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Newent Orchestral
Society Bill's Musical Notes, July, 2009 Music and Its Empty Spaces It all started with a bit of empty wall space. I was staring at that particular space in the room where I practise most evenings, wondering what to put there. I wanted a picture that would be quite big but not distracting, one with some depth but easy on the eye. Later, I bought a poster of a painting made by Rothko in 1951, just blocks of textured colour. Perfect. The painting, "Violet, Green and Red", creates a landscape of colour and leaves the observer with lots of room to fill with ones inner eye. I'd describe it as meditative. The picture was in place and now it was back to my music practice.
Musical rests play a much greater role than this. Of course, instruments can remain silent for passages of play until their turn comes and that length of time is defined by the rests, but that's not what I mean. Particularly in recent years, composers have explored the musical effects of rests and silences so that they become as much a part of the music as the music itself. I like that, as it gives the listener a chance to appreciate the music without being bombarded by sound. It makes the music seem much more a living entity, as if the composer sows a seed which then grows in the listener's mind into something individual and which has a new effect every time you hear it. In fact, just like that Rothko painting, it leaves plenty of space for the observer's inner world to respond with its own landscape. So there I was practising the empty spaces, feeling a bit like Tommy who had to tell his music teacher why he wasn't putting any effort in, "Because I'm practising the rests, sir." (One of George's!) One thing always leads to another and I subsequently discovered a piece of music called "Rothko Chapel" by American composer, Morton Feldman. Rothko was invited to create a meditative space filled with his pictures in a chapel in Houston, Texas, in the 1960s. This is the inspiration for Feldman's composition and if you want to find out what space in the music of today means, take a listen. I've written a short review of a CD recording of this piece on the NO's website reviews page.
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I had been wrestling with the problem of note lengths and the rests
in music, which give it its breathing spaces. If you play a piece of music strictly
according to the rules of the notation, it sounds mechanical, as if a machine were
producing it. For example, a dotted crotchet followed by a quaver rest should, by the
book, be played for exactly one and a half beats, followed by a rest for exactly half a
beat. In classical music, that's wrong. It's actually an indication to play the note for a
full two beats but letting the sound tail away during the rest. It's called "phrasing
off" and there is an unwritten diminuendo that occurs at the end of most musical
phrases. Without it, the music sounds clumpy and crude.
Bill Anderton, July, 2009