“Silence cures,” proclaims an inscription on the wall in a hall of the St. Lukács Thermal Bath in Budapest. This statement engraved in stone is a statement, a word of advice, and an exhortation at the same time. Presumably, it was intended to serve as the latter, warning those who are noisy and garrulous anywhere, anytime, and for their audience, for that it is right to be speechless, fall silent, and quiesce in this place.
Nowadays, finding a place of quietness or creating one is not easy. With the emergence of mechanical technologies in the 18th century, the acoustic environment has fundamentally changed. Until that point, only natural phenomena, human handcrafts, and animal-drawn vehicles were making noise.[1]
Then first the steam engine, and later the internal combustion engine spread across the world in several waves. But due to the complicated production and the high costs, these implements were in use only in limited fields of industrial manufacturing and shipping; and few could afford them for personal use until the middle of the 20th century. But since then, noise-making machines have become available to the greater public, and their use, from electric toothbrushes to lawnmowers, is a commonplace, together with all the rasp they generate.[2]
The increase of mechanical noise and the spread of its sources not only raised the noise level but also changed its character. Previously, sounds were distinct, and there were pauses between them; when a body started to resonate, the sound reached a climax, and then faded out. But technological equipment generates flat and steady waves. Therefore, only thick walls and sturdy sound insulation are able to block out the bombination of constant activity and working from the modern home.
If you want to find a quiet zone outdoors, you have to go far away from inhabited areas to remote locations in the bosom of a forest or to deserted waterfronts. With rustling leaves, roaring wind, and splashing waves, these places are not quite soundless, yet, they can suspend the siege that civilization lays to our ears.
Silence is not merely the lack of noise, it is “the opposite and necessary coexistent of sound,” as John Cage made it clear in his reflections and by his works on several occasions.[3] In his work 4’33”, which has become a canonic piece, sonority got distilled to silence exposed and made audible by a piano sitting there to be played – a concentrated sign of the European musical tradition. The tense anticipation of the commencement induced by the opening of the piano lid and the manners of the pianist getting prepared sharpens the ears. This enables the audience to hear the silence, which, of course, is always relative, since only the opposing relation of the extremes makes it possible to perceive: „silence allows us to hear the uninterrupted event of music, says Hannes Böhringer. Silence means participating in the still life of events. And again, we need silence for that, a still life, a piano as a support for our attention.”[4]
Whether 4’33” is performed in a concert hall or outdoors, the act of listening to the event of silence amplifies the sounds of the environment, and the otherwise unheard voice of the world becomes audible.
Quiet zones
Although said inscription signaling the curative power of silence calls upon us to still the resonances of the exterior, it can also suggest that we appease the ongoing flow within our heads. Silencing inner speech requires quite a great deal of effort and perseverance. To achieve this, both the East and the West have elaborated religious and philosophically motivated procedures, theories, and practices since time immemorial.
Yoga traces the internal voice back to its origin – the body and the course of breathing – to quench it.[5] In Zen Buddhism, inner speech is allowed free flow during long meditation sessions until it finally subsides. The Eastern Orthodox monastic practice of hesychasm[6] also focuses on breathing to reach the placid mind or the “peace of the heart.”[7] Even the main goal of life techniques practiced in the various schools of ancient philosophy was to attain the peace of the mind. Ars vitae or “the philosophical life was essentially about controlling inner speech, including total silencing.”[8]
Ancient Greeks called calm weather, calm seas, and quietness in general galênê. This word used for describing waves finding rest and complete stillness later gained the meaning ‘tranquility of the mind’ or ‘spiritual calmness’ in philosophy. This is the opposite of the turbulent soul, characterized by the raging of sea storms, which was considered the loudest phenomenon in nature.[9]
Presumably, Greeks chose to identify a scarce soundscape with the image of the still water surface because the proximity of the sea was an everyday experience for them. Although such proximity has been given to other maritime peoples, too, Greece is a special case in terms of proportion and scale because it has the longest seashore per capita. “The Greek geography displays the most fragmented coastal configuration; it surpasses all the other great peninsulas in Europe in this respect as much as the whole continent does the other parts of the world”.[10]
This unique coastal articulation entails both the vivid and audible proximity of the sea and a vista of the largest scale with seemingly endless perspective. In addition, its ambient noise, the average rhythm of the waves, coincides with the rhythm of calm breathing.
That is the reason why the sea became the “the invisible measure of prudence” (Solon) for the ancient Greeks.
The still water surface, like the undisturbed state of mind, is quite rare. It is almost exceptional in this busy world, and silence is not necessarily a first-hand experience of the modern man either. Art is capable of changing the course of everyday events and the way we usually look at and listen to things. This is why art used to be linked to breaks, holidays, spiritual events and places, from its very beginning. Over time, it separated from these special occasions, but in turn, it has grown to transform the literal and figurative atmosphere around it as well as one’s attitude and thinking, which may become more intense than usual or turn into a disposition of meditative calmness and contemplation that renders the respects of silence and sound discernible.
Joseph Tasnádi’s Quiet Zone is exactly like that. It consists in a bizarre piano, which the running water sometimes plays strange passages on, but mostly is surrounded by silence. The instrument is a structure made of raw wood the silhouette of which evokes the shape of a concert piano. It also has a keyboard and strings, but its action mechanism is vastly different from that of a conventional piano – it is designed to be played only by the water flow. And this will only happen if the locks in the water system of the former hydrological institute are opened.[11] Then its sound waves come into odd harmony with the water waves; which can come out either consonant or dissonant, entangling with the voices of the wider natural environment, or its rough, broken passages rhyming with the surrounding ruins of the outdated research technology center.
In all things
The vibrational acoustic waves, just like ripples on the water, are similar to the motion pattern of the world. This first became apparent around 1800, when E. F. F. Chladni found that sound waves can create patterns on rigid plates. His figures and experiments spread far and wide, and had a great impact on the romantic imagination. This is how Schopenhauer came to realize, long before the discoveries of quantum physics and cosmology, that the world is music embodied. His extended interpretation of music was not unique in Romanticism. In his famous poem, Von Eichendorff wrote that “a song sleeps in all things…”[12]
Despite the exalted overtones proper to the romantic era, these insights show a deep understanding of the nature of music and the musical nature of the world. Their intuitive understanding was a precursor of what we think of the universal significance of sound and especially the musical sound today.[13] Simultaneously, it can be seen as a return to the great tradition of music interpretation, placing music theory in the cosmological context, first pursued by the Pythagoreans, then continued in the Christian Middle Ages and finally abandoned at the end of the Baroque period.[14]
Almost a century later, Oskar Fischinger, experimental artist working with music and film, expressed this as follows, slightly more objectively than the romantic poem: “Everything in the world has its own spirit which can be released by setting it into vibration.”[15] The vibration of things is an idea that falls closer to the everyday experience as well as to our scientific knowledge – compared to that of a spirit that sleeps in us. Vibration waves, especially musical ones, have long betokened what twentieth-century physics has finally revealed as a fact – the wave nature of all things below, above, around, and beyond the perceptible range, from cosmic microwave background radiation to gravitational waves – waves that maintains and pervades “the flesh of the world” (Merleau-Ponty).
The rise and fall of waves, their formation and wane show the universal pattern of creation and passing, not only in imagery and metaphors but also in the broadest context. Perfect smoothing of the waves, i.e., silence is a relatively rare occurrence compared to the flood of noises, even though the directly audible frequency range is only a small part of the full spectrum of vibrations known today, which is surrounded by the inaccessible murmur of the universe. And it’s only in the quiet zones that this interlinked, intertwining and interfering network of waves that forms the world becomes sensible to the ear. Because silence is not unrelated to the ear, as Paul Beauchamp explains in his book on the Psalms, It’s the ear that silence visits, fills, and awakens. It is not foolish to strain our ears towards the firmament, to orient our tympanum towards the great celestial tympanum.”[16]
Translated by Bodóné Hofecker Zsuzsanna
[1]Even this wore upon the sensitive constitution, like Kierkegaard who was deeply tormented by the loud clatter of carriages on the paved streets…
[2]Chainsaw production in Canada has tripled in 10 years; and air traffic doubles every 5 years. Cf. Murray Schafer, The Tuning of the World, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977
[3] Cited in Michael Nyman, Experimental Music. Cage and Beyond, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 32.
[4] Hannes Böhringer, Semmi különös. A fluxusról, in. H.B.: Szinte semmi, Balassi, Budapest, 2006. http://www.c3.hu/~tillmann/forditasok/bohringer_szintesemmi/02_semmikulonos.html
[5] Sutra 1.2 of Patanjali says: “Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah: yoga is the cessation of the modifications, or fluctuations, of the mind.” Szabó Ágnes Szíta, A jóga alapjainak áttekintése, Egyházfórum 2021/2., 19.
[6]The word „ἡσυχία“ / hesychia means calmness, silence, acquiescence, solitude, .tranquility, relaxation, settlement, and peace.
[7] Gergely András Nacsinák, Jóga a középkori Európában? Kairosz, Budapest, 2010.
[8] Pierre Hadot, Die innere Burg. Anleitung zu einer Lektüre Marcus Aurels, Eichborn, Frankfurt, 1997, p. 82.
[9] Although the volume of volcanic eruptions exceeds that of storms, due to their rare occurrence, they were not a general experience. Cf. Murray Schafer, The Tuning of the World. Toward a Theory of Soundscape Design, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977.
[10] Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig/Wien 1902–1908.
[11] Waterloopbos, https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloopbos
[12] Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen / A song sleeps in all things around Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, Wünschelrute (1835). Full text and translation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%BCnschelrute
[13] Cf. my conversation with cosmologist Sándor Szalay A. in Ezredvégi beszélgetés – Szalay A. Sándorral; http://www.c3.hu/~tillmann/konyvek/ezredvegi/szalay.html
[14] Rolf Dammann, Der Musikbegriff im deutschen Barock, Cologne, Arno Volk, 1967, p. 34.
[15]“Oskar Fischinger, the filmmaker, … happened to say one day, ‘Everything in the world has its own spirit which can be released by setting it into vibration.’” John Cage, An Autobiographical Statement
https://johncage.org/autobiographical_statement.html
[16] Paul Beauchamp, Psaumes nuit et jour, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1980.
j. a. tillmann 
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