Silence

And so we come to the final workshop in my schools listening project. I was really sad to see it come to an end as it's been a hugely rewarding process for me and (I like to think) for the pupils as well. The schools have all been really accommodating and the kids have been enthusiastic, interested, interesting, stimulating, inquisitive, questioning, intelligent, surprising, enlightening, creative, responsive and good fun!

The final workshop was something that I was eager to get to right from the start of the project. I always knew I wanted to push the kids to the very edge of musical understanding and the best way to do this is to make them think about silence. As a musician I have always been interested in the thoughts and teachings of John Cage and so it seemed logical for this to be the starting point in the workshop. We discussed his famous 4' 33" which is, of course, 4' 33" of "silence". I told them about the very first performance and that the audience had reacted with curiosity and then anger. It's really surprising that even now, almost 60 years after that performance that it still has the power to confuse and divide opinion and the reactions of the participants highlighted this. Just speaking about the piece caused confusion and a divide of opinions. My favourite very astute comment came from a girl at Preston Street who made the realisation that since the piece is intended to draw the listener's ear to the sounds of the surrounding environment "the silence is the music" - a beautiful statement that I think John Cage would have been proud of. We then sat in silence for a minute (although one group at Dalry hilariously opted to sit in silence for 1' 33" in homage to Cage!). When I asked the kids to do this exercise at the start of the project the kids realised that there were sounds that could not be quieted and that there would always be sound. Watching the kids performing a minute's silence after hearing about 4' 33" seemed to go deeper than this. You could feel their questioning; their search for silence - it was really electrifying.

We then listened to a piece by Cage's friend Morton Feldman - Projection 1. This piece is one of Feldman's graphic score compositions, where choices are to be made by the performer/s with regards to the performance of the piece. I chose this piece to play to the groups as Feldman's use of silence is extraordinary. In much of his music solitary notes or chords are heard in isolation, the surrounding silence/spaces full of the resonance of what has come before and the anticipation of what is coming next. I was honest with the kids and told them that the music is very challenging to listen to but close listening would be fruitful. Having said that the piece did cause some squirming as the kids lost interest. Some children listened patiently but were full of questions by the end. For anyone who listens to this music it is possible to ask "why that sound?" "and why that sound, there?" The answer is, I guess, why not? Silence is used to give sparkling quality to the most simple of sounds. Isolation lends them a ghostly quality that bewilders and amazes in equal measure.

We the listened to two pieces by Kotra and Zavoloka - Diminutive, and A Taste of Live Life. These Ukrainian artists create bristling electronic music that bridges the gap between dance music and experimental noise. I chose these two tracks as they encompass silence in very different ways. In Diminutive familiarity is built up through a repetitive dance beat before a huge gap after about 40 seconds. The beats then continue and grow. Each group reacted to the gap in the same way - a questioning look to me "is that it?". Some children even asked that question out loud. All laughed when the beats resumed. In A Taste Of Live Life silences are fragmented and broken up around eclectic electronic bleeps and squeaks. This piece caused some hilarious robotic dancing from the kids!

We then listened to another piece by Morton Feldman - The Straits of Magellan. As they listened the kids drew. As the music is so abstract I found a huge variety in the drawings produced. Some kids resorted to drawing the instruments they could hear - piano, horns, a guitar. One of my favourite drawings was of a tree with a bird squawking out a scrambled pattern of noise and a man standing on top of the tree with a bag of money! Unfortunately the girl who drew it didn't want to talk about it but in a way it's quite nice for it to remain a curious mystery!

The final piece we listened to was a version of I Loves You Porgy by Gershwin. This version was played on piano by Ran Blake and it doesn't so much use silence as suggest a sense of space through the rubato elongation of chords. It was a lovely jazzy way to finish the workshops.

At the end I explained to the kids that I would see them in a few weeks time as I will be sending out questionnaires for the kids to fill in and will then come to collect them. At the start of the process I asked the kids to fill in questionnaires to give me an overview of their perception and understanding of music. The final questionnaires will help me to see any changes in thought for individual kids over the course of the workshops.