Church proves silence is golden
The public just clamours for a bit of peace and quiet.
ON THE one hand, the news that a CD containing half an hour of silence recorded in a Sussex, southeast England, church has sold out of its first pressing, and that the church is now taking orders from as far away as Ghana, seems a little baffling.
‘‘In this day and age, everybody seems to live busier, noisier lives – people sometimes like to sit down and just have a bit of peace and quiet for a little while,’’ suggested Ronald Byng, the member of the congregation at St Peter’s, East Blatchington, who came up with the idea of recording in the church, although how a CD of silence is supposed to blot out the noise of everyday life remains unexplained.
On the other hand, The Sound of Silence could be claimed as part of a surprisingly large musical sub-genre: it’s not the first silent album to be released – Stiff Records apparently sold 30,000 copies of the waggishly titled Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan in 1980 – and it’s certainly not the first silent track.
If the first classical composer to offer a silent piece of music was Erwin Schulhoff, whose In Futurum of 1919 beat John Cage’s better-known 4’33’’ by 32 years, Andy Warhol can probably take credit for introducing it to the world of rock. On The East Village Other Electric Newspaper – the same 1966 album on which the Velvet Underground made their recorded debut with a track called Noise – he got a credit for a track called Silence (Copyright 1932).
You might think this is not a gag to bear repetition. You would be wrong. Within 18 months, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band had concluded their third album with two minutes of silence: it abandoned Warhol’s prosaic track name for the more portentous title Anniversary of World War III.
Since then, a startling variety of artists has had a go, including Afrika Bambaataa, Sly and the Family Stone, Soundgarden, Orbital, Mike Batt – who claimed to have been sued by John Cage’s estate for ‘‘ sampling’’ 4’ 33’’ – Crass, Sigur Ros, John Lennon (twice), Korn, the Melvins, Boards of Canada, prog band Coheed and Cambria – who, in true prog style, split their silent track into 11 different movements – Sonic Youth offshoot Ciccone Youth, Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt. The latter intended his silent track as ‘‘a suitable place for those with tired ears to pause and resume listening later’’ midway through his album Cuckooland, but – as in the case of The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan – silence seems to be most regularly used to make a point about politics.
Indeed, using a silent track to make a political point is perhaps the only thing that links winsome folkie John Denver with terrifying industrial ‘‘ power electronics’’ pioneers Whitehouse, authors of Shitfun and My Cock’s On Fire; Denver’s piece was called The Ballad of Richard Nixon, Whitehouse went for the more wide-ranging Politics.
Perhaps the sheer range of competition in the genre explains why St Peter’s has felt impelled to make a qualitative claim for its CD. ‘‘It is an 800-year-old sacred space with a wonderful quality of silence,’’ offered the Rev Canon Dr Andrew Mayes. Or, forget John Lennon, Andy Warhol and, indeed, Whitehouse, our silence is better.