Talk:Lacuna (music)

There should be examples. There is Cage's 4'33", a total Lacuna music (hehe).

Here's another example, if it helps: in Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in E-flat major ("Resurrection"), the score instructs the conductor that there should be a pause of at least two minutes at the end of the first movement, as against the shorter pause that would normally be observed - and is observed between all other movements of the symphony other than the first and second.

Not that this pause is always observed. I seem to recall once hearing a live broadcast of the symphony many years ago, and the conductor made an effort, at least, observing a pause about one minute long - but apparently he couldn't go the full two minutes.

I'm pretty sure that, if anyone wanted to spend hours trawling through 20th-century scores, they would be able to find examples of at least several bars' rest within a composition. I'm sure I've come across this - well, not really often - but from time to time. Xenakis's "Herma", for one, includes several long rests, with varying numbers of bars in them. Whole-bar rests with a large "2" in them, to indicate 2 bars' rest, are not too uncommon in music from many periods - but these are usually part of the rhythmic structure of the music, so I gather from the article that these don't really qualify as lacunae. The ones in "Herma", on the other hand, really do seem to be outside rhythm, and do seem to separate parts of the music at a fairly fundamental level.

I could write these into the article, but I won't, lest I be accused of "original research" - I have no references for these things I've just mentioned, except the scores themselves, which I have examined. (Personally I think a score is the best reference of all for musical points - but I have been accused previously of original research because I mentioned something in an article that I'd learned from the score, but couldn't point to some musicological book that referred to the same thing.) M.J.E. (talk) 19:49, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Should this be here?

I'm not sure that this page should exist. But it's not to the point of nominating for deletion. I added mention of 4'33", but I can't find any mention of this in regards to any other piece of music. Even adding 4'33" is technically original research, since I can't find anybody describing it as a lacuna or being made of lacunae, but it makes the article better and will bring people to this page by building the web a little. I'd like to see this article improved, or at least some assertion of notability added, or else perhaps we should dispatch it. Conical Johnson (talk) 04:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

If it matters two and a half years later, I think it's a bit hair-splitting to regard the reference to John Cage's "4' 33"" as original research, simply because a reference can't be found actually *describing* it as a lacuna - it is well-known that this piece consists entirely of silence - or at least of no notes being played. At the same time, I have been a musician most of my life, and this is the first time I've ever come across "lacuna" being treated as a musical term - so if it's not a standard musical term perhaps we shouldn't expect many authors to describe Cage's piece as a lacuna or as being constructed entirely of lacunae.

Perhaps more useful would be, not a reference to Cage's piece being described as a lacuna, but a reference verifying that the word itself is recognized as a musical term. I don't think such a reference will be easy to find, though. M.J.E. (talk) 19:40, 22 May 2012 (UTC)