Rests and the power of silence
One of my favorite memories of teaching students about musical rests happened in a adult group class I was leading years ago on a world cruise. I’d presented the time value of notes, the division of the beat, and I sailed into a discussion about rests thinking it would be a quick lesson.
“What does a whole rest sound like?” A woman asked.
“A rest is a symbol of silence,” I told her, repeating the original definition I’d given the class.
“Yes, but what does it sound like?” she pressed.
I blanked for a second. The rest of the class looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Finally I counted out and clapped 4 quarter notes, and then counted 4 beats without clapping. She understood, and the class moved on to other concepts. The experience stayed with me, however, because on a deeper level, this student asked a very important question. What does a rest sound like? What are the properties of the silences that give notes their meaning and purpose?
Without silence, music would be unmitigated noise. Silence is what gives form to sound, and it is what allows us to organize and comprehend what we hear. When I was a young pianist in love with playing lots of notes very quickly, I rushed through rests. They felt like unnecessary intrusions and interruptions and I plowed through these times of what I felt was dead air with no understanding of the power of rests. It took years for me to realize that I’d had it all wrong. Rests—moments of silence—aren’t imposed on sound; sound emerges from silence. From the vast silence of space to the quiet of lonely places, silence is the foundation from which all sound is born.
Regardless of what we call it—a pregnant pause, a dramatic pause—there’s vast power in silence. The fact that silence is becoming rare in our increasingly noisy world only increases its force. Most of us, deep down, fear it. As the late composer Toru Takemitsu wrote in his book Confronting Silence,
“The fear of silence is nothing new. Silence surrounds the dark world of death. Sometimes the silence of the vast universe hovers over us, enveloping us. There is the intense silence of birth, the quiet silence of one’s return to the earth. Hasn’t art been the human creature’s rebellion against silence?”
Viewing silence as the foundational, living reality from which all art is created changes our relationship with musical rests. No longer are they impatient pauses imposed on us by composers, but rather moments of drama, mystery, and communication. Rests become places where all that has come before can be digested and understood, and where anticipation can be built for what’s to come. Honoring them allows us to play spaciously and graciously and to invite our listeners to experience these things in our performances.
Playing rests well requires us to become comfortable with silence. This is more difficult than it appears. I like to tell myself that I embrace silence, but when I wonder why I’m rushing through rests in music, I find my answer in how I fill every waking moment with noise and distraction. My discomfort with silence appears when I’m pretending that I’m good at multi-tasking, when I’m impatient in a long grocery line, or when I jump into conversation before the other person has finished a thought. The fastest way for me to find spaciousness in musical silences is to power down distractions (at and away from the piano) sit still, and shut up—and to stay quiet through all the uncomfortable feelings that come with potentially awkward or boring pauses. Then, and only then, can I find the internal grounding to play rests well.
What does a rest sound like? It sounds like the tension of preparing to jump off a high dive. It sounds like a catch in the throat. It sounds like a silent prayer of thanks. It sounds like the building blocks of life cradling sound. That’s the power of rests.