Music from Silence

Virtual Concert | Broadcast on Facebook and YouTube
January 29, 2021, at 6 pm

Silence envelops the world. It manifests itself in the hush of falling snow, in the quiet before ‘I love you’, and still more, in the silent moment the audience creates before the orchestra begins.

Often silence is at its most potent when accompanied by absence. The coupling of silence and absence is ancient; it was there, perhaps, even before time, and it will, perhaps, be there after. Frequently this duo finds its most commanding presence in the void created by a loved one who has left. And we must respond to this loss, this new silence. We cannot simply carry on as before. It violently disrupts our noisy relations with the world and each other.

Yet, of all the forms silence takes, pure silence is impossible. Our beating hearts won’t allow it. And though our beating hearts offer a powerful defense against the brutal quiet, our need to try and reconcile with silence is ongoing.

Silence, both familiar and forgotten, does not in itself require response. But because silence endlessly appears with newness, and precisely because it does not explain itself, we are compelled to respond anew, however feebly. Sometimes, all we can do is to become silent ourselves. 

Today, the silences we face are almost unimaginable, as are the accompanying absences. Silence fills our city streets, restaurants, schools, playgrounds, and our beloved concert halls.

And yet silence is necessary.

For music, silence is a necessary event.  Before the first note of the violin, the quiet of a concert hall is what invites the music in. It is the envelope created by the held breath of an audience into which music is folded. This silence is a gift. It is the gift that precedes and succeeds music.

We miss this gift terribly.

When we watch the many beautiful videos of musicians playing from their homes, we ask: where is the audience in the picture?

And so we are responding. We are responding by providing you with a space to ‘be there’, to be present. We are bringing you back into the performance space. It’s our way of expressing, re-creating the necessary relationship between audience and performer – however imperfect.  The audience’s gift of silence, this envelope of music, is indeed radical: it is the gift of physically being present in a space, entering into a relationship with strangers, giving silent attention, sitting still, and creating an ever-new, wondrous, silent envelope accompanied by the sound of our beating hearts.

Reflection by Joel Peters and Sarah Ens
Banner photo by Clayton Kennedy

Special thanks to Florafone (Claire Devlin, Kyle Hutchins, Alex “Pompey” K.S., Sarah Rossy, and Louis Stein)

This project is made possible through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts

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