"Silence of the Stars" for a cappella SATB Double Choir by Joan Johnson Drewes

From: Silence by Edgar Lee Masters —"I have known the silence of the stars". While contemplating silence, quietude and stillness I found a poem titled “Silence” by Edgar Lee Masters. The full poem is beautiful and quite extensive. I felt I needed to be more succinct in the message I wanted to impart about silence. After exploring many poetic resources, I concluded that the opening line of Masters’ poem was exactly what I was looking for; “I have known the silence of the stars.” While I am aware that the cosmos contain violence, chaos and noise, the stars appear to be silent as I gaze upon them from earth. Meditation is a sanctuary of silence, quietude and stillness which I have been practicing since 1976. I wish people understood meditation better. Despite the thoughts that arise during meditation there is a stillness that connects us not only to our inner self, but the universe. In meditation we dive deeply inside ourself and in so doing we allow the Soul to exponentially expand to the universe outside ourselves. There is a stage in consciousness that lies between the hamster-wheel of rampant thoughts and silence. This is where we become the observer of our thoughts. “I” am not those thoughts, I am observing them. So who am I really? The observer, the observed or both? We gain access to this state of awareness by being still and by listening. We practice being still. We practice listening to silence. As every musician engages in practicing and improving by using repetition, Silence of the Stars is exactly a practice in meditative repetition. This is how I have known the silence of the stars. Performance time: 6:45 This piece uses melodic and harmonic layering and repetition to express an etherial and spacious musical meditation. This is a demo recording performed by Connor Martin-Cox and Courtney Martin-Cox @cmartinmusic, @heyitscootnay MartinMusicProductions.com Connormartinmusic.com All Deep Space Images were photographed by Ken Scheben [email protected] ‪@kscheben‬ Video production: Ken Scheben joanjohnsondrewes.com SunJo Music (c) 2026 All Rights Reserved ©2026 Joan Johnson Drewes All Rights Reserved All compositions are protected under the copyright law. Unauthorized use or reproduction of this material without prior written consent is prohibited by law. Unauthorized use of these compositions for AI training, scraping, or machine learning is strictly prohibited.