Creativity within Silence C A M E R ON W E HR
Without producing a sound, John Cage revolutionized music. The 1952 debut of his three-movement composition 4’33” in which the only note instructed the player to be quiet brought about a swarm of criticism; some believed that his piece mocked interpretations of modern art from a new perspective. The silence within Cage’s 4’33” served as a catalyst for differentiating while new school of thought in which composers and music analysts began to view sound and composition questioned its status as music. However, Cage’s radical piece mainstreamed conception and the perception of music which encouraged the biological, philosophical, and psychological examination of music and sound within our selective attention. In this research paper, I intend to establish silence as an inherent social construct to musical perception in order to argue that creativity necessitates silence. I will first show the historical use of silence within compositions in order to demonstrate its value of contrast in producing vivid emotion. I will then discuss the differentiation of music’s conception and perception, through both music philosophy and semiotic theory. This conversation will transition to a biological standpoint in order to highlight the sounds that humans naturally deem insignificant and thus diminish in their auditory perception. From this, I contest that creativity is borne out of silence through the widening of sound production outside of conventional musical thought increasing the unpredictability of communication. Analysis of the social construction of conventional, or socially significant, sound and its corresponding relative silence will emphasize that the conscious attention to ambient noise will increase our awareness and, subsequently, our ability to engage with new creative processes. Since its inception, silence has pervaded music. William Beeman notes that there are tertiary, secondary, and principal sources of silence that separate notes, movements, and the beginning and end of the performance, respectively; therefore, silence is “a problem of cognitive framing” (24).
CREATIVITY WITHIN SILENCE
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