I found my inner silence, the silence that emanates from the center of the self. I felt it for the first time as something perceptible and real... I felt all shining like a mirror. I had the sense of eternity in space and time. I felt "washed" and clean, whole and at the same time without boundaries, as if universal life had entered me and my heart was beating in unison with its rhythm. But most of all I knew that this was more than just a state of mind. It was a way of living and being and of relating to others.
For a composer silence is something pregnant with expectation ... the most naturally spiritual medium. The music grows in the spiritual life: the silence of monks, the silence of meditation, the silence of not knowing something, the terrible silence of God when we are confronted with evil in the world. Music has always been intimately connected with the numinous and the immaterial. I increasingly believe that the non-corporeal quality of music can be a direct challenge to the world and its materiality.
~ James MacMillan on "Silence," Symphony No. 3 with thanks to Frances Kellog
