Silence is not the absence of sound. It is an active space, a pause charged with tension and meaning. In contemporary music, silence has become a compositional material as important as sound itself.
Cage and Structural Silence
When John Cage presented 4'33" in 1952, he was not proposing the absence of music but the conscious listening to what surrounds us. Silence, in Cage, is a frame that makes the world audible.
Silence as Breath
In my compositional practice, silence works like breath in speech. Without pauses, the musical discourse becomes incomprehensible. Silence articulates, separates, connects.