January 9, 2007
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A Frame of Silence
Such a treat last night – a concert held in a gorgeous church by the excellent Williamette University Chamber Choir.
My favorite piece was Felix Mendelssohn’s Richte Mich Gott (Psalm 43). You didn’t need to know German to tell, by the music, when the choir came to these words.
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.Yesterday brought two heavy items for prayer. Being bathed in beautiful music brought rest, relief and realignment. When the choir finished a piece there was a moment of silence which appropriately captured and contained the wonder. A young man close by me audibly exhaled after the first piece, as if he had been holding his breath during the whole piece. The concert ended with the choir’s signature piece Nunc Dimittis the glorious Song of Simeon.Professor Robert Greenberg, of The Teaching Company, on silence after a performance (transcribed from his series Great Masters:Haydn – His Life and Music):
One must always wait for an appropriate amount of silence. Silence is the frame that surrounds any given piece of music. We do not clap before the piece begins because we need to frame the beginning with absolute nothingness; and I trust that nothingness also includes no gagging, hacking, coughing or other tubercular signs of respiratory illness.
Likewise the end of the piece should be followed by an equally appropriate pause, that the music may exist within its own space.
Anything that disturbs that space disturbs our perception of the new world we’ve been transported to and has a terribly, terribly dislocating effect in the heart, ear, spirit and mind of the listener.
So let us not be that person who must applaud first.
Comments (6)
Ahh.
My oldest daughter’s piano and handbell teacher told her that as a performer, one of the highest compliments one could recieve from her audience was what she called “the pause” at the end of a piece. She said some pieces will almost command it, but it played with passion, the audience could not respond immediately because they were still in awe and wonder. We still recognize those great pauses!
When I hear a particlarly moving piece in church, vocal or instrumental, the “pause” –that time I am primed with reference and awe toward the Lord– is usually vociferously interrupted by wildly clapping people who seem oblivious to that necessary and created silence. Somewhere, we have changed our focus of worship, me thinks, to man instead of our Creator. But I digress from the original topic.
Janie, such a fine digression it is. I’m not a fan for clapping in church because it directs the focus on the wrong place/person.
I love the Nunc Dimittis. We end our service with it each week. And yet, I still get tears when I sing it. I hope to never cease to be moved at what Simeon witnessed.
I too do not like clapping in church. And I really don’t like clapping in a wedding service when the pastor announces the couple man and wife. Some weddings I’ve been to have had such whooping and hollering at that time that it totally has detracted from the beauty of the service. I don’t know how to keep it from happening at my children’s weddings….but I’m working on it
I agree with not clapping in church. I miss the reveared silence that no one can seem to stand these days. When I was younger I sang in church once and when no one clapped I thought I had done a terrible job (in that church it was common to clap only for the young people) but my mom said everyone was actually fighting back tears. It was then that I learned the beauty of silence. One of the reasons I don’t like doing ‘special music’ in church ( I play flute as well as sing) is I have to make a disclaimer at the beginning asking people to please not clap and have had people get offended. Not to mention that it makes me feel like I am performing and the clapping is just to ‘make me feel’ as if I’ve done a good job. Which has the opposite effect.
The sound of the cough drop wrappers opening in the middle of one of the most delicate of moments always makes me nuts. Since I am the one who usually has to choke down the cough, I open all cough drop wrappers ahead of time. As for clapping in churches I wish you could see the joy of the African and South American believers as they worship so. For them there is joy, praise, victory and release as they clap in church. They have to deal daily with such deep poverty and often the memories of the terrors of war and even genocide. Clapping in church is entirely appropriate for them. Yet in India people silently make their way to their “seats” not speaking to their neighbors. They sit in silence before, during and after the service. Sometimes our ecclesiastical and cultural perspectives need stretching.
Carol, I am looking forward so very much to meeting you (DV) in February. I think I will be a bit nervous meeting the best of the blog writers.
Oh, I agree, Maxine! I think we’re talking about two different things. The clapping in our American churches after a “performance” is so different from the exhuberant participatory clapping in other cultures. What do you think?
You are very kind Maxine, but tchah, friend, don’t be nervous.