Max Richter’s Soundscape of Silence
One of the most influential composers of his generation, Max Richter considers silence to be as essential as sound in creating music.
Photography by Rory Van Millingen
There must be no space more tranquil to compose music than Studio Richter Mahr, an alpaca farm-cum-recording studio in the Oxfordshire countryside. The space, opened in 2022 by composer Max Richter and artist Yulia Mahr, his partner, is immaculately tidy, flooded with natural light. Beneath a grand piano lies a dog bed, while on its music stand rests an unfinished score, scribbled with notation and jottings such as “Go Mad” and “Make it even simpler!” Silence, however, is not essential to Richter’s creative process, he says. The space may be quiet, but there is always music playing in his head.
Born in Germany and raised in Bedford, England, Richter is among the most important figures in modern classical music, whose melancholic, yearning compositions reach listeners far beyond the concert halls where they’re performed. His music underscores many popular films, TV series, dance recitals and fashion shows. Sleep (2015), an eight-hour work designed to accompany a full night’s rest, is the most-streamed classical album of all time. Current events inspire many of his most acclaimed works, including The Blue Notebooks (2004), written in opposition to the Iraq War, and Exiles (2019), in response to the refugee crisis. This month, Richter released his ninth album, In a Landscape, and soon he will embark on his first world tour. It’s a smaller-scale production than his previous records, though the result is no less pleasing, and listening to it has the warming effect of the sun bursting through clouds.
Is it isolating work, being a composer?
MR It is, in a way. It is just me sitting in a room. It probably speaks to something about my personality. You wouldn’t choose to do that unless you were somebody who enjoyed sitting in a room on your own. So, yes, there’s a kind of introversion. And this album is the outcome of all of that ruminating and thinking.
It’s a social result – your music connects listeners and speaks to them very intimately.
MR You write a piece of music because you’re able to be more precise about what you want to communicate via musical means than you can in words. So, music hovers beyond words, in some way. It delivers a very specific kind of meaning, a meaning that is hard to convey in words. There’s something really satisfying about the sensation of saying what it is you really mean, which isn’t often easy to do verbally. So, that’s why I’ve always gravitated toward music: it seemed to me it was possible to be more precise about the important things.
“The final destination is silence, but how we make that journey is up to us." Max Richter
Many of your works are inspired by conflict or crises. What was the source of inspiration for In a Landscape?
M.R. The biography of the record, if you like, is trying to resolve polarities. It reconciles electronics and acoustic instruments, technology and nature, the human and the natural – all of these things. Also, the title, In a Landscape, can be misheard as “inner landscape.” That’s quite deliberate, making the argument for the external world and the internal world in a kind of a dialogue. That, for me, is the story of the record. The reason I went there is because the world is very polarized right now. People who have different opinions on quite banal or simple things can hardly speak to one another. And that’s bad news. So, trying to find ways to develop a situation where these things can find a kind of harmony – that’s a very worthwhile thing to do.
John Cage thought that music was a means of changing someone’s mind, in that by opening themselves up to new sounds, listeners open themselves to new possibilities. Do you agree?
MR Cage is an important influence for me, in his thinking and attitudes. I believe in creativity as a thing that elevates us in really simple ways. If I wake up in the morning, turn the radio on, hear a bit of Beethoven – well, my life is slightly better after I’ve heard that than before. It’s quite hard to say how and exactly why, but you feel these things. Somehow you’re moved, you’re transformed, you’re transported – everything is just a little bit brighter. And that’s something creative work can do.
As a composer, how do you understand and use silence?
MR Silence is one of the principal materials of music. It’s as important as the sounds. You work outward from silence. A piece of music is a kind of dance with silence. You’re positioning sonic objects in space in relationship to the background, which is this absolute silence. It’s sort of a dialogue process. And, of course, the piece ends up in silence.
Many of your best-known works start softly, gradually build and swell, then expire. What draws you to this approach?
MR Form and architecture are really connected with story. As we just said, the final destination is silence, but how we make that journey is up to us, right? But ultimately, yes, we always land in the same place.
Cage thought of silence as a real note, whereas musicologist Daniel Charles considered it the opposite of music. Where do you fall?
MR I’m with Cage, really. In 4’33’’ [a composition in which musicians do not play their instruments for the four-minute-33-second duration of the piece], he makes the argument that everything is music because the piece gets out of the way of everything else that’s happening. Particularly now, we work with electronics, found sound, these kinds of things – they have musical properties. The universe and the world we inhabit are fundamentally musical places. Part of the fun of being a composer is having the opportunity to engage with the sonic environment creatively.
In that sense, this studio space itself could also be considered an instrument.
MR Yes. The building is something Yulia and I dreamed into existence over a 20-year period. On one level, it’s a laboratory: we’re trying stuff endlessly, experimenting. And also, yes, it’s an instrument. This room is full of synthesizers, sound-making objects of different kinds. It’s a space for thinking about music, for trying music, for making and recording music. Next door, if you look at the recording space, it’s all made of oak, which has very specific acoustic properties. The technical equipment is all very specifically chosen. You hear the difference.
Do you need silence to work?
MR No, not really. In a way, I’m always working. I’ve always got music going around in my head.
Do you need silence to perform? How does a hushed concert venue compare with Glastonbury, where you performed in 2023?
MR They are quite different, and again it comes down to silence. In a live setting, you work with the silence. A piece will grow out of nothing and return to nothing. Whereas in a festival setting or an outdoor setting, you don’t have control of that. I remember when we played Sleep outdoors at the Music Center in Los Angeles. We had jets flying over, and sirens, and you think, “Okay, so this is different.” But people didn’t mind it because, for Angelenos, that’s just normal. Having a jet fly over – that is silence for them.
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