A few days ago I had my piano lesson which is a highlight of my week. I am learning Dmitri Shostakovich’s piano concerto no. 2 in F Major, Op. 102: II. Andante and Beethoven’s 5th symphony, “Emperor”, along with a lot of scales.
At one point, my teacher told me I need to learn how to be “ok with the silence of the rests” in the concerto when I was struggling to figure out how to use the pedal in a way that correctly aligned with the notes but did not blur the rests.
Playing rests aren’t just a matter of lifting your hands off of the keys. They aren’t the avoidance of sound or the absence of a note. Playing rests is an uncomfortable experience, but that is where you hear God’s Word.
Stanley Hauerwas wrote that silence “is time to let the Word sink in like rain on dry soil – or perhaps like a hurricane battering a house”
My teacher went on to say that I needed to learn how to make my rests powerfully silent so that when I perform it at a recital, the audience will feel it in their bones. Blurred rests make the audience think about other things like what they’re going to have for lunch. But beauty comes with the wait.
You have to wait to hear God’s Word. Shostakovich was known for infusing subliminal messages into his music to protest Stalin’s regime. He even put his name and the name of his alleged muse in his 10th symphony. His piano concerto was written for his 19-year old son, Maxim. Many say it is his happiest piece, but others have noticed the brooding, stormy undertones that hint at a coming end. Perhaps the end of the war– or his own death.
1906-1975
I hear a long wait.
This could also be a lesson on how context changes things. People interpret songs differently based on where and with whom they listened to it, especially the first time. Maybe I was impatient the first time I heard it, maybe I was waiting for something to end, longing for it to be over. Trying to find the sun at the end of a dark tunnel. Wondering why God’s Word seemed to be more like a Morse code than a human being.
These years have been a long wait for resolution. The first three measures, which my teacher likened to a hymn (imagine choir students practicing stretching out their vowels, and you get the point), creep up to the first note, a high E, when the concerto switches keys. The special thing about this E is that its ambiguity is simultaneously increased and resolved because of the ground of the previous measures and the silence surrounding the note.
I’m not sure we can ever be comforted by a true end. Even when I complete this composition and finally perform it, there are going to be little mistakes I notice that nobody else does. And I will move on to practice another song with hopes that I will never forget this one and its stories– the ways that I slaved over uncovering hidden Christs in rests, like they were Easter tombs. I will remember how I straightened my posture to look a little deeper into the darkness and curved my fingers in just the right shape to hold notes, resisting temptations to run away to some other place where it was much easier to be human than a piano room where I played a song that made me wait.
I’m not sure the primary goal of liturgical silence is making the congregation have goosebumps on their arms. But if there is no silence, the congregation will not be able to name the problems that are bothering them in the spoken Word. Musical rests persuade listeners to “come, follow me” as if Christ was hidden within them. They call out “I’m not done yet, stay with me!” Similarly, Hauerwas says “the preacher must point away from herself toward the one before whom the whole congregation bows– one who does not impose a will upon us or compete with earthly authorities, but whose authority rests in the power of the story to draw our lives into God ’s life.”
I love playing the piano (even on the most frustrating days when I can’t even get my scales right) because of how God’s hiddenness is revealed in the spaces between notes. I love how different pianists interpret God’s hiddenness in different ways revealing new and unexpected sides of God.
I want to know how to name hidden notes and feel the silence of rests. I want others to join me in this conversation.
It’s the divine act of uncovering subliminal messages in Shostakovich’s concerto that motivates me to practice more; and as a formerly delinquent high school piano student who refused to practice the fundamentals of classical music and scales, this is saying something.
3 Responses
I loved this. Thank you for it. I love Schostakovich. On the face of it, the most secular of great composers, but deeply spiritual, passionately moral, for whom music is life and death. Maybe secular, but he imitates Bach by doing 24 Preludes and Fugues, and also, as you note, like Bach he uses the four letters of his name as a motiff. Thank you for these thoughts, for God’s hiddenness, not only in the notes but in the rests. As God lies hidden in the Tomb on Saturday, silent, at rest.
Sometimes silence hurts mimicking theprofoundity of rests my pet Roscoe just died my apt. Is silent in many ways. Perhaps if I live through this unique Roscoe silence living through musically as musical rests it won’t hurt so much.
Thank you, Clara, for stirring up rich memories of dear piano teachers who used rich images to convey truths about the pieces we worked on. I’m a singer preparing Kim Arnesen’s Requiem for Solace for Good Friday evening, tonight’s our dress rehearsal with the orchestra. There are many Grand Pauses. Your essay accompanies me as I prepare today. Blessings.