PAGE 316 of the 17th volume of the massive New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians begins with the tail end of the bibliography for the article on the Silbermann family (organ builders in 18th-century Germany), then continues with entries for silbote (a Basque flute), Friedrich Silcher (an 18th-century German folksong collector), Angelius Silesius (a 17th-century German poet), Anja Silja (a German soprano), Dorothy Silk (an English soprano), sillet (the French word for ''nut,'' not the edible kind but the wooden or ivory ridge that separates a violin's pegbox from its fingerboard) and, finally, Beverly Sills (the American soprano familiarly known as ''Bubbles'').

It seems odd that the English language's most comprehensive reference source on music devotes not a single sentence to silence.

Silence is a prime ingredient of music; it always has been, and presumably it always will be. Definitions of music of course vary, especially in a society such as ours, which for decades has taken dadaistic challenges in stride and which today - by virtue of electronic media - has ready access at least to the sounds of music from distinctly foreign cultures. But if one takes the traditional Western approach and defines music the way Webster does - as something that results from the act of ''organizing sounds in combinations and sequences that constitute a cohesive, unified and continuous composition'' - then it stands to reason that without silence there can be no music.

If music is indeed organized sound, then silence is the necessary absence of sound that surrounds it. Like a frame around a painting, silence marks music's edges. There is silence before and after music, and there is also silence within music. To carry the analogy a step further, silence is also like the ''open space'' in a painting that separates one element of the design from another. Little silences occur between notes, bigger silences occur between phrases, and still bigger silences occur between major sections of pieces and between the movements of large-scale compositions . We have to have them - we have to ''hear'' these silences, these boundary lines - if we're to make sense of the music. Without silence, traditional Western music would hardly seem organized at all.

The concept of silence as ''frame'' or ''open space'' - around or within music - is certainly not new. What is new - or, at least, relatively new - is the idea that the silence normally associated with the absence of music can be heard in a way that makes it seem to contain music. The idea presupposes, of course, that there is no such thing as absolute silence. Noise - that is, environmental or human sound over which the listener has no control - in fact exists everywhere and at all times. To hear the ''music'' contained in ''silence,'' one must simply attend to the noise.

John Cage is acknowledged as the author of this idea, and his ''4'33'' '' - a 1952 ''composition'' scored ''tacit, for any instrument or combination of instruments'' and divided into three clearly marked segments whose durations total exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds - is widely acclaimed as Cage's breakthrough creation. Cage himself often refers to ''4'33'' '' as ''the silent piece.'' Just as often, however, he reminds us that anyone who regards the work as literally silent is missing the point.

''There's no such thing as silence,'' he told John Kobler in a 1968 interview. ''What the first audience thought was silence, because they didn't know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began patterning the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.''

To my mind, Cage's ''4'33'' '' is not a musical work but simply an illustration of a musical-philosophical concept. ''4'33'' '' is not a composition but a proposition, similar to a Zen koan but more practicable than the famous one - called ''sekishu'' in Japanese - that asks the student to contemplate the sound of one hand clapping. Cage's koan might be phrased: ''What music do you hear when you hear no music?''

In Cage's own writings, the largest number of statements on ''4'33'' ''are found, not surprisingly, in the essays that make up his 1961 book ''Silence.'' And most of them, like this one, support the idea of ''4'33'' '' not as music per se but as commentary on the nature of music:

''When it is realized that sounds occur whether intended or not, one turns in the direction of those he does not intend. The turning is psychological and seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity - for a musician, the giving up of music. This psychological turning leads to the world of nature, where, gradually or suddenly, one sees that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together; that nothing was lost when everything was given away. In fact, everything was gained.''

If not quite everything, then at least a great deal - in terms of freedom - was gained for composers and listeners alike by the dramatic gesture Cage made with his ''4'33'' ''. In the 37 years since the example was set, however, much has happened to counter the positive influence ''the silent piece'' has had on Western society. Especially in respect to music, we are today dealing constantly with what German writer Walter Benjamin more than a half-century ago described as ''the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.'' Music, not in the Cagean sense but in the traditional sense, is everywhere around us. And the result is that fewer people than ever before engage in any kind of willful, active listening.

''Noise'' is the provocative title that French sociologist Jacques Attali gave to his 1977 attack on contemporary mores. And the noise began, Attali claims, as soon as music started to become an industry. ''With the appearance of the phonograph record, the relation between music and money starts to be flaunted,'' he writes. ''More than ever, music becomes a monologue.''

But it is not only Marxist thinkers who express the idea that, for many listeners, music is no longer either an art form or a means of communication but simply a commodity. Music's previously unknown ability to isolate listeners from one another is poignantly noted, for example, by Evan Eisenberg in his 1986 book ''The Recording Angel.''

Commenting on the marked differences between so-called ''live music'' and recorded music vis-a-vis social situations, Eisenberg writes: ''People seem more comfortable dancing and courting to mechanical music. The charitable interpretation of this is that it lets them be alone with each other. The other interpretation is that it lets them be alone.''

And on the subject of ubiquitous ''background'' music in shopping malls, in elevators and at home, Eisenberg offers this: ''Music and silence are both supposed to be golden, but most people are terrified of their Midas touch. That is why both are hedged with ritual, or else trivialized . . . . Music or silence, either one heard clearly, would ennoble every thing or else explode it. By playing background music we kill both birds with one stone.''

Most disturbing is Eisenberg's observation on the modern urban habit of transporting one's self from place to place while absorbing music via headphones attached to a portable cassette or compact-disc player: ''Half the time one has to use them (headphones) as shields against other people's sounds. Music becomes a substitute for silence.''

Music grows out of the silence that frames it. Silence, in the form of ''open space,'' is contained in music. Music, in the Cagean sense, is contained in silence. And now, in this age of mechanically reproduced music, music has become a buffer that protects individuals both from undesirable noise and from the undesirable music of others. Once the antithesis of silence, music has for many become the psychological equivalent of silence.

Why do so many of us read our newspapers, and even our books, in the audible presence of the television set? Why do we find it so difficult to drive our cars without the company of AM or FM radio? Why do so many teen-agers seek to ''lose'' themselves in the din of rock music? Why, in casual conversation, are moments of silence perceived as uncomfortable? Why do lovers, instead of relishing the opportunity to communicate silently with one another, so quickly reach for recordings of supposedly ''romantic'' music?