Musicon / Kissine / Kissine – Silence is a part of music
-Kissine – Silence is a part of music
Kissine — who makes his home in Belgium, where he is a professor of music at two important conservatories — writes that he was a student at the Leningrad Conservatory when he first discovered Ives’ piece, “The Unanswered Question”. Considering it a “revelation,” he assiduously studied the details of its score, noting that Ives used a trumpet to repeatedly intone his so-called “Perennial Question of Existence.” The piece continues, as a series of other instruments offer comments on his question but cannot “answer” it. In his “Post-Scriptum,” Kissine engages a series of five sounds, each of which evolves into either a major or minor pitch interval of a third to deal with “the question.”
Kissine has written a great deal of film music, as well as chamber and orchestral music during his career. However, his approach to composition departs significantly from the assertive, agitated, often ear-grating styles issuing from the fin de siecle era at the beginning of the 20th century.
He explains that his musical language expands to include elements of classical Western-style tonality, 20th-century atonality, minimalism, aleatory sounds and 12-tone techniques, adding that he also uses micro-intervals (notes that fall “between the cracks” of notes on the piano). Further elaborating on his style, he wrote that beyond the four basic parameters of music — duration, pitch level, intensity and timbre — there is yet another: Silence, which he uses to great effect in his compositions.
“Silence,” he says, “does not stop the music. It’s part of the music. It’s the flip side of music. Sound without silence wouldn’t exist.”
By Cheryl North, Contra Costa Times; excerpts, edited by MUSICON