SILENCE: POSSIBLE CATEGORY FOR UNDERSTANDING RELATIONS BETWEEN MUSIC AND HISTORY

Abstract

This text emerged from reflexion concerning the participation of the author in a debate
entitled "Music History and Literature." We attempted to operate a convergence
between the concepts through a common element - the text: the music score, the
historical narratives about music and literary writings that may inform on the History
of Music. To this brief essay we took the silence as a category for this examination.
We identified three kinds of silences: the silence stemming from the limitation and
encrypted registers of the music score; the silence of historical narratives about music
because of political constructions and silences of texts on music, such as
archaeological fragments that are insufficient to show how the music of the past
sounded