[Dixielandjazz] Space as feeling in music

[Charles Suhor]

On Apr 14, 2005, at 11:31 PM, Steve barbone wrote:

> Space is essential to feeling. Carried to an illogical conclusion, 
> then:
>
> Cage's musical composition, 4:33 (4 minutes and 33 seconds of total 
> silence)
> is the ultimate in musical feeling. :-) VBG
>
> Or Monk's famous set in San Francisco in the 1960s where he sat down 
> at the
> piano with the trio and for the entire set, appeared to be playing 
> piano,
> but with enormous concentration kept his fingers from hitting the keys,
> stopping them just prior to making a depression, hence no piano sound.
>
> No doubt is was, in his mind, and in the listener's too, if one hears 
> notes
> in the space. (and why shouldn't we, the music is in our minds)
>

Lots of good stuff here. In a sense, everything we hear is perceived 
against a backdrop of silence. Musicologist Bennett Reimer says, "when 
we approach the transcendent quality of experience, the breadth we feel 
is more like silence than sound (even when musical), more like quietude 
than action." In the Buddhist tradition, attention to this spacious 
source is blissful, and sense impressions of all kinds move through it 
like clouds drifting in a clear sky. John Cage was saying something 
like this, I believe, when he said we can experience everything as 
music, letting all sound play itself to our ears and into our open 
consciousness. I don't see this as high-blown puff talk--I think it 
describes the way most of us feel in moments of deep appreciation of 
anything, and it's accessible on an everyday basis through cultivation 
of awareness.

Charlie Suhor