rest
A symbol indicating a period of silence in music.
In Depth
Rests are as important as notes — they create space, punctuation, and breathing room within the musical texture. Each note value has a corresponding rest: whole rest, half rest, quarter rest, eighth rest, and so on. The shapes are distinct and must be memorised: a whole rest hangs below a staff line, a half rest sits on top.
Great composers use silence as deliberately as sound. Beethoven's dramatic pauses — long rests followed by explosive entries — are a signature of his style. In jazz, Miles Davis was famous for the spaces he left between notes, saying it's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play. John Cage's 4′33″ took this to its logical extreme — an entire piece consisting of nothing but rests.
John Cage's 4′33″ consists entirely of rests — the performer sits in silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, and the ambient sounds of the audience become the music.