RockOm

By Trevor Harden, trevor@RockOm.net

"For we are gathered here to celebrate and explore the music of Winter,
the season of frosts and long dark nights."

So writes Sting in the liner notes to his latest recording, If on a Winter's Night..., a concept album centered on the darkest and most contemplative of the four seasons. What began as a suggestion to create a Christmas album has evolved into a collection of pensive songs - both original and borrowed - that survey that most spiritually reflective time of year.

Sting continues,

"Like all early creatures we seem pre-wired to recognize and respond to the polar archetypes of light and dark, of heat and cold as they are encoded in the rhythm of the days and nights and the perpetual cycle of the seasons."

And while most of Sting's popular work - if not lyrically, at least in tone - has rested more in the realm of light, If on a Winter's Night... plunges into the darkness and stays there for 50 frigid minutes, never budging from its stoic, frosty soundscape.

To get a sense of this album, one has only to look at the cover art: Sting walks alone in a snowy woods, accompanied only by his icy-whiskered companion named Compass. There is a silence that whispers from within the photo, only presumably broken by the sound of crunching snow collapsing beneath rubber soles. And this picture, in its simplicity, sums up the album perfectly, as if the audio from these 15 tracks had coalesced into a single image.  Both Sting and his marketing team have done a fantastic job "setting the stage" for this album, carrying out the concept and vision to its fullest potential: Pictures in the album's liner book include a heavily bearded and deep-eyed Sting, blustery landscapes, sweaters and coats, candle-lit living rooms and musicians in wistful meditation. Wintry words spill out from the pages of Sting's personal commentary such as mentions of "hot mugs of tea," scarves, ghosts and coal fires... he's certainly attempting to paint a picture. And he has, quite successfully.

PARALLEL STORIES

You could go so far as to say that a Winter-themed album that ignores the reality of Christmas would be in error, as the two have become so intertwined in Western culture. As the large portion of Sting's borrowed material stems from British and Scottish sources, it's no surprise that the album begins with a song singing the praises of Mary, the mother of Jesus. In fact the story of the "God-child come to earth" makes repeat appearances on If on a Winter's Night..., appearing also in the recordings of the 15th century German carol "Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming," the touching fable-song "Cherry Tree Carol," and beyond. Despite Sting's self-professed agnosticism, he shares that "the sacred symbolism of the church's art still exerts a powerful influence over [him]."

Don't for a minute believe this is a Christian-centric album, however. Alongside hymns singing the praises of "the root of Jesse" are hints of something more ancient, medieval, folksy, ritualistic, natural and even pagan. In his own words, Sting says that it was "important to draw parallels between the Christian story and the older traditions of the winter solstice."

Spiritually and metaphorically, Winter's Night draws you inward through sonic themes related to winter such as reflectiveness, introspection and stillness. In order to fully "get" this album and its overtly subtle tone, one almost needs to understand Sting's motivation:

"...there is something of the Winter that is primal, mysterious and utterly irreplaceable ... as if we somehow need the darkness of the winter months to replenish our inner spirits as much as we need the light, energy and warmth of summer."

He goes further, acknowledging that Resurrection and light are just around the bend as Winter soon makes way for Spring. In truth they are two sides of the same coin:

"We are reminded that there is light and life at the centre of the darkness that is Winter - or conversely that, no matter how comfortable we feel in the cradle, there is darkness and danger all around us."

THE SONGS

Those longing to hear a new offering supported by Sting's Fender P-bass, electric guitars, synthesizers and a trap set need look elsewhere for herein we experience the folk-inspired sounds of harp, classical guitar, Melodeon, cello, Northumbrian Pipes, and fiddle. Fans of the Sting who penned Brand New Day, Mercury Falling, Ten Summoner's Tales and the majority of the Police's material will have to be remarkably open to other styles of music in order to include this alongside their favorite of his albums. This is not because this latest release is less than his previous offerings, not at all, but rather that it is so extraordinarily different from them. If On a Winter's Night... was released on the Deutsche Grammophon label which is both appropriate and telling, for this collection of songs belongs more suitably alongside your classical CDs (or even his own 2006 album Songs from the Labyrinth) than it does next to your Peter Gabriel or Paul Simon discs.

Sting begins with "Gabriel's Message," singing "Most highly favored lady, Gloria!" over the gentle instrumentation of a nylon-stringed guitar, muted horns and tight vocal harmonies.  From there the album slowly and intentionally bubbles forward like a frozen-over brook, presenting classical and folk pieces including a Celtic begging song, a folk tune from Sting's home of Newcastle, a number from Henry Purcell's King Arthur, a reference to Schubert's Winterreise and more; as well as two original pieces, the beautiful "Lullaby for an Anxious Child" and a new arrangement of the previously recorded "Hounds of Winter."

CONCLUSION

If on a Winter's Night... is almost "application music," or music for the purpose of introspection, mood setting, or direct listening. It most likely shouldn't be considered for enlivening your holiday party with yuletide cheer and may not even be - if I may be so bold - for entertainment. Like most music with depth, it requires a certain conscious presence to fully appreciate and experience, coming to grips with it over time like slowly warming beneath a freshly applied sweater.

There's a mystery in the dark of winter that is both unsettling and strangely comforting, as if everything remains unanswered and yet is perfect as it is; If on a Winter's Night... resides in that mystery. It isn't music for everyone, nor will there be any signature Sting hit singles emerging from it, and yet for those brave enough to look within and meditate on what lies in the heart of darkness, it is a welcome companion to the bleak seasons, both in nature and in the soul.

"If I have a spirituality at all, it's about music. I play and I listen to music as if it really matters to my soul, to my eternal being." [Sting]

To add to a recent run at RockOm regarding rests, silence and space, here is some footage from Icelandic musician Bjork during a BBC program entitled "Modern Minimalists."  In this clip, she interviews Arvo Part, a "serious composer who - in a very sensitive way - has got the whole battle of this century inside him."  In a world dominated with music that has, in Bjork's words, "500 billion notes," it's quite interesting to get the perspective of a musician who seeks fullness and "lushness" in a few, well-chosen pitches and plenty of "divine space."

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Newswise — Silence in music is not really silent. Research by a University of Arkansas music theorist, Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, reveals how context affects listeners’ experience of silence in music.

“The same acoustic silence, embedded in two different excerpts, can be perceived dramatically differently,” Margulis wrote in an article in the current issue of Music Perception that explores the transformation from acoustic silence to perceived silence.

Silence offers “an opportunity to study the active participatory nature of musical engagement,” Margulis wrote. There has been little experimental study of musical silence up to now.

“Silent periods could provide a unique chance to study the way that past musical events shape expectations about future ones, and the way that under acknowledged, often taken for granted musical elements (such as rests) are actually suffused with the full extent of ‘musical’ listening,” she wrote.

Silence in music communicates in a similar manner to silence in speaking, Margulis said. Sometimes the duration of the pause indicates the importance of the segment. In written language, a pause at the end of a paragraph is longer than the pause at the end of a sentence. Pauses in language are also used for expressive effect, Margulis explained:

“For example, I could say ‘You know what happened?’ Pause. ‘He called her.’ And that pause in the right context is really tense, and you get everyone leaning forward. Music can do something similar.”

When a listener encounters silence in a musical work, Margulis wrote, “Impressions of the music that preceded the silence seep into the gap, as do expectations about what may follow.”

Listeners’ impressions and expectations can have a powerful effect on how they hear a silence, to the extent that identical acoustical silences may come to “sound” quite different. For example, Margulis found that musical context can cause two silences of the same duration “to seem like they occupy different lengths of time or carry different amounts of musical tension.”

Margulis’ research involved two experiments, one using musical excerpts from commercially available recordings. The second experiment used simpler musical excerpts produced specifically for the study with carefully measured and controlled silences.

Participants without musical training were selected for both experiments, so that their responses would reflect reactions to the music they were hearing rather than assessments based on formal musical training. They proved to be “highly sensitive” to the subtleties of silence in its musical context.

“I’m interested in showing how listeners without any special training know more than they think they know,” Margulis said, “You don’t need courses and lectures to understand music; it’s meant to naturally speak to you.”

Margulis is an assistant professor of music in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas. Her article “Silences in Music Are Musical Not Silent: An Exploratory Study of Context Effects on the Experience of Musical Pauses” appears in the June 2007 issue of Music Perception.

Your Turn: We'd love to hear your responses in one of several ways:

1. What stood out to you in this article? (or other such general responses)
2. Have you ever noticed this before?  Where a silent pause in a song or a piece of music serves a greater purpose than just a time of "no sounds"?
3. The essence of silence and stillness are the basis for mediation and centered prayer. If indeed we, "don't need courses and lectures to understand music; it's meant to naturally speak to [us]," can we say the same for either listening to or performing music AS meditation and prayer?

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