society. At the same time silence is used as a protest for the damage our civilization is doing to our planet.