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The Poetry of Silence New York
St. James Church
05/01/2024 -
Yves Klein: Monotone-Silence Symphony
The Orchestra & Choir of the S.E.M. Ensemble, Petr Kotik (Conductor)
Y. Klein
“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.”
Virginia Woolf, The Waves
“You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.”
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Last night’s 40-minute performance of Monotone-Silence Symphony was neither monotone or silent or original. Far from it.
But the late avant-garde painter/performance artist/composer Yves Klein worked on both tone and quiet for almost a quarter century. He produced several versions, some with nudes, some with his characteristic blue coloring. And last night his friend and collaborator Petr Kotik gave us his full S.E.M. Orchestra and Chorus to test our ears and our sensibilities.
The title says it all. So here is a complete, unexpurgated description of the concert in the beautiful St. James Church.
Orchestra and Chorus start with a harmonized D Major Chord.
That D Major Chord doesn’t alter. It continues for 20 minutes. Oh, there were changes. No wind or horn can blow for that duration, so the colors change ever so slightly.
The audience (or in this case the congregation) then remain silent for another 20 minutes.
After that, the audience rises to its feet and applauds the performers.
The raison d’être for this was explained with dozens of philosophical words in the program, and I won’t repeat them. But here are a few caveats.
First, the “monotone symphony” is hardly original. Carl Nielsen had a monotone movement from his wind quintet. Benjamin Britten arranged a one‑note motive from Henry Purcell. John Luther Adams bases his grand scores around a single note, albeit with swirling galaxies. Both the popular song Johnny One‑Note and the chanting of Thai Buddhist Monks are equally mono‑toned.
(And I won’t even begin to mention Arvo Pärt.)
Though second, this was not actually a monotone. The D Major chord was fully harmonized. In fact, it resembled the first note of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Every instrument had its own tone, its own vibrations, its own color.
More authentic was the word “symphony”, the same literal way Stravinsky used his Symphonies of Wind Instruments.
Now onto our 20 minutes of silence. With knee‑jerk reaction, one thinks of John Cage’s 4’33”. Yet Cage didn’t expect “silence”–and hopefully neither did Klein. Cage premiered his piano silence in a spacious barn outside Woodstock. He wanted or at least approved the sounds of birds, coughs, turning in seats, perhaps the occasional giggle. That was not only aleatory, it was expected.
I kept silent during these 20 minute, but the man in the next pew looked occasionally at his watch. (Kaffir!! Unclean!!!. May he roast in hell forever... or at least 40 minutes.)
Other un-silences including a few people walking out, two screaming fire‑engine sirens outside a few inevitable coughs and a few squeaky pews.
P. Kotik
Obviously one must compliment conductor Kotik for his seriousness, for cuing in the instruments who had to take breaths–and for keeping those 20 minutes at an even pitch.
And how did this listener react? Well, music, even a single chord, is lovely. After the initial surprise of pure stasis, I actually enjoyed the microscopic changes of color. After all, just a few days ago, we heard Boléro! Yes, a single theme, but only a Philistine would label it mono‑thematic!
As for the 20 minutes of silence, I didn’t wish to become totally vulgar, so didn’t sneak a book out of my bag, but kept, yeah, quiet.
My thoughts were, hélas, not on Yves Klein’s words. “The Symphony does not exist. It exists outside phenomenology because it was neither born will die.”
For the final eight minutes of silence, rather than thinking of Eternity, I constructed a quick limerick. As follows:
A monotone’s hardly monotonous/With more notes: “So why not jot on us?”/The eighth note berated,/“Or e’en syncopated/If only you’d thought about dottin’ us.”
Harry Rolnick
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