Music Teaches the Power of Silence

It’s easy to underestimate the power of silence. In today’s noisy world, silence is something that isn’t easily mastered. People tend to feel uneasy when there’s a pause in the flow of sound or movement. Many feel the need to turn on the radio every time they get in their car. And when they’re home, they turn on the television or play music, or they look at their phone or iPad every free moment.

Silence, space, and stillness in rehearsal settings can be equally unnerving, but music performance experiences can help students learn the powerful influence of the gaps between sounds. If you’re a band or orchestra director, you have likely heard students look at a page of music and make a negative judgment about the worth of the experience because there are a lot of rests or long sustained notes. And you may have even chosen music with a lot of technical challenges because you’re more comfortable with the activity of all the notes on the page. But everyone can learn the value of silence.

Directors who fully engage with the musical momentum that can be created with the rests in music, the longer sustained notes, or the quiet before it starts and after it stops can provide deeper learning that positively impacts students for the rest of their lives. Miles Davis said that he always listened to what he could leave out. That kind of listening has incredible value.

I remember attending a semi-staged production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute several years ago. This opera has captivated audiences for more than 200 years, but. it was particularly enjoyable to experience it in an intimate setting with performers, orchestra, and action so close that it felt as if we were all part of the production.

While The Magic Flute’s overarching story speaks to the many tests we must face as we move through life, the real interpretive magic comes through reflection, awareness, and ever-deeper personal understanding of who we are as human beings. That experience doesn’t necessarily happen in the notes or dialog, but rather through the stillness that can be found in each of the character’s innermost thoughts and feelings.

The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.
~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

While performing artists spend hours expertly playing or singing the notes in music, they spend lifetimes perfecting the pauses between notes. That’s where the true artistry resides.

Mozart builds anticipation through his compositional technique to create dramatic pause, building tension and withholding resolutions. The pauses prolong the tension of the preceding buildup of tension creating a dynamic, charged silence. Silence is part of what gives the music such beauty and life. The world is a noisy place, and when students have an opportunity to experience deeper learning in music performance, they’ll soon discover the value of silence in other situations in their lives.

Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music. ~ Marcel Marceau

Are you a band or orchestra director? Are you unsure about how you can use this concept in your rehearsals? Take a look at my course—Transform Your Band and Orchestra Rehearsals: From Ordinary to Extraordinary — a course that’s intended to motivate you to open yourself to new possibilities, and to consider a deeper learning approach that helps students make connections beyond music to other situations in their lives.

Do you wonder how you can use this concept and others in your personal life and work? Take a look at my online course—Soft Skills to Kickstart Your Career: Little Known Benefits of Arts-Based Training to Catch the Eye of Employers—a course that’s designed to help you maneuver more confidently in today’s competitive environment and have more control over your future.

Patricia Hoy

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Deeper Learning In Band and Orchestra

Many years ago, I met a young musician who told me a story I’ll never forget. If you have ever wondered about the value of the arts, her story shows how the arts provide an opportunity to learn how to live a more creative and successful life. Students, families, and impassioned, innovative, thriving communities can grow with the guidance of teachers and artists who are deeply connected to the potential of the artistic process to provide comprehensive and relevant 21st century skill sets. This matters because our children—in fact all of us—are facing an increasingly challenging world that changes every day. It’s a world that’s asking us to think in new ways.

The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling. ~ Elliot W. Eisner (1933-2014), former Stanford Professor and champion of arts education

Emily told me how she learned through music to understand every member of her family and to love all of them no matter their attitudes or rules. Music helped her find her own voice and to muster the strength to move forward and understand how to find freedom even within her strict family structure. While this is an incredible story, Emily is one of many who have experienced profound learning through the arts, and in this case, it was her band rehearsals that made the difference. 

Value of Well-Taught Arts Experiences

My contention is that we simply can’t afford to ignore the value of well-taught arts experiences in our schools and communities. If we don’t value arts experiences of all kinds, we’re disregarding a comprehensive and relevant set of skills that can lead to a successful and more meaningful life. We can all benefit from learning through the arts and the opportunity to experience an invigorating depth of awareness in our own hearts and souls. 

Art is the triumph over chaos. ~ John Cheever, American novelist and short story writer

This certainly doesn’t mean that everyone must choose an art field as a career. Rather, it means that the knowledge you can gain in the process of learning the art form is invaluable to your life experience. From an early age, Emily had been involved in deeper learning experiences in band that allowed her to make connections beyond music to other situations in her life. Not only was her musical understanding and performance ability at a high level, but she learned the value of curiosity and open minded, flexible, and reflective thinking. 

Approaching arts learning from a broad and deep perspective allows everyone to learn to use the knowledge they gain in other ways. Our minds tend to expand by seeing in one thing something else that’s even more meaningful. Rehearsal experiences that fully involve students in artistic processes allow them the opportunity to develop deeper knowledge and a creative state of mind.

Painting is a means of self-enlightenment~ John Olsen (b. 1928), Australian artist

Deeper Knowledge and a Creative State of Mind

If you’re a band or orchestra director, you likely look to music performance for personal fulfillment, and as an educator, it’s also likely that you long to succeed in bringing meaningful musical experiences to your students. Open yourself to new possibilities and, through performance, make connections that foster depth and breadth for you and those you lead. Students can learn to perform at a high level, and at the same time, learn to make connections that help them express themselves effectively in other ways as well—with their families, communities, and the world at large.

Are you unsure about how you can use this idea in your rehearsals? Take a look at my course—Transform Your Band and Orchestra Rehearsals: From Ordinary to Extraordinary — a course that’s intended to motivate you to open yourself to new possibilities, and to consider a deeper learning approach that helps students make connections beyond music to other situations in their lives.

Remarkable things happen when you allow yourself to become fully engaged with creating art or performing music. At every level, you learn how little things make big things happen. The arts allow you to experience things from a global perspective and to bring real world meaning to basic knowledge and skills. When you’re open to the artistic process, you can learn to expand the meaning you and your students get from your music experiences and transfer that knowledge to other situations.

Patricia Hoy

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Added Value of Arts Aware Employees

Businesses and organizations experience an array of rapidly changing and increasingly complex challenges. Today’s world demands that we think in new ways. More than ever, it’s an environment that requires creativity and innovation. If we are to succeed, we must lead with openness and authenticity, and our employees must have the ability to think in ways that take full advantage not only of their knowledge but of the breadth and depth of their experience. Employees who have creative experiences in the arts can see more clearly into the depths of things. They are more able to see the little things and the bigger picture simultaneously. The benefits of Arts Aware employees to organizational performance are numerous. Here are three of the many organizational performance benefits that can come from Arts Aware employees: 

Enhanced Leadership and Management Skills

The diversity of values and viewpoints in organizational or institutional management and leadership is similar to the way materials interact in the artistic process. Momentum comes from the creative tension of materials interacting in a certain way. The momentum in resolution of a creative tension can lead to greater awareness for everyone involved. If you truly study the most profound personal and economic issues the world is experiencing today, you can see the value of greater Arts Awareness—thinking outside in and inside out.

Effective Teamwork and Negotiation Skills

With our cognitive ability, we can understand a concept in its wholeness and also break it down into its basic parts. Breaking apart a concept and piecing it together again is important, but we must also use a process that helps us understand the balance between the parts and the whole. Artistic efforts are inclusive and balanced like this in many ways. Arts Aware employees know the value of organizational processes that include honest assessment and the depth and breadth of involvement from others. Artists carefully study relationships, arranging and rearranging various elements, to create a moving and powerful work of art. The way artists use the relationships between all elements is critical to the result.

Increased Adaptability and Healthier Problem-Solving Skills

When you think about it, for centuries artists have used adversity, breaking down the problems they faced and developing the inner strength to move their work forward. Once they break through the resistance that comes with challenge, their unyielding focus creates an incredible force of forward motion. The friction is threefold: creating momentum, finding balance within the work of art itself, and overcoming internal and external snags. Arts Aware employees understand that organizational goals must be focused on more than just one element. Artists use a wide array of elements and materials in their work to produce a creative and successful result. While one element might be important, the arts help one to consider how to look at a wider range of elements.

I would love to paint a large landscape of Moscow—taking elements from everywhere and combining them into a single picture—weak and strong parts, mixing everything together in the same way as the world is mixed of different elements. It must be like an orchestra.

~Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) Russian painter and art theorist.

In his War Requiem, Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) created a masterpiece by creatively using the power of compositional elements in imaginative ways to express the tensions and contrasts of suffering and hope. In the end, the shock, pain, and revulsion of war brilliantly mix with the peace, comfort, and stillness of everlasting rest. The experience of opposite extremes of human emotion creates a special kind of lasting beauty, the mixture of elements creating a new wholeness of understanding. Even in our everyday lives, we don’t truly ever forget the hopelessness of anguish. Instead, we’re constantly renewed by its contrast with love and unity. When we step back and see things in context over a period of time, we have greater awareness and understanding.

How can you enhance your business or organizational culture with the added value of Arts Aware employees?

Develop an arts-based employee engagement program that includes the following:

  • An arts-based training program focused on organizational goals
  • Cultural experiences that are delivered through various arts disciplines and can be related to organizational goals
  • Interview experiences that help identify potentially successful Arts Aware employees.

More and more businesses and organizations—from local and community-based organizations to law firms and Fortune 500 companies—are using arts-based training to work through transitions, find shared values, increase the capacity for innovation, and teach employees leadership and communication skills and high-performance teamwork. This move toward arts-based learning from more traditional programs is evidence of the profound changes taking place in today’s world that necessitate a new approach.

Do you wonder how you can use this concept in your personal life and work? Take a look at my online course—Soft Skills to Kickstart Your Career: Little Known Benefits of Arts-Based Training to Catch the Eye of Employers—a course that’s designed to help you maneuver more confidently in today’s competitive environment and have more control over your future.

Patricia Hoy

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Little Known Secrets of Arts Based Training

Arts-Based Learning: A Real Solution for Business and Organizational Success in A Challenging World

Today’s world demands that we think in new ways. More than ever, we live in an environment that requires creativity and innovation. If you are to succeed, you must have the ability to use big picture thinking in your work and daily lives. And, when you’re a leader, you must have the ability to think in ways that take full advantage of the breadth and depth of the experience and knowledge held by all employees.

I believe approaching big picture thinking from an arts-based learning perspective is invaluable. Arts-based learning helps both employers and employees shift away from the unpredictability in the world and from situations where things get bogged down. It provides an opportunity for everyone to step back and look at things from a different perspective without the emotional attachment to everyday challenges. Arts-based learning comes from the experiences and processes artists use to create their art, whether music, visual art, drama, or dance. With arts-based training, you can learn to see more clearly into the depths of things. You’re more able to see the little things and the bigger picture simultaneously. It’ opens your mind to more possibilities. The benefits for organizational or business performance are numerous.

I am where I am because I believe in all possibilities . ~ Whoopi Goldberg

Even amid struggles, the artistic process helps you learn to generate momentum, and change direction and keep moving. The work of Simon Beck is a great example of this process. He creates massive snow designs by walking around in snowshoes, and sometimes he works a ten-hour day carefully creating a masterpiece. He creates detailed patterns that have different effects as the light changes throughout the day. At the end of the day, he climbs up to the highest point to take a picture before it’s destroyed by nature. His work is sometimes completely gone within an hour or two.

You can see the big picture/detail aspects of his work in this article: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31741611

When you commit yourself to using your imagination and expand your own understanding of things, you can transform your own experiences. At the same time, you influence new possibilities for everyone around you.

Every block of a stone has the statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. ~ Michelangelo

Patricia Hoy

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BANDING TOGETHER Big Ideas Shape Thriving Arts Environments

Different art forms are often placed in a position to compete with one another. While everyone has passion for the art they create, or support, or understand, we’re often placed in a position in schools and communities to take a competitive stance because of limited funding or economic issues. Beyond the need for funding is the powerful role competition plays in our society. Competition is fun, and it can be even more fun when you win. Although competitiveness can be a useful way to achieve a short-term goal in the arts, it can also be a zero-sum game for the arts to truly thrive long-term.

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The Added Value of Arts Aware Employees

Businesses and organizations experience an array of rapidly changing and increasingly complex challenges. Today’s world demands that we think in new ways. More than ever, it’s an environment that requires creativity and innovation.

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Big Things Happen in the Arts

Remarkable things happen when you allow yourself to become fully engaged with creating art or performing music. At every level, you learn how little things make big things happen. The arts allow you to experience things from a global perspective and to bring real world meaning to basic knowledge and skills.

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About 20 years ago I met a young musician who told me a story I’ll never forget. If you have ever wondered about the value of the arts—especially the process of performing music, dance, or theater, or making visual art—her story shows how the arts provide an opportunity to learn how to live a more creative and successful life.

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