Walter Meyer ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>Ed Zubrow wrote:
>
>>So, which is more important or profound, sound or silence? Friends' Meeting
>>poses this question as does Cage's 4'33.
>
>"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter...." Keats, "Ode
>on a Grecian Urn".
>
>"Love and be silent...."  Shakespeare, King Lear, Act I, scene 1.

   "Rest always sound well"
      Arnold Schoenberg.

   "After silence, that whic comes nearest to expressing the
    inexpressible is music"
      Aldous Huxley

   "This notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the
    pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides"
      Artur Schnabel

and, of course,

   "Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot"
      John Cage.

It is not insignificant that Cage's first book of writings was titled
"Silence" and in it, IIRC, he relates the tale of going into an anechoic
chamber in his quest for silence.  In all the quiet he could still hear
two very quiet sounds, one high- and one low-pitched.

When he emerged and mentioned this, the engineers told him he'd been
listening to the sound of his nervous system (high) and cardio-vascular
system (low).

Absolute silence is incompatible with being alive.  (And, to quote
Lemmings, "There's endless peace and flowers in the grave")

Deryk Barker
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