Awkward Silence

Today I had a concert in which I played a Vivaldi concerto for four violins, and the Vivaldi Gloria. Nineteen whole pages of Vivaldi, it was quite torturous, especially since we were accompanying the singers in the Gloria. Before it started, we were rehearsing and once we finished rehearsing the chorus and a few orchestra members took off to go get a drink of water, use the restrooms and such. The orchestra members all returned within five minutes, but the chorus was conspicuously absent, and it was five minutes past the time we were supposed to start at. However, all was going well until it started quieting down.

The problem with this was that once it got quieter less and less people wanted to speak because they were afraid of being the only one talking around them. So finally it got to the point where everyone was dead silent. It felt like hours as the orchestra and audience sat there silently in a silent stand off. We couldn't start without the chorus. We looked around at each other, trying not to burst out laughing. It was so awkward. We didn't know what to do with ourselves. It went on for a whole ten minutes of complete silence. Somewhere in the middle I whispered to one of the cellos, "We could claim we're playing John Cage's four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence." Finally, the chorus walked in and we tuned and played the piece.


Sachi