List of silent musical compositions


This is a list of musical works which consist mostly or entirely of silence.

Theory

Some composers have discussed the significance of silence or a silent composition without ever composing such a work. In his 1907 manifesto, Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, Ferruccio Busoni described its significance:
After Paul Hindemith read this, he suggested a work consisting of nothing but pauses and fermatas in 1916.

Classical compositions

A number of classical compositions consisting primarily of silence have been composed since 1896:

Songs

Albums

  • Rosemary Brown Psyches Again!, a 1982 Enharmonic Records LP by David DeBoor Canfield.
  • Sleepify, a 2014 album by Vulfpeck consisting of 10 tracks of silence. The album was released on the music streaming service Spotify and generated $20,000 in royalty over a two-month period. It exposed a loophole in the streaming service's royalty calculation model.
  • The TISM Omni-Album by TISM is a 100-minute album of silence, released in 2020.
  • The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan, a 1980 Magic Records LP consisting of two 20 minute silent tracks "The Wit of Ronald Reagan" and "The Wisdom of Ronald Reagan". The joke of the album was that somebody would buy it expecting to hear wit and wisdom from Ronald Reagan, only to hear silence as he didn't have any wit or wisdom. The album was never reissued however an extract from it appeared on the compilation "The Big Stiff Box Set"
  • Is This What We Want?, a 2025 Virgin Music Group album credited to over a thousand UK artists, including Kate Bush, Damon Albarn and Annie Lennox. It was released as a protest against the use of unlicensed copyrighted work to train AI. The track titles form the sentence "The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies".