“A pocket of possibility”: Silence in creative Australian music teaching and learning

Abstract

Silence defines sound, framing it and giving it meaning. Contemporary music engagements with silence have infiltrated Australian school music education practices through the work of three seminal composer-educators. This selective historical sweep is infused by the personal. I was an inspired early adopter of exploratory creative approaches permeated by silence. I adopt an autoethnographical approach punctuating history with first-hand vignettes. In 1939 provocative American modernist composer John Cage (1912-1992) published Silence, an extended manifesto. In 1952, he created and performed the iconic work “4’33” in which performers are instructed not to play. Twenty-years later, I was one such performer. Silence became the focus of listener experience. Once legitimised, intentional silence infiltrated composition and music education. In 1967 George Self (1921-2001) devised ensemble improvisations suitable for schools, the first being “Sound/silence.” In 1970 another prolific British composer/educator John Paynter (1931-2010) published (with Peter Aston) the revolutionary Sound and Silence, which comprised increasingly complex classroom projects in creative music. The first attends to instrumental sounds punctuated by deep silences. Canadian composer/educator R. Murray Schafer (1933-2021) asserted the silence is a container for musical events, it is valuable, increasingly lost, and a focus of modern composers. Evocatively he described silence as “a pocket of possibility.” As a young music educator, I embraced these provocative, inspirational ideas. Murray Schafer toured Australia, speaking charismatically to a crowd including me. His ideas, bolstered by those of Cage, Self and Paynter, gradually permeated Australian school music practice. I was a witness to this, becoming a disciple and practitioner of creative compositional approaches to music teaching and learning.