The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters

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The whole orchestra is instructed to sit there, not moving or playing their instrument, for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

In addition to all of the musical aspects of conducting, there is so much psychology, physicality and crucial attention to detail – among many other things – wrapped up into every second on the podium.When we listen to music, we might feel our skin tingle, a rush of nostalgia or perhaps a sudden desire to stick our fingers in our ears.

Since all the sounds – such as a baby crying or someone coughing – that might occur in a piece like 4’33” are incidental and unplanned by the composer, it cannot meet this essential criteria, Dodd says. In 2014, the funk band Vulfpeck released 10 tracks of silence on Spotify and encouraged listeners to stream it while they slept. These are generalisations, but it is hard not to be aware of the work ethic of the Japanese, the suave style of the Italians, the passion of the Hungarians, the efficiency of the Americans, the sophistication of the Swedes, the team work of the Dutch, the freedom of the South Americans, the cultural confidence of the Germans, the ‘no-worries’ attitude of the Australians, and the more-passionate-than-we-like-to-admit British.The temptation is to start quoting bits which underline all the facts, fears, responsibilities, fun, successes, failures etc which make up a conductor’s life. We are nevertheless very pleased to have reached agreement with Mr Batt and accept his donation in good spirit.

He cited John Cage and French mime Marcel Marceau as inspirations, saying he wanted to “take silence to new levels” with the album. Wigglesworth sums up the profession with such clarity and perfection: “In a nutshell, conducting is about knowing what is important and what is not… In that sense, though the circumstances might be uncommon, conducting is a rather normal profession. Denver didn’t bother thinking of anything good to say about Agnew, and his silent song dedicated to the President himself demonstrates that he bothered even less to think of good things about Nixon. A healthy mix of authenticity, tradition, and spontaneity is better than being a slave to any one of them.

Here was Vulpeck’s plan—get users to stream the album, earn enough money from it to fund a tour, and allow admission to be completely free. It is fabulous to know that now there is a way for people to find out the deep truth of this business of conducting. Possibly the most famous silent composition, avant-garde composer John Cage created “4’33″” in 1952. So I will succumb to the temptation and choose some quotes from his book which underline how accurate he is when talking about what a conductor really is.

I think often about how our common understanding of sound is that it is natural and given and compulsory that it's just a thing that, um, I don't know occurs to us? Openness and shared authorship being a proponent of her work, her influences feel easier to access and discover. This, the authors outline in their discussion, explains why the polarity of the signal is reversed in these moments of silence. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

One of the most challenging aspects of conducting is to avoid coming under the spell of a particular recording. Deep Listening® is written here with the symbol to denote that it is a registered trademark, in part to separate it from other forms of deep listening, such as relating to meditation or mediation.