The Sound of Silence

23 June, 2014
Houston

One day I was having a philosophical conversation about music with a person who was a musician by profession and a philosopher by birth. He told me that the whole universe was filled with music. I agreed.

He said that the earth itself resonated at a particular frequency. I had never heard that before, but I smiled and said that I knew that, because hear it all the time - and that it is Middle C, or thereabouts.

 Nobody ever told me this, and I never read it anywhere. I discovered this when in Lurray Caverns in Virginia at age 6. The tour guide turned took us into the main cavern, turned off the lights, and we stood there deep beneath the earth, and experienced total darkness and quiet.

It was then that I heard the sound *Schubert heard; I called it the "Sound of Silence." Turns out, I was one note off - it is B.

In the late Sixties, the duo Simon &  Garfunkle came out with a song I liked, called (much to my surprise) "The Sound of Silence." I wondered at the very first if they were going to sing about a ringing in the ear, but the song had nothing to do with what I experienced. I loved the song because of its message.

Once, in a silly movie I saw, a young boy chided a little girl for her style of piano playing: "Music is a precise mathematical configuration, not a sentimental noise!"

I believe music is both, and much, much more. Since that tender age I have been aware that there is music everywhere and in everything - if we would only stop, be quiet, and listen.





*"Schumann resonances" are the closest anyone could come to the sound the earth makes. The apparent base frequency of the earth's electromagnet field is 7.8 Hz.

According to this calculator, the note would be B (-2).


There is a certain margin of error here and there is not just one frequency, but several resonant modes.

I wonder if one of them was the note A, which rang incessantly in the composer Robert Schumann's ears, ultimately leading him to suicide. Anyway, just another one of those weird coincidences if it was. Maybe this physicist Schumann in the 1950s was a descendant of Robert.

Edit: Resonant frequencies are not the result of the earth's rotation or its orbital period.