Music doesn't always need a stage. Sometimes two book covers are enough for it to emerge. Of course, texts about music that try to make fleeting sounds comprehensible with words are common. But these descriptions usually "only" attempt to capture on paper what someone else has composed and played. What is rarer and more unusual, however, is when the music is created in the literary text in the first place, without annoying interpreters, so to speak, solely and directly in the reader's head. Musicalized language, such as Kurt Schwitters Ursonatathe prime example of sound poetry, is not meant by this. Rather, it is about music that remains silent, i.e. never really sounds - unless someone takes the trouble to convert this "literary music" into sound waves. It only sounds in the head, which does not necessarily mean that the music is less realistic, and certainly not that it has to be silent music. Hermann Burger's novel Schilten is the best example of this. Burger lets his anti-hero Armin Schildknecht play the keys. When the frustrated primary school teacher sits down at his harmonium in the mortar pit below the gym, he conjures up the apocalypse, makes the inventory shake or plunges his listeners into "silent derangement" or a "melancholy trance".

The literarily composed music as well as the entire "school report for the attention of the inspectors' conference" - as Burger subtitles his novel - is delivered to the reader's "inner" ears with powerful language. The main character, Schildknecht, delivers a first-person report on the state of the school in Schilten, which is both a monologuing psycho-self-analysis and a multifaceted testimony to a high-grade psychological pathology: "My voluntary detention is defused by the fact that I am locked up together with my beloved harmonium. The mixed school and cemetery care of Schilten gave me an instrument to say what I was suffering." In Burger's work, music provides access to the deepest abysses of the novel's character and thus - which is obvious - also to the mental abysses of the author himself: What the harmonium plays becomes a morbid soundtrack that accompanies Schildknecht's self-pitying excesses and gives expression to his struggle with the world around him: "For the duration of the interlude, however, they [the mourners] are exposed to my message. In the first fantasy, I work with the simple trick of panic in enclosed spaces. With octave leaps, I take hold of the proportions of the shabby-green unpleasantness, I also let the cool crypt of the mortar chamber arise at my back, so that the mourners move closer together and anxiously peer for the exits."

Although the music in Schilten although it takes up a lot of space, it is not the subject of the book. After all, the novel would be conceivable without "literary music". Music plays a completely different role in the small autobiographical booklet by Marina Tsvetaeva Mother and the music. Although included in the title, it almost never contains music. The author describes her problematic attitude towards it all the more poetically. Her mother wanted to raise her to be a musician, but daily piano practice was a constant source of frustration for the girl Marina: "When I wasn't playing, Assya was playing, when Assya wasn't playing, Valeria was practicing and - drowning us all out and covering us up - her mother, all day and almost all night!" The story revolves around music and the struggle with it, which is actually the struggle with the mother: "But - I loved her. I loved the music. Only I didn't love my music. The child knows no future, it lives in the now (which always means). Now there were only scales, canons and shabby 'little pieces' that offended me with their inconspicuousness."

Working and agonizing over music is also the subject of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. However, the book delves much deeper into historical, musicological and theoretical considerations of music than the works of Burger and Tsvetaeva. Thomas Mann modeled his main character on the composer Arnold Schönberg and at the same time linked him to the archetypal Faust. The composer Adrian Leverkühn has made a pact with the devil and, thanks to him, can work like a man possessed with a guarantee of brilliant ideas. Thomas Mann has thus created a literary monument to twelve-tone music based on great connoisseurship. He thus builds a unique bridge between music and literature that is much stronger than Burger's and Tsvetaeva's, because it goes beyond literary and poetic playfulness. On the other hand, there are hardly any concrete descriptions of sounds. Instead, the book as a whole can be interpreted as a musical form, as suggested by Theodor W. Adorno. He noted about the Doctor Faustus"Fausti's journey to hell as a great ballet score." The ballet to read, it would also be worth a few thoughts.
 

Laptop noise, birdsong, an off-screen jigsaw, the city humming its drone from afar. Doors slamming in the courtyard, children's voices, the rattling of a moped exhaust, airplanes that will land on Tegel airfield in a few moments. The average backdrop of a city in 2014, in the morning, in a quiet Berlin side street. The construction work is omnipresent. The noise produced by the grinding, sawing and drilling machines is part of my environment. Work goes on non-stop here, if not on the street, then in the house. An everyday backdrop, my silence. The quiet stillness that is and has always been described as spiritual in the history of music (especially that of the 20th century) and beyond - it doesn't exist, it probably never has.

I encounter a different listening situation on a February evening at Berghain in Berlin. The club, which techno fans from all over the world flock to every weekend, was playing noise music that evening: Pressure on the ears, assault on the body. Concentrated listening is hardly possible. Instead, my body is "involuntarily" attacked by the sounds, walled up. Gradually, after what felt like 20 minutes, the ear got used to the masses of noise and differences began to quietly emerge on the auricle: shredded MP3 remnants, feedback loops, sounding data garbage.

This noise, the almost unbearable din, is actually the supposed counterpart to the rather romanticized "silence" described at the beginning. The often-used phrase of the Wall Of Soundthat is what for once is appropriately attributed here in terms of sound. Yasunao Tone is the composer, sound artist and performer of this music and probably one of its most important representatives in noise circles. As with other of his Fluxus contemporaries, the Japanese composer's field of activity is diverse; he has worked with Merce Cunningham and John Zorn, among others. In the 1980s, however, Tone devoted himself primarily to the manipulation and preparation of CDs and has since created his music from the maltreatment of digital, binary codes. This aesthetic and sonority of the glitch is exemplified above all in his piece Solo for Wounded CDTone sticks strips of tape on the side of the CD to be read by the laser so that the CD player plays back the binary data "incorrectly".

But what does the music of the noise musician Tone have to do with silence? One might think that silence and noise are two irreconcilable poles, with music situated somewhere in between: as an organized structure consisting of sound and silence. However, these fixed points are no longer considered normative and rigid, as music has proven many times in the 20th century: Noise was emancipated and silence was used for compositions and concepts. However, the fact that even this dualism, as proposed here, does not necessarily work, but is softened as a figure, is demonstrated by the music of Tone and, more broadly, Noise.

In addition, noise as a musical genre should not be labeled exclusively with the attributes of violence and noise. Because - and here there are certainly similarities with what we call silence - noise also always addresses the perception of sounds and music, indeed noise can even be heard contemplatively. This can be seen in pieces by the Polish composer Zbigniew Karkowski. The composition White can be found on a Zeitkratzer CD with the title Noise ... [Noise]; the subtitle: "To Listen To At An Extremely Loud Level". Despite the overwhelming volume and density of the sound events, a piece of music like this leaves the listener a free space and the possibility of orientation in the sound events. Similar to listening to the landscape, one can speak here of listening into the density of sound. In the listening modes of Noise, at least the possibility of a gentle contact between these different poles is revealed. For both phenomena - silence and noise - have an inherent idea of sonic material that can be experienced sensually and physically.

However, the fact that Yasunao Tone is not concerned with similarities to the phenomenon of silence is most explicitly demonstrated by the composition Imperfection Theorem of Silence in which silence is thematized directly. For this, he uses "soundless" pauses from his piece Wounded Soutai Man'yo BOOK III and processes this supposedly silent material into a new composition. The result is a short piece that is rather quiet in comparison, but nevertheless interspersed with noise and interference. Silence is thus reinterpreted as the sounding material of a noise piece. There is nothing to be said against listening to this music contemplatively and thus incorporating modes of perception of silence. More important than this perception, however, is the de-romanticization of silence, which in the history of music over the last hundred years has taken on an almost mythical quality; Nono, Cage and Pärt come to mind. Noise deconstructs the idea of silence as contemplation, of silence as more natural retreat and demythicizes it. Noise as a negation of communication and communicability deliberately produces errors, is intended to be flawed and thus celebrates the disruption of calm and digital smoothness and the disruption of the romanticism of silence, which is always fictitious anyway. The music of Noise thus also reflects our sonic environment.
 

Scene one: A bare, white-painted waiting room. There is nothing more than a hard chair. It blends in beautifully with the wall, tone on tone. Let's imagine we have to stay here and don't know how long. So let's take a seat. The information that the room offers us is quickly scanned. If our attention keeps slipping away from the white wall, we will start looking for a new fixed point. It is possible that such a situation makes us uncomfortable.

Scene two: We are talking to another person. Our mutual familiarity is superficial. The dialog works according to familiar rules: One person talks, the other listens and remains silent. The ball is passed back and forth properly. But then one partner fails to pass the ball and the conversation pauses. The dialog comes to a standstill. We want to get the ball rolling again in search of a continuation. It is possible that such a situation makes us insecure.

Scene three: We are sitting in the concert hall. The musicians have entered, the instruments are tuned. The audience slowly quietens down and the light gives way to darkness. We await the first note, but it doesn't sound. We maintain our concentration for a while. But when the orchestra falls silent, our attention goes searching. It is possible that such a situation makes us restless.

What do all three scenes have in common? We experience silence in three different situations. A silence, however, that we were not looking for. We indulge in the positive silence with joy, find it in life-styled self-discovery meditations or through alpine nature experiences. The other kind of silence, however, throws us into nothingness. It does not relax us, it does not calm us down. It confronts us mercilessly with emptiness.

In the 20th century, a "less-is-more" fashion spread in art, music and literature. In the experimental field of reduction, monochrome paintings were created that denied the eye a fixed point. Or poems that spoke to the reader through pauses. And finally, a music of silence that revealed this emptiness that was difficult to bear. As a musical pioneer, Erik Satie was already exploring the musical treatment of time at the turn of the century. Vexations was the name of his piano piece, which lasted around twenty hours and for which the pianist had to prepare himself with the utmost silence. Post-war composers paid tribute to Satie's aesthetic and explored slow and quiet music. If the "less" in the music continues to increase, the silence becomes silence. If the pause "resounds" as deliberately composed silence, then we are confronted with the other side of silence. And with emptiness. "Less is more" becomes "even less is empty".

Wolfgang Rihm points out in the score of his music theater The Hamlet machine points out: "Nothing happens for 30 seconds. Despite horror vacui: count through. "
Philosophers called the child by this name: "Horror Vacui" means the fear of emptiness. A 30-second pause is treacherous, which can rarely be said of music that lasts 30 seconds. Whether as a listening audience or performing musician: if the music is silent, our fixed point becomes blurred, time expands. The emptiness that joins us has no direction. When the searching gaze slips off the white wall, a new fixed point must be found. That's why we feel the urge to fill empty spaces, end pauses and break silences. How good that our mind will help us: Whenever situations become unpleasant, it will look for shortcuts, avoid uncertainties or prevent them altogether. It wastes no time in doing so. Let's take the third scene: in the concert hall, we are waiting for the orchestra to start playing. Our mind will reliably become active. It ensures that our gaze, fixed on the stage, slowly feels its way to the edge of the stage. We will realize that our seating position is not the most comfortable and correct it. The person sitting next to us does the same. The emptiness awakens our senses. We bounce our legs, turn our heads and take a deep breath. Our thoughts jump. We will watch people or go through the shopping list. The tactics for refocusing are many and varied. There is a lot to discover in the communal horror vacui. We don't have to fear the void, because it naturally sparks creative potential. Seen in this light, the void does not exist.

Scene four: Let's trust that our minds will fill any empty space as if by magic. Let's simply take a confident seat in the white-painted waiting room. Together with a silent stranger, we wait for the promised piece of music to begin. Our mind will become active and bridge the tense silence. Perhaps relaxation is already setting in. At the latest when the music starts, the burden can fall from our shoulders. It is possible that we will get up with the first note to leave the room and start searching for a new fixed point: a place where we can celebrate the silence and emptiness a little more.
 

A concert grand piano. It is on stage for the upcoming solo recital. I, the pianist of the evening, step up, walk to the instrument, sit down, place my hands on the keys without pressing them down and play a work that consists of silence.

I imagine this scenario as I sit at the piano in my study and ask myself the question: What does silence mean at the piano?

Silence is an extreme form of musical expression. What is decisive in silence is what precedes it and what comes after it, like a pause, in an enlarged form. But what if the framework of silence lies outside the composition, because the whole piece consists only of silence?

Is such a work an expression of musical speechlessness? Does it lead the listener to their own inner sounds? Does such a composition purify the ears? Does it uncover a deeper musical layer?

I'll start with the instrumentation. If, as a composer, I opt for silence on the piano, then this instrument plays a central role without a single note being played. Silence can direct the audience's focus to the visual appearance of the grand piano. Silence can stimulate the memory of the sound of the piano, can awaken a longing for piano music. Silence at the piano can be like music.

The performance instructions are essential for the message of such a composition. If they specify that the pianist should place his hands on the keys without pressing a key, a different silence is created than if the pianist is sitting in front of his instrument with his hands folded in his lap. It is important whether the pianist has his gaze directed towards the piano or lowered, whether he is looking outwards or inwards.

The position of the hands on the keys plays an important role. If the pianist places the left hand in an extremely low bass position and the right hand in an extremely high treble position, the appearance of the silence will be different than if the pianist places the hands around the C of the key.

The desired basic message of the composition is central to these decisions: is it about the non-resounding of a piano piece in which the hand positions show what is not sounding? Is it about a silence that blocks the pianist and prevents him from playing? Is it about showing that there is no silence after all, but that every little rustle is also part of the music, or is it about reaching a kind of meditative silence that can be a door to inner auditory impressions? Since the acoustic identity of the instrument is lost in the composition of silence, the visuals play an even greater role. There is a shift in emphasis.

The structure that the composer has chosen for the silence is also interesting. The composed silence can, for example, consist of a single pause. The composed silence can be made up of lots of small rests. If the pause values become smaller and smaller over the course of the piece, is this an accelerando of silence?

From a compositional point of view, the beginning of the piece points the way. If I, as the composer, clearly show the listener when the silent work begins, the effect is different than if I let the listener gradually discover that the piece has already begun. As a rule, the grand piano is already silent on the stage during the entrance. Is this already the performance of a composition of silence without a pianist? Is there even a need for an interpreter for such a work?

The beginning and end of the silence form a necessary framework that defines the silence and shapes its identity. The pianist plays a central role in this. Silence overrides the expectation that something will sound on the instrument. The pianist is also needed for this. The pianist's performance and the beginning of the defined silence create a concentrated silence, a guided silence. Since silence is always in relation to something, the dynamic range of the grand piano is also an important reference. The grand piano is a large, powerful instrument and the silence on the piano is oriented towards it. Silence at the piano can take away what the pianist is most familiar with on stage: playing the piano. Silence at the piano requires new skills from the pianist that have their origins in choreography or the performing arts.

Silence as a musical manifestation is not a marginal phenomenon, but an elementary component of music. Dealing with this topic leads composers, performers and listeners directly to fundamental musical, compositional, interpretational and philosophical questions.

I can only recommend the mental journey to silence on a selected instrument. Silence acts like a magnifying glass and immediately brings the central themes of the respective instrument into play.

I have been sitting quietly in front of my grand piano in my study for quite a while now. After this journey of thought, I feel a great need to make the instrument sound. I am curious to hear how I perceive its sound now.
 

While browsing in the souvenir store, my eyes fall on a postcard: a line of music that runs across the entire width of the card. There is a treble clef at the beginning, otherwise it is blank. "Enjoy the peace", reads the caption. It reminds me of a series of black and white prints, the sheet music by Johannes Kreidler, which follow exactly the same pattern: a graphic of music symbols with a title, the principle of minimalism, as in the sheet Sunsetwhich consists of only one stave and a single note.

Although the postcard motif is nice and somehow sophisticated, it still looks pale against the background of Kreidler's works. The sheets obviously have something that the postcard does not, but which remains hidden at first glance. But what?

The key to this lies in its origins: its creator is not a graphic designer with a particular flair for originality, but an artist, performer and, above all, a composer. In recent years, Kreidler has repeatedly attracted attention for his innovative and provocative works and actions, which he always places in a theoretical context. New conceptualism is the catchphrase under which the 34-year-old understands his current work and on whose soil the sheets are also planted. What counts is the idea, for the realization of which all means and media of art are permitted. How and whether it sounds is secondary. With the sheet musicwhich Kreidler has been creating since 2013, he completely turns away from the audible: He composes graphics from sheet music, "eye music" - and that too with a concept.

As far as the material is concerned, this concept is very simple: white background, black font, type: Times New Roman, a triad with title 1+2=3without frills. The postcard contradicts this with its red, italicized slogan, which reveals that it wants to be pretty. The sheet music doesn't want that, at least not only. Above all, it wants to communicate something, and the viewer generates this communication himself by relating the two layers of signs to each other. 1+2=3 does not actually show a triad, but notation symbols that we call a triad because of their arrangement and the title. The title sets limits to the scope for association, a principle that Kreidler already applied in a similar way in his action External work tested. There, he influenced auditory perception by always playing the same music with different introductions. He called this "prepared hearing", and here he provides the counterpart: "prepared seeing".
 

Johannes Kreidler

"Sunrise for Bejiing" (2014)

The postcard works in the same way: the image and title make a statement that is relatively easy to grasp and unambiguous. Once we have understood it, we look away. The sheets, on the other hand, hold our attention through their individuality, openness and mysteriousness. Their interpretation is not only a cognitive but also a creative achievement. Each sheet provides food for thought that can lead in very different directions. Only irony forms a continuum, as in the sheet Sunrise for Beijing. A few graphic elements, in combination with the commentary that accompanies the sheet on Kreidler's blog Cultural techno adds, as a cocktail of gallows humor and social criticism: "Because of the extreme smog, the image of a sunrise is shown on a large LED screen in Beijing."

However, most of the sheets lead thematically back to the origin of the small forms. "I want everyone to think about music now!" What Kreidler demanded in one of his performances also applies to the sheets. They take up topoi from music history, process them in a playful way and expand them with subtle punchlines, such as Tristan Motive, altogethera cluster that unites all the notes of the Tristan motif - Kreidler's contribution to a never-ending debate in music theory.

Ultimately, the prints as a whole can also be understood as reflections on the digital tools of today's composer. The mass accumulations of notation symbols in the sheet series Deposits stand for the limitless availability of the material, which nowadays seems to be better stored in graphics than in scores. The sheets introduce us to the software both as a tool that facilitates notation and makes it easier to communicate, and as a medium that creates a distance between author and notation. The seemingly arbitrary composition of musical notation, e.g. in Beach Gamehas symbolic status: the composer is no longer the master of what he enters into the computer.

But Kreidler has his notes under control: he deliberately moves signs to create awareness. He composes, just not sounds. Is sheet music music at all? An almost philosophical question, to which Kreidler takes a clear stance: "Music also has to get out of the time-base. Music is not only acoustic, it also has its [sic!] visual contexts. It is then still music." In fact, only a few of the images suggest an acoustic moment. Kreidler's answer belies the complexity of the matter, just as many a sheet belies the serious thoughts of its relatives: a line of music that stretches across the entire width of a canvas. There is a circular note in the fourth space, otherwise it is empty. "Asshole", reads the caption. Provoke - the postcard cannot do that either.