The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters

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There are challenges to working abroad. Humour can be a most valuable tool in creating and maintaining a positive atmosphere, and it is a very effective way of defusing tension. Disguising criticism with a cloak of self-deprecation can produce the right results while making sure the air stays free of any potential negativity. But you have to be careful. Not everybody’s sense of humour is the same. A joke in Manchester might not go down so well in Munich and what could be considered a light touch in Paris might well be thought of as superficial in St Petersburg. 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. This is a dynamic list of songs and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries. Extract From The Compassion & Humanity Of Margaret Thatcher", on the Cherry Red Records compilation Pillows and Prayers 2 (1984)

Wigglesworth’s writing is quotable and valuable – beyond that of a “how-to” guide and comparable to a sort of spiritual text, making you not want to put this book down. Many of his quotes resonate beyond just a job description of a conductor. He writes, “It is a knowledge, understanding, and love for music that justifies your right to lead its advocacy.” Wigglesworth digs deeper than just the visible surface of gesture that conducting entails and describes the art in a truly admirable and extremely effective and insightful way. In these ways, a silent (or near-silent) piece may do everything that a traditional score would do: it can be a political statement, cause us to contemplate death and grief, and provoke us to question ourselves and our feelings. But does it really count as music? Twenty-four blank measures. Earlier title: "Great sorrows are mute: incoherent funeral march". The composer instructed: "Great sorrows being mute, the performers should occupy themselves with the sole task of counting the bars, instead of indulging in the kind of indecent row that destroys the august character of the best obsequies." [4] Carpenter, John T., Oka, Midori – The Poetry of Nature: Edo Paintings from the Fishbein-Bender Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018 (p. 85)

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annotated transcript of Inventions in Sound, BBC Radio 4 documentary presented by Raymond Antrobus (22) 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.

Antrobus, Raymond – Annotated transcript, Inventions in Sound, Falling Tree Productons for BBC Radio 4, 2021 For thousands of years, the qin was considered the supreme example of Chinese instruments, and a symbol of the literati (to play the qin was one of the “Four Gentlemanly Accomplishments of the Literati Lifestyle”) (2). Tao Yuanming’s poem alludes to the instrument’s greatest appeal - its relationship to personal and spiritual development. The qin was said to “restrain evil thoughts”; in literature, it was used by sages to manifest supernatural powers. (3) You might also see the term tacet al fine which literally means ‘ to be silent until the end.’ Tacet al fine The band was going through all the motions: the swart, longish-haired leader led away; the brasses, the saxophones, the clarinets made a great show of fingering and blowing, but the only sound from the stage was a rhythmic swish-swish from the trap-drummer, a froggy slap-slap from the bull-fiddler, a soft plunk-plunk from the pianist. [6] Rosemary Brown Psyches Again!, a 1982 Enharmonic Records LP by David DeBoor Canfield. (Side one contains parodies of works supposedly taken down by British psychic Rosemary Brown from deceased composers. Side two is silent and contains an Introduction by Marcel Marceau and a "discussion" by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johannes Brahms on the musical merits of Rosemary's Brown's efforts.)It is so wonderful to be able to read a beautifully written and constructed book which exactlyinforms the reader what a conductor is with disarming accuracy and humility and with a touch of humour when needed. This truly underlines the complicated business of performing what a composer wrote honestly and is the constant challenge we as performers face. 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. 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.

When I was asked to review a book about conducting my first reaction was to say no thanks. Then I thought that even if I had to endure another book of two-dimensional pictures of beat patterns it would at least give me a platform to parade my wisdom and prejudices, so I said yes. The Heart Sutra – https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/letters/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation I was drawn to Oliveros’ work after an ecstatic experience listening to ambient sounds while visiting my parents in Hong Kong. Learning that Deep Listening made use of Chinese movement practices, I signed up for one of two intensive courses at the Centre for Deep Listening®. In doing so, I hoped to combine an interest in ambient sound with questions concerning my own roots as a mixed-Chinese person who has lived in both the UK and Asia. The motivation behind Scott’s 1941 concert is unclear; the audience, apparently, found it amusing and giggled throughout the performance. Perhaps the sight of the musicians puffing and banging away on the instruments was designed purely for comic effect, or as an ironic comment on effort and failure, says Julian Dodd, a philosopher of music at the University of Manchester.The latter technique is called musical imagery and has been studied in detail previously. Marion and DiLiberto wanted to look specifically at how brain activity during audible music varied from that produced by imagined music and whether the predictions our brain makes about a heard melody are preserved when there is no melody to hear. The authors therefore conclude that our enjoyment of music is more complex than just a kneejerk reaction to sound. It is a constant processing that happens even when there is nothing to hear but the whirr of our brains’ prediction engine.

No wonder those who experience silent music report transformative experiences. In Ocean of Sound, David Toop describes heightened auditory awareness gained after “sparse tones” of the suikinkutsu, the Japanese water feature and instrument, for which “silence in the point”. (30) Meanwhile, my own experience of Deep Listening has had a surprising effect on my interactions with people around me. These days, I am more able to understand the things we can’t communicate with words. DeWoskin, Kenneth J. – A Song for One or Two, Center for Chinese Studies, the University of Michigan, 1982 (p. 117) Oliveros, who died in 2016, was a contemporary and friend of John Cage’s. Despite her influence on contemporary music history as a performer, composer and mentor, she is not always found in the mainstream narrative of that history. To those who know her work, she is often spoken of with something akin to reverence. The researchers estimated expectations by building a statistical model that was fed with a huge variety of Western music. This model enabled the researchers to assess how well their participants’ brains were predicting the notes they heard or imagined. Their analysis showed that, regardless of whether music was actually audible, their volunteers’ brains predicted it in a very similar way.The researchers knew that time (specifically keeping their participants in time with music while imagining it) would be key to the success of the study, and so they wired up their volunteers with tactile metronomes that vibrated at a steady beat to keep their imagined music at a steady pace. In the first paper, the researchers played 4 different Bach melodies 11 times each to their participants, who were allowed to read the sheet music. Then, they were placed in the same scenario but with the music switched off. The composer instructed: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action. The performer should allow any interruptions of the action, the action should fulfill an obligation to others, the same action should not be used in more than one performance, and should not be the performance of a musical composition." [8]