interviews
Samuel Ode and the Architecture of Silence
The composer of the new choral cycle explains why he begins every score with thirty seconds of nothing.
David Achebe · 2025-09-06
In the studio where the cycle was finished, a grand piano sits unused. “I write silence first,” Samuel Ode explains. “The notes are just the walls I build around it.”
His choral music has been described as architecture in sound, and the metaphor pleases him. “Cathedrals are not made of stone. They are made of the space the stone protects. Same with music.”
Asked whether silence is harder to compose than sound, he smiles. “Sound is easy. Silence requires patience, and patience is the rarest instrument.”