Re: Composers who use lots of silence

Yehuda Yannay's "Continuum" from 1969 has long passages of slow, soft 
material which dies away into silence.
But in addition to this, for much of the piece the pianist is instructed 
to pantomime playing the notes. This
results in long stretches where more the half of the time the performer 
is producing no sound at all.
I did this piece on Yehuda's concert series in Milwaukee last April. The 
pianist's back faces
the audience, so the keyboard can be seen clearly, while at the same 
time a live
projection of the keyboard is shown on a screen behind the piano. There
is a video of this projection at this url: http://www.vimeo.com/1282844
This composition is mentioned in _The Time of Music_ by
Jonathan Kramer.

Louie
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Mr. Yannay's program note:

I always had a fascination with the visual aspects of musical 
performance. To experience what I mean, turn off volume on a filmed 
performer in action. In this piece, written 42 years ago in Israel, I 
incorporated the idea of composing “performed silences.” I wanted to 
write a chain of short sound-blocks that connected in silence by visible 
choreography performed by the fingers, hands and arms of the pianist. In 
the original, pre-video version, I placed the pianist facing his back to 
the audience and the piano keyboard parallel to the rows of the 
audience. It occurred to me several years ago that one can now extend 
the visual experience of the piece by real-time video capture and