The article analyzes the concept of silence and its application in the work of Sofi a Gubaidulina, with special attention to the poetry of Gennady Aigi whose poems were used by S. Gubaidulina. The author surveys how silence both as a concept and as an artistic method is represented in the art of the twentieth century. The author traces a variety of approaches to silence in poetry and music and demonstrates how it can engender novel interpretations. Expressive possibilities of the language of contemporary art are revealed through a variety of meanings of the concept of silence, which leads to changes in the creative activity of contemporary artists who increasingly resort to the use of silence as an artistic technique and do this in various ways, giving rise to original forms of the concept’s embodiment.