Sound of Silence

If you were to make a list of all the sounds known to men, would you include "silence" ?

I would.

Because, silence is the next best thing to talking for expressing your thoughts and feelings. Without silence, there wouldn't be speech, the other "sounds" you might have put on your list, or music.

In one of their songs called "Sound of Silence", Simon and Garfunkel reflect upon the concept of silence and describe it as many things from a well to a hall, and most importantly, a sound.

John Cage, the 20th century musician, has a piece called 4'33". It is a three-movement piece composed for any instrument, and lasts 4 minutes and 33 seconds; during which no one plays anything. Complete silence for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The conductor turns the pages of the score in front of him, as if there is something playing, and the audience hears what they want to within that silence.

There is a room in the United States which is 99.9 % silent. You cannot hear your own footsteps or anything from the world outside. The longest time a person could stay in that room was approximately 40 minutes, because, after a while, people started to get disturbed, hear things that were not there, hear the sound of their heart pumping and their lungs working. Their ears tried desperately to compensate for the silence they were engulfed in.

Yesterday, I went to a concert. It was about Clara and Robert  Schumann and it wasn't a very big event, so the concert hall wasn't full. Thanks to this, while the trio made up of a piano, a violin and a cello played the wonderful music of Mr. and Mrs. Schumann, everyone could hear it perfectly, and when the pieces ended, there was utter and undisturbed silence, contrasting to the screaming, rich and resolving final chords.

So, it makes sense for me to say that every other sound you listed on your list exists thanks to silence, and are just infinite variations on the sound of silence.