Introduction

This chapter begins to feel our way into a new branch of musicology, in which different disciplines - history, music analysis, psychology, cognition, performance practices, social practices, music therapy, religious studies, and philosophy - intersect in considering the multiplicity of relationships that exist between music and silence. It provides both a substantive platform of diverse topics and a variety of perspectives, personalities and approaches. It is notable that a number of composers have consciously sought to express their silent contemplations of the spiritual through composed sound: John Tavener, Toru Takemitsu, Olivier Messiaen and Federico Mompou spring to mind as examples. This idea of music confronting silence as death, a spiritual, philosophical, private and individual encounter, rather strangely becomes a dramatized, heightened and communal experience within the conventions of commercial film. Music that exists as a type of silence -that is, disassociated from visceral reality - has a strange resonance with mystic perceptions of 'silent music'.