ABSTRACT
The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of cycles of generations that have lived. In The World of Silence, the Swiss theologian, Max Picard, found a way to weigh this relationship between silence and sound texture; as this quotation reveals, in his spiritual quest, Picard gave primary billing to silence. Haydn, too, was a master of musical texture; the grounding of his compositional style in motivic interplay and development inherently led to varied, contrasting, shifting layers of sound. Denial of silence is the focus of much of the Western art music canon, the expressive foundation of which requires sound as a basic, essential element. This concept is wonderfully illustrated in the string quartets of the British composer, Elizabeth Maconchy.
