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music |ˈmyo͞ozik|

noun

1 the art or science of combining vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion: he devoted his life to music.

• the vocal or instrumental sound produced in this way: couples were dancing to the music | baroque music.

• a sound perceived as pleasingly harmonious: the background music of softly lapping water.

“Music” is one of those words that’s difficult to define.  We all know what it is.  You turn on the radio, and some song is playing.  This song isn’t just random noise.  You may have it playing in the background, just like you have your dishwasher running in the background, but a song is something that somebody consciously wrote.  And it’s a particular kind of thing that a person would write.  It’s not a poem, it’s not a speech, it’s not a love letter.  If it’s music, it’s got a tune you can sing along with, it’s got a beat, it sounds nice, what more do you want?  

There’s one thing missing.  Have a listen to this clip and you’ll hear what I mean.

It’s got a tune you could sing along to, but I’m not sure you’d really want to.  The melody doesn’t go anywhere.  It just keeps going, and going, and going.  Even when you think it’s about to take a break, it starts right back up again.  It’s almost as if that violin is having a conversation with someone you can’t see.  Every time the poor guy thinks he can get a word in edgewise, the violin cuts him right off!

There’s no silence anywhere in the piece.  That’s what’s missing.  

In contrast, listen to how Beethoven uses silence in the the beginning of his Symphony #3.

BAM!  BAM!  Two big chords from the orchestra!  In between the two chords - silence.  In musical terms, this is called a rest - a place where one or more instruments are silent.  Think about how the opening would have sounded had Beethoven not put those rests in between those two chords.

DAAAAAAA!  Not nearly as impressive, is it?

Beethoven’s making a statement here: the symphony has begun.  In those first two chords, he’s already given us a few clues about what we can expect in the rest of the piece.  We know it’s in a major key.  We know what the tempo is going to be.  Moreover, we hear every instrument in the orchestra in those first two chords.  Beethoven makes it plain from the very start that every instrument is going to be important in this symphony.

Silence can also be useful for setting up the mood of a piece.  

This piece, the Kyrie from the Papae Marcelli Mass, was written by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina in 1562.  The text for the piece, “kyrie eleison” comes from the Latin setting of the Mass, and means “Lord, have mercy.”  At the beginning of the piece, we have a few seconds of silence - a time to take a breath, focus, and put all other worldly thoughts aside.  And then the singers come in, one by one.  

Listen closely to how each vocal part (there are six of them) comes in and goes out during this piece.  The music is continuous from start to end, but each individual part has periods of rest while the other parts continue singing.  You can hear it most clearly in the boy soprano parts - there’s a very nice handoff around 0:20.  This is an early example of something called polyphonic music: when you have multiple musical lines going on on top of each other, all at the same time.

In my next post, I’ll finish up this discussion of silence, introduce a couple 20th century pieces, and bring up an old friend you just might know.  :)