Introduction

This paper will examine the phenomena of silence and gesture within acousmatic music and ways that the relationship between them impact on musical expectation. This will be considered through the analysis of two acousmatic works, Shortstuff (Stollery, 1993) and Break, (Williams, 2004), both of which make dramatic use of silence and short gestures at the beginning of the work.

Through consideration of existing literature in the field and analysis of these two works, it will be suggested that the use of silence has some wider implications for the creation of expectation in acousmatic music than in tonal western music.