Music and Silence: On the Dimensions of Silence in Music

Kinga KIWAŁA

Abstract

The subject of the article is a multidimensional approach to the dialectics of silence and sound in music. Musical silence, manifested among others by a rest (pause), should be distinguished both from objective physical silence (which is not part of music) and from the so-called ‘music related’ silence, constituted in the ‘performer–listener,’ relation characteristic of the moment just before and directly after the composition is performed. The inner silence of a musical work has many functions, of which the most important seems to be its constructional and expressional (energetic) role. However, the inner silence of a musical work may also hold semantic and symbolic functions; in exceptional situations Ingardenian metaphysical qualities may also constitute themselves on the basis of such silence. The article also discusses the space and time nature of musical silence, including its crucial role in constituting an impression of depth in music. The article concludes with a short examination of some theological and philosophical approaches to the dialectics of music and silence, including the fundamental treatment of the problem in the phenomenological thought. References to specific concepts and compositions by 20th-century composers (Anton Webern, John Cage, Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Eugeniusz Knapik, and others) exemplify the discussed interpretations.