musical form; architectural sound (cont.)

the bachelor thesis 2005

2. Comparison of Music and Architecture

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A. “Battle Line”

           For our investigation into past studies, I will begin not with the common ground between music and architecture, but the battle line between them. To look at the difference in nature between the two will not only provide us with an objective standpoint to begin with, but also guide us to the correct direction, by which we will eventually discover the similarities in them. Considering the abundance of writings on the connection between music and architecture, we can be sure that the study of their difference is not going to undermine my argument later. To begin, let us start with the obvious, and then work our way up.
 

I. “Exactness” in Architectural Practice

          The first difference between music and architecture is a practical observation, namely the quality of exactness in architecture. This is to say architects tend to have a stricter cut in determining the validity of design decisions, while in the discipline of music there tends to exist a more lenient atmosphere when evaluating compositions. Of course, there are always a variety of debates on journals, from critique of new compositions to debates on interpretational issues in music. However, the major difference between the two is that, in the disciplines of music, there exist actual debates, unlike in architecture where majority of discourses tend to share the same attitude, making them more like endless critiques on architectural works that are all based on a uniform standard. Eventually, this results in a biased undertone in the discipline, filled with judgments like “right” or “wrong” instead of “perhaps.”
         Naturally, this difference has largely to do with the difference between architecture’s role in society and that of music. The former takes an active, almost self-assigned, responsibility and importance within the society. Architects often see themselves as an integral part of the community, thus their decisions have to be noticeably responsive toward the needs of the users, which are often very specific. Composers, on the other hand, have taken a passive role in society since the beginning of the last century. Before the late 19th century, composers like Liszt thought music had an important role in social and moral amelioration, making composers important figures in society.[vii] This underwent a sharp change at the end of the century. Schoenberg was one of the most obvious examples; he formed an exclusive society of musician, which only opened to those equipped with such sophisticated taste that they were able to appreciate his compositions. Since as mentioned before, the role of serialism can be one whose benefits lay in the further future, we have to face the fact that people contemporary with it may feel disconnected from the music. 60 years later, Xenakis showed similar inclinations, although his were based on a different attitude. Xenakis also did not believe music should serve immediate functions of any kind, instead composers are supposed to be “artist-conceptors” whose work would ultimately contribute to some, almost utopian, greater goods.
           That being said, it is understood that musicians do tend to choose a more detached position with respect to the public. As mentioned, modernism for one met totally different fates in music and architecture. In architecture, the dominating ideal was to turn away from classicism of all kinds—most of them were prefixed “neo”—and to base design primarily around function (no need to quote the cliché again). This approach logically requires significant consideration of the inhabitants. This was a primary difference with modernism in music, which essentially a quest for a fundamentally new realm of musical function and aesthetic. The only similarity between the two was the fact that they both aspired to abandon their respective past practice; one being classical orders, and the other tonality.
          Oddly enough, the difference in exactness between the two disciplines does not end at pragmatic concerns, where such difference is perhaps inevitable. What happens is that the difference in attitude in conceiving and evaluating compositions of both kinds is, in fact, carried over from pragmatic to aesthetic aspects. It sounds almost unimaginable today for a field to hold an absolute aesthetic standard, and most architects would refuse to admit its existence. However, the truth is there do exist common guidelines for determining what “good designs” are. Even without considering practical factors at all, a design may still be commented on with a strict “valid” or “invalid,” leaving no room for gray area.[viii]
          This atmosphere can only result in homogenous products, and this is exactly the case in both academia and private practices. Let us look at the 2001 survey conducted by the National Art Journalism Program of Columbia University, in which 40 newspaper architecture critics in America were consulted.[ix] On the list of favorites, we have Renzo Piano, Santiago Calatrava, Steven Holl, (Sir) Norman Forster, Tadao Ando, James Stewart Polshek, and so on. These are all doubtlessly some of the greatest architects of our time; yet even if their works did not all possess similar qualities, they certainly have similar creative mindsets. Practically speaking, it is far to say that these designers represent the norm, upon which the common standard is based. Then we can look at the least favorites: Bernard Tschumi, Peter Eisenman, and Zaha Hadid—two initiators of deconstruction, and one who refused the title for the description supremacist—and the situation cannot be any more obvious. Although they all hold a very high reputation in the discipline,[x] these designers, who the report described as a group of “theory oriented deconstructionists,” are not exactly the most popular ones among their colleagues. Finally as we enter the new millennium, we have the honor to possess a few weirdoes in the profession of architecture, the same way that Schoenberg and Webern once were among their contemporaries, and this is how we treat them.[xi] Not to mention that we in the architecture are already falling a good 100-year behind. To call this a difference in diversity between the disciplines of music and architecture, we may as well be truthful and admit it as our own deficiency.

II. Music’s Temporal Quality

               Practitioners of any art form often exaggerate their respective uniqueness. Music never runs out of statements of this kind; these ideas, however, tend to be grounded in one truly unique fact of music: it is a temporal art. This is one aspect that the visual arts, with the exception of motion pictures, cannot share. However, even movies often contain music as an essential component. Also, movie’s compositeness (image and sound) makes it a poor candidate for any discussion of this kind, which concerns its basic nature. At least among non-imitative arts, music is unique on this one.
               Music’s temporal nature was most obvious during the Middle Ages, when music existed only in the form of memorization and not notation of any type. When music is written on paper, it is easy to mistake it as a single entity or by nature some kind of inert being. Only when it is played do we apprehend that it is actually continuously flowing along with time. St. Augustine devised an excellent description of such experience:

          Suppose that I am going to recite a psalm that I know. Before I begin, my faculty of expectation is engaged by the whole of it. But once I have begun, as much of the psalm as I have removed from the province of expectation and relegated to the past now engages my memory, and the scope of the action which I am performing is divided between the two faculties of memory and expectation, the one looking back to what I have already recited, the other looking forward to the part which I have still to recite.

           Before the invention of modern notation in the 14th century, music was similar to time in conception. It was perceived as a collection of successive and discrete “nows.” Instead of having an additive quality, music was considered immeasurable and indivisible.[xii] Needless to say, such views of music made it relatively difficult to manipulate; so described, it also bears little resemblance to any visual or spatial arts, architecture included. The emergence of notation may start to confuse this quality, but fundamentally, music’s nature has always been temporal, whether it is played or written.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s famous poetic notion of architecture being “frozen music” was guilty for such confusion to a certain degree. We also have seen examples like Franz Liszt’s Sposalizio from his Annees de Pelerinage, a piano piece that was either inspired by or depicts Raphel's painting La Sposalizio della virgine.[xiii] All these made us start to overlook music’s temporal nature, and consider it in the same manner we do with visual arts. However, in the real world music is never frozen; it is notation that is frozen, but then music does not necessitate notation—it is notation that needs music or else it would be meaningless. Even for the “wholeness” of Schenker’s idea of reducing a composition into a single idea, it merely explains but does not challenge music’s nature. In the defense of his dissertation, Iannis Xenakis had also made a comprehensive description of time, which is essentially music’s fundamental nature:

         …I think it is impossible to make time go backwards…Judgments which are made in the time flow are, if you please, reversible. As an example, let us take the most elementary thing there is: duration. A duration is something that can be moved about within time, it is therefore reversible, commutative. A duration always occurs in the same direction as time, of course (it can go against the temporal flow). This is to say that if I want to write, design, or, especially, visually represent time, I would have to put it on an axis, as physicists do, as musicians do (first musicians, and later, physicists). It must be pointed out that musicians with the same musical staff were the first to invent a Cartesian representation of this principle. Fine, the temporal flow would be represented by a straight line which, by definition, would be a continuity. I’ll put points on this line: these are instants. The difference between any two points is a concept which stems from comparisons and mysterious judgments I make about the reality of the temporal flow, which I accept a priori. The distance between the two points is what is then identified as a duration. I displace this duration anywhere; therefore, it is reversible. But the temporal flow itself is irreversible. And if I draw an axis on a spatial plane and place pitches on it, on an axis perpendicular to an horizontal time axis, then, to go from a low point to a higher point to the right of it, I can only move in one way: from bottom to top, and from left to right. That’s irreversibility.[xiv]

          Beautifully put; in a nutshell this means that unless time is put on paper (or other mediums), it is not reversible. But when music is put on paper notation, it is just an abstract representation of music (Xenakis described a time period as “a definition of time”); it intends to depict music, but can never be considered an actual part of music. Thus “frozen music” is technically a false statement, for it has confused the nature of music with that of musical notation.[xv] Interestingly, Xenakis’ idea on irreversibility was analogous to Steven Hawking’s.[xvi] By now we are just one step away from an exciting discussion of thermodynamics and ideas like entropy, which regrettably does not lay the scope of this essay; we can always pick up where we are leaving off in my doctoral dissertation.

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​B. Past Studies: Suggested “Common Ground”​

          We learn from Hesychius and other lexicographers, that μβσικη and τεχνη, music and art, were among the Athenians synonymous words; Architecture, therefore, as the most noble art, more particularly deserves this appellation.
The Music of the Eye, Peter Legh.[xvii]

               Now we are getting to the similarity between music and architecture, the true goal of this study.
               In the antiquity, the study of music—specifically harmonics—stand as one of the seven liberal arts, or one of the four arts of measurement in the higher education curriculum, among others are arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Moreover, Boethius in De institutione musica suggested that musica as a metaphysical entity dictates performance, “human harmony,” and even the harmony of the universe itself.[xviii] Although the above scholastic classification was based on a ill-defined understanding of music, this ancient notion shows that music may possess a bigger influence on other disciplines than the way we recognize it now.
               In this chapter, I am going to introduce a series of studies of the relationship between the two entities. These studies, ranging from ancient Greek to modern time, do not necessarily provide a firm argument on the issue; what they will do is to suggest ways that we can approach the subject. Here I do not intend to endorse all of these studies. Instead, the examples of differences discussed in the previous chapter may explain and evaluate the successes and failures of these studies.
I. The Mystic (also Overstated) Proportion      
               If the obvious difference between music and architecture is one being a time-art and the other is not, then the obvious similarity would be the proportional factor that is found in both disciplines. Without a doubt, during almost every discourse on the relationships between music and architecture, the subject of proportion tends to be the first one that comes up, and this happens in both disciplines. This is mainly due to how much this topic was investigated in some of the oldest writings in both knowledge fields, although the truth is that not everybody who discusses it actually knows of its actual significance. Therefore in order to provide a mutually understood platform where this issue can be explored, it is necessary to clarify a few very basic concepts.
               The fact is, most of the time when an ancient scholar talked about proportion in music, she/he was talking about proportion in the study of harmony. Although this is not the only aspect where proportional study can be applied, as proportion also exist and is essential in rhythmic analysis, harmonic proportion is definitely the most mystifying one. As we are going to see, proportion has been the core issue in the studies of music-architecture relationship from Ancient Greek to the Renaissance. Even after the Renaissance time when the study eventually died out, we can assume that musical harmony continued to bewilder writers when they wrote about musical affects, especially for those of architectural treatise. The reason I say “assume” is that the question of what exactly in music that is appealing to human mind is, as a matter of fact, one of the most controversial discourse until today. In this essay we are only able to touch just a tiny chunk of it; That is, after we have a much better understanding in music’s nature. So to begin with, what exactly is harmonic proportion?
               Perhaps the whole craze around proportion in music began in Ancient Greek, and we are not even sure about that, as the earliest account available was from the 2nd century A.D. Assume the legend was true, then Pythagoras would be the first person in record who discovered the numerical relationship that governs the study of harmonic intervals, which is the basic foundation of the whole Western Music tradition until today. Here is a famous story told by a Neo-Pythagorean in the 2nd century A.D.:

               Pythagoras being in an intense thought whether he might invent any instrumental help to the ear, solid and infallible, such as the sight hath by a compass and rule, as he passed by a smith’s shop by a happy chance he heard the iron hammers striking on the anvil, and rendering sounds most consonant to one another in all combinations except one. He observed in them these three concords: the octave, the fifth and the fourth, but that which was between the fourth and the fifth he found to be a discord in itself, though otherwise useful for the making up of the greater of them, the fifth.[xix]

               As the legend continued, Pythagoras rushed home and started to experiment with the effects of playing different tones on a monochord, an instrument with only one string and a movable bridge that he invented. By comparing the effect of different pairs of pitches (tones) with the length of the string, he ended up with the amazing finding that those consonant intervals that he heard from the smith’s shop were actually created by string lengths of regular and simple proportions. Pythagoras was really excited about this discovery, for he believed it is one quality of perfection that God had created.
               Pythagoras’ discovery was actually quite simple when described as a physical phenomenon. Sound is pressure wave’s oscillation by nature, and each pitch has its specific frequency of vibration. For example, a modern concert A is understood as 440 Hz.[xx] What is amazing is that the consonant pitch pairs, or consonant intervals, are of frequencies of simple and regular proportion.[xxi] In the case of Pythagoras’ discoveries, an octave is two pitches with frequency proportion of 1:2, which means if the lower pitch is 440 Hz, the higher one would be 880 Hz. In the same manner, a (perfect) fifth would be 2:3, and a (perfect) forth would be 3:4. The more dissonant the interval is, the more complex (involves larger integers) the proportion would be.[xxii]
               This could be one of the most important discoveries in all the arts, for it implies that quite unexpectedly, such intuitive consciousness as tonal sense that we are arguably born with, can have an actual scientific basis instead of being pure subjective statement.[xxiii] In a micro level, this also means that musical intuition can be directly correlated with some basic proportions, which can be represented visually. Derived from these findings, the natural hypothesis would be that, if music is based on some regular proportional qualities, then it is possible that the same principle can be applied visually. This is the very reason that why many of the later studies on aural-visual relationships were based on proportional studies.
               Based on his own discovery, Pythagoras and his followers speculated that the entire universe was bounded by the same principle of harmony which music is an audible version of. They believed that this harmony was the imperceptible yet universal “music of the spheres.”[xxiv] However, this is yet far from actual application in built forms. What Pythagoras or the Pythagoreans did investigate was the golden section, one of the most applied proportions found in the surviving Ancient Greek structures.
               Golden section, also referred as golden mean or golden ratio, was one of the more investigated proportional studies throughout the history of architecture. There are numerous ways to obtain it graphically; the most direct definition of it is that if you want to square it, you just add 1, or in formula Phi2 = Phi + 1. The value you obtain will be two irrational numbers, either 1.6180339887… or 0.6180339887… . The reason for having two distinct possibilities is that the golden section is a proportion, and if we take its positive quantity to the power -1, we get its negative quantity 0.6180339887… . When this proportion is drawn out, we would obtain a rectangle. Close analysis of this rectangle revealed that if we attempt to trace the locus of a spiral bounded by this boundary, we will end up with one that resembles the natural growth pattern extensively observed in different organisms. As expected, the golden section was hence speculated as another natural proportion that belongs to the same universal harmony, or “music of the sphere.” It was adopted in Ancient Greek architecture,[xxv] which was passed on to Ancient Roman time and eventually to the Renaissance, when the following two treatises were written.
Roman scholar Vitruvius was the first one whose writings explored this issue in architectural context. In his treatise Ten Books on Architecture, he had devoted a whole chapter to introducing Ancient Greek’s finding on the proportional principle behind basic harmony.[xxvi] Interestingly, this chapter was following the one where he explained the rules of thumb in theater construction, in which he revealed the reason for mentioning this: the study of harmonic proportion was actually essential for theater building, for it acts as a set of mathematical guidelines that regulate such pragmatic issues as the size of the theater and acoustical concerns. Here he talked of the rules of placing “echeas” in the theaters, which were some kind of metallic sound vessels that was supposed to enhance sound effect. Although later studies suggested that echea may not necessarily have a positive effect in acoustics, Vitruvius did successfully apply musical principles in architecture. This means that the ancient Greek architectural technology that he described was probably the first who incorporated the principle systematically.
               Inspired by Vitruvius’ writings, Leon Bettista Alberti was another writer who wrote about the proportional factor. Alberti was an architect during the Renaissance time. By then the role of architects in society was much clearer defined than Vitruvius’ era, whose exact identity seemed to wander between an architect, a grammarian, or a stylist.[xxvii] Thus Alberti’s own version of The Ten Books on Architecture also appeared relatively specific. This is what he wrote on how visual aesthetics could be related to music:

               …Variety is without dispute a very great beauty in every thing, when it joins and brings together, in a regular manner, things different, but proportionable to each other; but it is rather shocking, if they are unsuitable and incoherent. For as in musick, when the base answers the treble, and the tenor agrees with both, there arises from that variety of sounds an harmonious and wonderful union of proportions which delights and enchants of senses; so the like happens in every thing else that strikes and pleases our fancy.[xxviii]

               As a matter of fact, both Vitruvius and Alberti in their Ten (or twenty in total) Books on Architecture did not mentioned the golden section at all. Vitruvius was more interested in musical harmony than purely visual one, and that idea was passed onto Alberti. Here I argue that such focus on proportional matters in music implies both Vitruvius and Alberti actually had a preference in music’s appeal: tonal harmony.[xxix] As we will see, writers of our time may have a better vocabulary in describing what exactly the delight of music is, yet modern writings on musical appeal already tend to appear vague and abstract. Considering the development of tonal harmony being still in early stage during both of the two scholars’ time, it is unrealistic to expect them to each have a more detail account on their experience. The most specific Alberti could get to about musical appeals was “proportion which delights and enchants of senses.” Vitruvius probably felt even less confident in describing the issue, telling from that he had completely stayed away from any experiential narration. His writings about music were entirely focused in pragmatic applications, specifically, theater construction. However, he had also mentioned “the architect should know music in order to have a grasp of canonical and mathematical relations.” It is possible that Vitruvius did pick up a certain kind of (tonal) stimulation from music that he could not explain, and it resembles the same intuitive consciousness he had in experiencing architecture. The only way he could demonstrate its existence was through pragmatic application, and that was exactly what he did. Similarly, Alberti could only use the word “proportion” to describe this unexplainable intuition, although there was much more that he may wanted to say.
               The important lesson we can learn from the studies of the golden sections is that, visual aesthetic proportional study in the above manners is, if not fruitless, not worthy for the time it was invested on. The major difference between harmonic proportion and golden section is that, the former is a scientific inference from human intuition, while the latter is merely an physical observation of nature. To put it simpler, harmonic proportion hits us directly without we noticing, while visual proportion requires deliberate analysis in order for we to perceive. Thus to apply musical harmony is simply to fulfill the natural human need for some unexplainable “sublime experience,” an act that needs no justification. To apply the golden section visually or spatially is, however, recreating a natural phenomenon in completely different forms. [xxx]  Although proportion is without doubt essential in visual arts of any sort, it does not come as natural or intuitive as the scholars assumed. Considering that Vitruvius’ application in placing echas was already based on a wrong assumption, as harmonic proportions has little to do with acoustics, his and Alberti’s studies on the topic would lead to nowhere they expected. Therefore, I believe when musical proportion is involved as relationship to visual art of different forms, harmonic proportion in particular should be handled with special caution in order not to create confusions, or not to create base on confusions.
Quite surprisingly, before this essay was written, Frank Lloyd Wright had already made a counterargument to the hypothesis above. More than once he made reference on the harmonic aspect of music when he was writing about an objective standard of architecture:

          There are laws of the Beautiful as immutable as the laws of elementary physics, and the work of art sifted by them and found wanting cannot be good for the growth of a soul, because all tendencies, either of form, line, or color, have a distinct significance…A discord is an expression, in a sense, an expression of the devil! But the sort of expression we seek is that of harmony, or the good otherwise know as the true, otherwise knows as the Beautiful, and it is folly to say that if the ear can distinguish a harmonious combination of sounds, the eye cannot distinguish a harmonious combination of forms and lines. For in the degree that the ear is sensitive to sound, it can appreciate the qualities of harmony in tones; and why in a larger degree should not the eye receive and appreciate the expression of harmonies in form, line, and color?
…But similar rules (to musical harmony) governing the expression of feeling more catholic and useful still, as expressed in pictures, buildings, and statuses, have scarcely been formulated and are still referred to as “matters of taste.”[xxxi]
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          Wright was writing this in response to the various problems in practice and architects’ attitude he witnessed in the architectural profession. Architecture’s affiliation with Musical harmony by then was an old cliché; what is interesting is that he had specifically attacked my notion of separating of harmonic and visual proportion. While I do agree to a certain extent on his disbelief of aesthetic judgments as purely based on subjective “tastes,” I believe he had underestimated the intensity of stimulation that musical harmony applies to human perception. It is possible that his sensitivity in visual proportion had reached such a sophisticated level that everything became completely intuitive to him; in other words, a “disproportional” object would be to him a natural eyesore in the same manner that a discord did to his hear. But if this was the case, then this intuition of his was not shared by many others, unlike that in musical harmony.
          In the beginning of this section I talked of “rhythmic proportion” in music, yet neither I nor any writers above have discussed about its possible relationship with architecture at all; the reason for this should be rather obvious by now. Temporal factor is unique to music; in other art forms time does not play such an essential role as it does in music. If pitch is illustrated on the x-axis on a graph, time would be on the y-axis. In this sense, to compare spatial proportion with harmonic one would be reducing the three dimensional data in an architectural construction into one single x-axis, or else the two would be incompatible. As I have shown above, due to the limitations of such reduction, studies of this sort had led to little success. On the other hand, to compare spatial proportion with rhythmic one would then be comparing the x-axis reduction of architecture to the y-axis of music. Even though this kind of comparison can be done on paper and in construction, it would make little sense to the audience or inhabitants, for it is an analogy of two unrelated and incompatible elements. Another way to relate musical rhythm to architecture requires reducing all three dimensions into the y-axis instead of x-, or to put it simpler, to introduce time factor in architecture and forcing it to become a sequential experience. This method is actually adapted by all of the examples presented in chapter 3, as well as my own construction. Although this was proven to promise partial success, such operation cannot be considered as a perfect solution, as it has added additional constrains to architecture that are otherwise foreign to it. This will be demonstrated later below.[xxxii]

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II. An Similarity in (Aesthetic) Nature

We know that proportion-based studies have their limitations in locating the music-architecture relationship. However, the majorities of the past writings on the issue, most of them written much closer to or during the modern time, did not take such objective and rigid factors as harmonic or rhythmic proportions into account. They avoided considering any “axis” in the two art forms at all and instead worked on an almost metaphysical level. The following studies, the earliest done in the early 19th century, all showed interests in music’s expressive power that lies in its abstract quality. Magdalena Dabrowski has once written about Vasily Kandinsky’s fascination about music’s emotional power:

               …music expresses itself through sound and time, it allows the listener a freedom of imagination, interpretation, and emotional response that is not based on the literal of the descriptive, but rather on the abstract quality that painting, still dependent on representing the visible world, could not provide.[xxxiii]

               A typical Romanticist born-late. Obviously, the new trend rooted deeply in the 19th post-enlightenment tradition or Romanticism, whose major aim was to attain the “unattainable” world of human emotion through music, a task that rational science could not achieve.[xxxiv] There were roughly two kinds of writings on this subject: the first tries to portray directly the nature of these abstract similarities in words, the second prefers illustrating it through colorful accounts of the writers’ own experiences. In this section we will first look at the former in order to get an overall picture of the core idea common in these writings. This will assist us in appreciating the groundwork of different writers’ own experiences that we are going to come across in then next section.
                Interestingly, before the true Romantic Movement took place, there were already traces of such kind of comparison. To be precise those were not comparisons, but they did give hints of this very relationship that we are looking for, and thus laid the groundwork for later studies. Living in the time of the Enlightenment, both Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant focused on rationalizing beauty or sublime in logical writings, instead of exploring aesthetics by making elaborated and personal descriptions, although quite often their notions were already subjective and biased enough.
Perhaps the boundless expressiveness of music was a little bit too much for Kant’s rational mind, telling from that he could only comment on music’s value as a “vehicle of poetry,” and that was the only reason that music was beautiful to him. He believed music as an art was incapable to provoke rationality and to really penetrates human mind, for “poets speak also to reason, musicians only to the senses.” [xxxv] He did, however, address that music possesses a certain kind of beauty that is based on its own pleasure, and made no particular distinction of this beauty to other kinds. [xxxvi]  Burke, on the other hand, attempted to cover a vast range of sublime and beautiful experiences, the latter related to pleasure while the former is independent of it.[xxxvii] After defining both of their general concepts, Burke move on to the descriptions of almost each kind of senses that he could imagined. Experience of architecture in particular was one that he had devoted longer passage on, resulting in a good set of parameters on spatial aesthetic experience, while the section on sound appears relatively short. Apparently, he may have faced the same problem that Kant faced, namely their inability to rationalize musical experience; still he tried to define the beauty of music as follow:

         … the beautiful of music will not bear that loudness and strength of sounds, which may be used to raise other passions; nor notes, which are shrill, or harsh, or deep; it agrees best with such as are clear, even, smooth, and weak.[xxxviii]

         Such selective sense of beauty may remind us of the emerging gallant style of his time. Indeed, Burke’s description seems to have less to do with harmony than melody, which was one distinctive character of the music of his time. The biggest importance of his writing, however, lies in what he wrote after the description of the affections of music:

          Let us parallel this with the softness, the winding surface, the unbroken continuance, the easy gradation of the beautiful in other things; and all the diversities of the several senses, with all their several affections, will rather help to throw lights from on another to finish one clear, consistent idea of the whole, than to obscure it by their intricacy.

          The relevance of Kant’s and Burke’s studies with my own is not very specific in this study, but it is important for us to see that they both showed no intention to distinguish the sublime or beauty of music among other stimulations. Kant simply mentioned it along with his discussion on the beauty of the arts in general. Conversely, Burke created separated entries for each kind of beauty and sublime. However these classifications were merely meant to served as a demonstration of the general collective idea of sublime and beauty, rather than actual classification of the idea. As Burke had stated himself, the beauty of music can be “paralleled” with other beauties. To our convenience, the example for music that he used in the book fits perfectly into his own description of architectural experience.
          Of course, 18th century aesthetics was more “pleasure aesthetics” than “expression aesthetics,[xxxix] and this was true for both Kant’s and Burke’s studies. Such narrow perspective naturally did not survive through the next century. A simplest musical example: Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, or the total work of art, had already provided an example of how music does not subordinate poetry the way Kant imagined.[xl] Eventually, even the Romantic ideal of expressiveness did not stand and was replaced by the vast range of trends in modernism, and so on. However in later part of this study, when we start to investigate different possibilities in actual translation between music and architecture, we will actually see that due to the primitive stage of development where the majority of contemporary architecture is still in, some 18th century notions in aesthetics will be very sufficient for us. At least just for the moment.[xli] In my own construction, Burke’s theory in particular will prove to serve as a rather powerful tool in assisting this particular attempt of translation.
          One of the earlier 19th century writings on the similarity by nature between music and architecture was Peter Legh’s The Music of the Eye (1831). Written as a book on the beauty of architecture through analysis of Vitruvius, the book conveys the same elitist undertone of considering architecture as “not within the reach of every illiterate mechanic” that Vitruvius once had.[xlii] This attitude was what brought him into writing about the connection:

          (architecture’s) pre-eminence is perhaps, however, most conspicuous in the circumstance of its being an art perfectly independent of any thing else; in its being, in fact, not an imitative art, but capable of affording us pleasure upon its own rational and fundamental principles: for thought (as will be shown in a future essay) imitation comprises a great part of the principles of its beauty, yet we cannot degrade it so far as to call it an imitative art; we cannot say of it, as we do of painting, poetry, and sculpture, that its resemblance to nature is the test of its perfection: in this respect it may be fairly said to have an excellence in common with music.[xliii]

         Legh was no serious theorist; his use of the term “imitative art” was oversimplified and loose, especially when applied on music. Right after the above paragraph, he confused his own argument by describing how music and architecture can imitate other ideas to a certain degree. Music for one can imitate different “passions,” namely different human voices or sounds of nature. In the same manner, Architecture can imitate various object like the way in which a Corinthian capital imitates natural vegetations. It is difficult to take this kind of examples seriously, yet Legh did hit an important point: both music and architecture in general are not imitative in the way that other forms of art are, which Legh considered as inferior to the two “noble” idioms. Note that this statement is not supposed to be completely precise, since it only applies to the general practices of compositions in both disciplines. Most of the 20th century musical and some architectural compositions have explored much wider possibilities in both forms of art than previously imagined. Hence Legh’s narrow definition of architectural and musical imitation was actually quite fragile. However as far as the elementary understandings in the two entities are concerned, Legh’s theory was sufficient in describing the relationship.

III. Experiential Similarities in Narrations

               Unlike the above rationalizations of the music-architecture relationship solely through investigations in their fundamental nature, most of the writers chose to incorporate another angle in their investigation. There are numerous evocative and even poetic writings on the similarity between the appeals of the two art forms. Some of them were written as part of treatises, but more were just reflective accounts of the writers’ personal experience. Obviously It is unnatural to “borrow” feeling from the writers and substitute it as our own, yet these writings may help solidifying our common emotions towards the two entities and put them in written expressions.
               Although probably overemphasized, visual appeal does compose an important part of the composite experience of architecture. Anyhow sensations like light, shadow, color, depth, and even material or texture are built up on infinite number of consecutive images one sees as she/he is experiencing a structure. Therefore it is useful to investigate the relationship between aural and two-dimensional visual stimulations, for such study can serves as a helpful starting point for in-depth study of relatively complex architectural experience. I have chosen two examples of such kind of comparison from both perspectives.
Frank Liebich was an active writer in the Musical Times during early 20th century. In a short article Sight and Sound: ‘Eye-Music,’ she made an eloquent description on the stimulation of vision in initiating musical inspiration. After mentioning that “all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music,” she suggested that often when one appreciates artworks by the Venetian School of painting, the look on her/his face would be the same as the look when one listens to music “in concert hall or the open-air.” To exemplify her idea, she raised specific examples of how the “beauty of phrase and cadence” merges with the “loveliness of Nature’s sight and sounds” in a musician’s mind:

         A florious view of the mountains of three northern counties, combined with sea, lake, river, wood, and fell, and distant moors seen from the windows of a poet’s hill-top home, sing to me certain phrases from both movements of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. The passages jostle one another in my head, for the waters utter one phrase, the mountain another, the foreground of woods and fells argues with other motifs, the beautiful violoncello phrases persist, till, finally, they disentangle themselves and sign to me demurely in right and proper sequence… Many a musician and music-lover must have experienced the same mingling of sights and sounds.[xliv]

          Liebich believed that composers like Mozart and Weber may have composed from visual inspirations, for example Weber was once recorded that “lines and from called forth melodies within him as sounds gave rise to harmonies.” At about the same time of Liebich’s, Kandinsky were equally fascinated by the idea of expressing musical experiences in painting, which was a reversed operation based on the same sentiment Liebich had. As mentioned in the previous section, Kandinsky held a 19th century view on music’s power, which in turn made him to believe that music is a superior art to painting due to its inherent abstract language.[xlv] This is a common romanticist’s attitude; what was uncommon was that it came from a 20th century painter.
          Kandinsky was especially interested in Aleksander Skryabin’s research on establishing a set of comparisons between tones in color and music, which Skryabin applied in his work Prométhée, le poème du feu (1908). What fascinated Kandinsky was the idea of having in music the equivalences of color and feeling in painting, an idea that was vaguely demonstrated by Liebich’s examples, although Liebich’s portrayal of graphical images was probably too specific for Kandinsky to apply in his own works. Note that the above two examples were both related to the musical impressionism. Liebich was a close friend of Debussy and had written the book Claude Debussy,[xlvi] while Kandinsky’s early writings showed a strong interest in Skryabin’s musical ideal—although his later works turned away from using a figurative idiom and adopted an expressive and abstract style, which reflected Schoenberg’s development in twelve-tone music. Kandinsky’s “Composition” series is sometimes considered as an intentional parallel to Schoenberg’s music.
          Liebich’s writing affirmed the perceptual similarity in musical and architectural experiences. Although she had not elaborated this experience onto theoretical level, it is indeed inspiring for artists to hear a vivid account from a musical perspective. On the other hand, Kandinsky had made relatively systematic studies by dissecting the two arts into fundamental elements, which made it a powerful tool for the direct translation of experiences from aural to visual art. However, unlike two-dimensional graphics, architectural experience is relatively composite. Kandinsky’s quest for aural-visual parallelism brought the two realms much closer than ever before. It could act as a firm stepping stone for crossing this river that divides architecture and music, but we still need to look at the matter from a “more architectural” perspective, in order to put his studies into application.
          Among various architectural treatises, Viollet-le-Duc’s was probably the first who explicitly describe architecture as a stimulus of human emotion, followed by attempts to understand it through various aesthetic experiences.

               The noise of the sea, the murmur of the wind, the rising or the setting of the sun, the aspect of a rugged declivity or of verdant meadows, darkness or light, awaken in the soul moral sensations and reveries which are independent of our material reality, and which we shall call poetical for want of a better word…it will be readily allowed that those thought which arose in your mind on the sea-shore can be recalled by the musician or the poet. The architect possesses the same power:--which may seem more remarkable still. The musician by his own peculiar language,--the harmony of sounds,-- recalls to your mind the grand spectacle of the sea…The architect also by means of his peculiar language can place you again under the influence of the same impression. If he traces beneath the sky a long horizontal line along which your eyes may range without interruption, your mind will be affected by a sense of grandeur,-- of calm,-- which will arouse in it ideas analogous to those caused by the sight of the sea.[xlvii]

               Viollet-le-Duc believed art is an instinct that diffuses itself through many channels. Artists of different types—orator, poet, musician, architecture, sculptor, and painter—all express this common emotion by their own familiar language. Although he did not intend to isolate music among other art forms, music may have given him stronger inspirations than the others, for he had specifically written:

               …why, in music, does the minor key awaken in the mind different ideas from the major? It may be said that there is a minor and a major in all the arts as also in the infinite details which constitute each of them severally.[xlviii]

               This innovative notion may appear a little bit naïve, but it shows that Viollet-le-Duc did have an understanding in how seemingly different idioms in art can express the same emotion. Such standpoint may reminds us of how Burke express the experiences of sublime and beauty by different senses, although Viollet-le-Duc did not investigate this topic any further than the narration above; instead he focused on how this idea can be applied on architecture.
               Through this assumption of the nature of architecture as a language of art, Viollet-le-Duc concluded that an architect should be able to experience a melody as lively as she/he does in viewing a building, or she/he would merely be a “practitioner” instead of an artist. Vitruvius had also expressed similar ideas when describing an architect’s ideal attribute, although he only explained the need of architect to know musical knowledge as having a tool to assist her/him in designing such structures as a theater. Compared to Vitruvius, Viollet-le-Duc had made a stronger case in explaining the reason for this special requirement concerning an architect’s attribute and education.
               Frank Lloyd Wright had also mentioned music frequently in his writings on architecture, as we have already seen one example above. Among all of the writers, he was the one who had shared the most intimate experience in this subject:

               …as a small boy, long after I had been put to bed, I sued to lie and listen to my father playing Beethoven—for whose music he had conceived a passion, playing far into the night. To my young mind it all spoke a language that stirred me strangely, and I’ve since learned it was the language, beyond all words, of the human heart.
               To me, architecture is just as much an affair of the human heart.[xlix]

               This, again, reminds us of those writings about an architect’s attribute in appreciating music, although Wright had not covered that topic explicitly. Apparently his understanding of music was limited to the “universal laws plus composer’s talent” formula, and in his writings he was just using music as an example for expressing his opinions on the architectural practice.
An interesting fact is that Wright had actually inadvertently joined the 19th century debate, for in his writing he had shown a preference towards absolute music over program music. The 19th century discourse mainly focused in the whether composers should deliberately incorporate external content in their music. This debate was then extended to the question of whether music should be depicted with words at all. Some composers, like Felix Mendelssohn, insisted that any external reference would be a contamination of music, for it would restrict music’s strength in expressing nonverbal emotions.[l] An idea further derived from this was that music should be considered devoid of contexts like historical background or composer’s intension.[li]Conversely, composers like Richard Wagner believed literal content like story plots would substantialize the rich but abstract music expressions. Wright seemed to be belonged to the former, for he believed that describing music with literature of any sort would be a curse to music—and he had even applied the same stance on architecture:

               Music may be for the architect ever and always a sympathetic friend whose counsels, precepts, and patterns even are available to him and from which he need not fear to draw. But the arts are today all cursed by literature; artists attempt to make literature even of music, usually of painting and sculpture and doubtless would of architecture also were the art not mentioned. But whenever it is done the soul of the thing dies and we have not art but something far less for which the true artist can have neither affection nor respect.[lii]

               It is fair to assume that Wright appreciated arts in their purest forms; in a way, he was an absolute architect.[liii] Wright did not spend much time dwelling on musical appeal and how exactly it resembled to him that of architecture. However, his ability in appreciating music independent of context may imply that, for an architect, he did possess a rather profound sensitivity in music, probably one that was actually beyond his own understanding. When dealing with this similarity in appeals, his resolution of proportional factors reminds us of those architects who clearly had the sensitivity for music but felt powerless in expressing it in architecture. (See above 2.B.I.) If, deliberately or unconsciously, Wright had designed his built works with the same sensitivity he had in music, the following narration would be a perfect example of how these works could be perceived in a musical perspective, and in turn to be expressed in music. In other words, it was a complete circle of translation.
               In the book Arcana: Musicians on Music, Myra Melford talked about her impression in architecture, and what impacts it had on her own compositional thinking.[liv] Like Frank Lloyd Wright, Melford started the passage by a recollection of her childhood experience; only that it was Wright’s house that she grew up in. She went on talked about her experience with the mosque La Mezquita in Cordoba, Spain:

               As soon as I entered I felt like a different person. All the distracting thoughts and chatter in my mind were suddenly stilled. The space was beautiful, quiet, and dark except for occasional shafts of dusty sunlight; and it was completely empty except for a forest of stone columns and arches which my guide book aptly described as a meditation in stone. This experience kindled an aspiration for me as a musician: to create an aural space, if you will, that is not only structurally and esthetically satisfying, but that also allows for the individual listener or player within it to have her own experience-an experience that perhaps leaves one feeling alone, but that brings one back to one's Self, that affirms one's deepest feelings or longings.

               In fact, Melford sensitivity in architecture could be stronger than many architects; her description of her own impression in the mosque can be compared to some of the most sophisticated treatise in the architectural discipline. May be this was the reason that she felt such a strong connection with Wright’s ideal. In her writings, she studied both the writings as well as built works of Wright, especially on the idea of “organic architecture”: building growing out of the site, out of materials that fit with the site, out of the function it needs to serve, without imposing a design. While inhabitants would sense the inner harmonies expressed by the visible form, they are not able to tell how the form was created.
               But Melford’s understanding of Wright did not end at these vague imageries. Through serious observations, Melford noticed the fluidity presents in Wright’s designs, where spaces are defined not only by walls but other parameters such as floor height or placement of furnitures. It was the quality of “free form” yet following some basic principles in Wright’s work that attracted Melford, and she believed it had a significant influence in her compositional practice later.
               As Melford pointed out, architecture inspired her metaphorically when she composed. Transferring the idea of working within a free form onto music, she chose to compose through by some basic principles that include certain standard forms, while at the same time she tried to maintain a balance by giving it a freedom in improvisation. Her understanding to Wright’s work assisted her in achieving the seemingly contradictory tendencies of improvising both within and without form, or to be freed from tonality and rhythm while playing within harmony and rhythmic feel. To exemplify her idea, she described the following counterexamples to her compositions:

               I once read that Picasso would intentionally take an initially pretty idea and work it over and over again to find something more substantial, and that Stravinsky had a penchant for a certain awkwardness in a work of art. The techniques to which Henry Threadgill introduced me gave me the tools to take what might be a pretty or conventional idea and develop it into something more compelling. The ear plays a crucial role in all of this.

               Wright had always stressed the balance between basic principles and intuition in his writings. His works often show a high level of respect in program (function), while maintaining a kind of delicateness that gives his works a warm and serene atmosphere, something that was occasionally absent in the works of his contemporaries. Obviously Melford was able to comprehend this particular touch from Wright’s work, and had applied it in her own compositions.[lv] She was fully aware of the appeal of architecture, but she did not attempt to analyze its nature. Instead, by applying the architect’s idea she was able to construct compositions that echo architecture at the deepest level. Perhaps it was Melford’s intuition as a composer that gave her the unusually lucid sensitivity in architecture.         
              Each of the above writings had its contribution in bringing the disciplines of music and architecture closer. By affirming the inherited relationship between music and architecture (as well as other art forms), Viollet-le-Duc had laid the path on which later artists could continue the quest for the relationship. Kandinsky’s and Liebich’s approaches intended to simulate in visual art the integrated musical experience in whole, involving both objective (form) and subjective/perceptive (content) factors in music. On the other hand, Wright and Melford had formed a genuine discourse between music and architecture, although slightly offset in time. Wright focused on some of the fundamental ideas in both composition and architectural design. Although he had no intention to perform any substantial translation from music to architecture, the traces of abstract musical ideals embedded in his built work was actually perceived and translated back to music by Melford. Her poetic approach involved comprehension of Wright’s fundamental ideals in design, which were independent of idioms, and in turn applying it back in music. It is possible that she was the one who had found what many architects including Wrights were aspiring for, namely the unexplainable similarity between musical and architectural appeals.
              Personal account of experience in musical and architectural affects is as important as analysis of their similarity in their metaphysical natures. During the conception of artworks, the above subjective or even sentimental writings may actually assist artists (designers or composers) better by suggesting countless possibilities in imagination and creation. These writings had bypassed direct analysis of the natures of the two arts, and instead they have decoded these natures with more delicate imageries that, unlike descriptions of abstract nature, are much easier for artist to comprehend.
Nevertheless, both the analytical writings in section II and experiential narrations in section III contribute heavily in breaking the difference of exactness between the two disciplines. By understanding architecture thorough music (or vice versa), these writers were able to soften the rigid standard that architecture is judged upon, thus giving architectural design a new chance. It also provides us with alternative ways to interpret and experience architecture, which perhaps was merely older ways that we have given up during the past century. Perhaps this is our chance to pick up our lost sensibilities.

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Notes

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[i] Alvert Camus, "Create Dangerously," in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 249-72.
[ii] Kasimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2003), 9.
[iii] Arved Ashby, "Schoenberg, Boulez, and Twelve-Tone Composition as "Ideal Type"," Journal of the American Musicological Society 54, no. 3 (2001): 586-87.
[iv] If we apply the same musical terminology in architecture, deconstruction can be considered as one of the first examples of “absolute architecture” or “formalist architecture”
[v] Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Lectures on Architecture, trans. Banjamin Bucknall, 2 vols., vol. 1 (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1987), 17-20.
[vi] The second part of the project is presented in the accompanying Design Studio 8: Portfolio.
[vii] Cornelia Szabo-Knotik, "Tradition as a Source of Progress : Liszt and Historicism," in Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe : Music as a Mirror of Religious, Political, Cultural, and Aesthetic Transformations : Proceedings of the International Conference Held at the Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, ed. Michael Saffle and Rossana Dalmonte (Hillsdale, N.Y.: Pendragon, 2003).
[viii] One of my most discouraging experiences in the architecture school happened during the design of a housing project, which in the beginning I decided to move away from the initial program and focused working on a painting that later served as the basic concept for the entire project. To my dismay, during a studio critique a professor told me that he did not believe the painting had anything to do with the project. In fact, during the several occasions when I felt blocked, the painting had helped me returning to my original vision. The painting certainly was not premeditated intensively in the manner of a “standard” studio design, but it was disappointing to witness such narrow vision in a professional.
[ix] Arthur J. Lidsky, "Why Hiring a Star Architect Isn't Always a Stellar Idea," The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 25 2005.
[x] Zaha Hadid won the Pritzker Architecture Prize of Hyatt Foundation in 2004.
[xi] For Zaha Hadid’s Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art which was (fortunately) actually built, its reviews range from “fun looking but impractical” to “completely disregarded the urban scale.’”
[xii] Richard Taruskin and Piero Weiss, eds., Music in the Western World: A History in Documents (Belmont CA: Schirmer, 1984), 41-45.
[xiii] For detailed analysis or interpretation of Sposalizio, refer to Elizabeth Way, "Raphael as a Musical Model: Liszt's Sposalizio," American Liszt Society Journal 39-40, no. 1996 (1996).
[xiv] Iannis Xenakis, Arts/Sciences: Alloys: The Thesis Defense of Iannis Xenakis before Olivier Messiaen, Michel Ragon, Olivier Ravault D'allonnes, Michel Serres, and Bernard Teyssèdre, trans. Sharon Kanach, Aesthetics in Music (New York, NY: Pendragon Press, 1985).
[xv] The problem is that to freeze music in imagination is essentially an act analogous to turning music into notation, thus removing a big chunk of (temporal) component that is fundamental to music’s nature.
[xvi] There had been suggestion of the possibility of achieving time travel through manipulation of accessible wormholes. Steven Hawkins argued that, if quantum mechanics is considered, time machine is not possible in the real world, for it is theoretically impossible for a wormhole to let matter pass through without it collapsing.
[xvii] Peter Legh, "The Music of the Eye: Essays on the Principles of the Beauty and Perfection of Architecture, as Founded on and Deduced from Reason and Analogy, and Adapted to What May Be Traced of the Ancient Theories of Taste, in the Three First Chapters of Vitruvius," Fowler Collection of Early Architectural Books ; Reel 30, No. 175 (London: W. Walker, 1831), viii.
[xviii] Taruskin 33-35
[xix] Taruskin and Weiss, eds., Music in the Western World: A History in Documents, 3-5.
[xx] The word “understood” here refers to that the frequency of concert A is commonly agreed definition; “A = 440 Hz” is not an inherited quality.
[xxi] Consider “consonant interval” as simply two tones that sound comfortable when played simultaneously.
[xxii] Modern music theory rejects perfect 4th interval as a consonance. Instead, major 3rd was adopted as one, which both Pythagoras and Vitruvius had overlooked.
[xxiii] Once again, whether we are actually born with tonal sense is a highly controversial topic. In the scope of this paper I am going to assume we are in most cases; since as far as most “inexperienced listeners” (as Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff put it) are concerned, we probably are.
[xxiv] Nicholas Cook, Music: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2000), 33-34.
[xxv] Parthenon at Acropolis, for example, was designed with both its façade and overall plan in golden section. Further analysis revealed that the proportion of the natural spiral was applied in some smaller details of the structure.
[xxvi] Pollio Vitruvius, Vitruvius : Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Engrid D. Rowland (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 66-67.
[xxvii] Ibid., v.
[xxviii] Leon Bettista Alberti, Ten Books on Architecture., ed. Joseph Rykwert, trans. Cosimo (Italian) Bartoli and James (English) Leoni, vol. 5, Tiranti Library (London: A. Tiranti, 1955), 14.
[xxix] In this essay I am applying the broadest possible definition for the term tonality, which stands for the systematic organization of pitch phenomena in both Western and non-Western music. Not to be confused with the common definition of tonality being the Western music tradition between 1600-1910.
[xxx] That is, given that harmonic proportion is an inherited human need. However, either way (inherited or acquired) tonal sense is definitely intuitive. A tonal dissonance and a visual proportional “dissonance,” if the latter actually exists, provoke totally different kinds of emotions or reactions in human perception.
[xxxi] Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings. Volume 1 1894-1930, ed. Bruce Brooks Pfeoffer, 4 vols., vol. 1, Frank Lloyd Wrights: Collected Writings (Rizzoli: New York), 41-42.
[xxxii] The underlying assumption of architecture lacking temporal elements here may sound oversimplified, but considering the fact that temporal factor in architecture—if any—is an applied quality, while it is inherited in the nature of music, we can at least claim that architecture is “relatively” lacking time factor when compared to music.
[xxxiii] Magdalena Dabrowski, Kandinsky Compositions (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1995), 19.
[xxxiv] In the beginning of the 19th century, music somewhat acted as a reaction towards the failure of the Enlightenment to enrich the human soul. The abstractness of music made it a good candidate for the task of crossing over from full rationality to the other realm of “unknowable,” i.e. human emotion.
[xxxv] Immanuel Kant, Analyic of the Beautiful. From the Critique of Judgment, with Excerpts from Anthropology from a Pragmatic Viewpoint (Second Book), trans. Walter Cerf (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1963).
[xxxvi] In his other writing, Critique of Judgment (1790), he did make a better account of musical charm than he did in the Enquiry; however his stance on music’s value remained the same.
[xxxvii] Here sublime can also be beautiful, although Burke did actually make very specific distinctions of the two. His argument on beauty was questionable to some (Kant, xviii). In the scope of this study it is quite sufficient, though not totally justified, to use the two terms rather loosely or interchangeable. I do plan to revisit this issue in future studies, however.
[xxxviii] Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. James T. Boulton (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1987), 122.
[xxxix] Kant, Analyic of the Beautiful. From the Critique of Judgment, with Excerpts from Anthropology from a Pragmatic Viewpoint (Second Book), viii.
[xl] Gesamtkunstwerk was a term Wagner used when he described his ideals in musical drama. Although virtually similar to opera, Gesamtkunstwerk was meant to have a much broader consideration for a wide spectrum of art forms, lead by (naturally) music.
[xli] Of course, this statement is rather subjective and is absolutely debatable. Here I am just saying from an observation of the general trend within the architectural profession (not discipline).
[xlii] Legh, "The Music of the Eye: Essays on the Principles of the Beauty and Perfection of Architecture, as Founded on and Deduced from Reason and Analogy, and Adapted to What May Be Traced of the Ancient Theories of Taste, in the Three First Chapters of Vitruvius," viii.
[xliii] Ibid., 2.
[xliv] Frank Liebich, "Sight and Sound: "Eye-Music"," The Musical Times 64, no. 963 (1923): 311.
[xlv] Dabrowski, Kandinsky Compositions, 19-22.
[xlvi] In this essay, “musical impressionism” is just a common notion. Whether Debussy and Skryabin are truly impressionists is a question that depends on the interpretations of both their works and the term impressionism itself. One common notion in the music discipline is that in music, timber corresponds to color in painting, while dynamic correspond to tonal variation (darkness). Such simple comparison can sounds seductive at first, but it was obviously based on a narrow understanding on both disciplines. After all, we cannot just dissect music and painting into such simple elements as the comparison had, and even if we can, there is little justification to support this exact parallelism.
[xlvii] Viollet-le-Duc, Lectures on Architecture, 18.
[xlviii] Ibid., 20.
[xlix] Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings. Volume 1 1894-1930, 311.
[l] Felix Mendelssohn, "An Exchange of Letters," in The Nineteenth Century, ed. Ruth A. Solie, Source Readings in Music History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998).
[li] Eduard Hanslick, "From Von Musikalisch-Schönen," in The Nineteenth Century, ed. Ruth A. Solie, Source Readings in Music History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998).
[lii] Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings. Volume 1 1894-1930, 95-96.
[liii] Throughout the course of this study, one question that keeps coming up was “what exactly is absolute architecture?” I believe this question existed throughout the history of architecture, although there was not much recorded discussion dedicated to it. Most of the time it is buried under the issue of “Should we design with cultural references (like all kind of Neoclassicism),” which is closely related to the quest of absolute architecture—but its focus was more on making actual design decisions. In terms of dealing with the abstract nature of architecture freed of pragmatic and some other common concerns, little has been said. Only that once we have started trying to seriously compare music with architecture, the urgency for an answer for this question arises, since suddenly we are forced to examine the universality of architecture, an issue that was much discussed in music but much neglected on the other side.
[liv] Myra Melford, "Aural Architecture: The Confluence of Freedom," in Arcana: Musicians on Music, ed. John Zorn (New York, NY: Granary Books, 2000).
[lv] This is just meant to be an elementary reading of Wright’s work. Please do not consider this as a direct (and superficial) comparison between Wrights and the rest of the modern movement, especially the International Styles. Nevertheless, the fact that many composers happen to find a strong familiarity in Wright’s aesthetic touch may have some significant implications on this issue.
[lvi] Wright used the word “maze” and “labyrinth” interchangeably in The Maze and the Warrior. He stated that in most Roman languages the only word for it was derived from the Latin term labyrinthus. The word maze appeared in the English language much later.
[lvii] Craig M. Wright, The Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture, Theology, and Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 1-2.
[lviii] Stephen Schloesser, "The Maze and the Warrior. Symbols in Architectrue, Theology, and Music.," Theological Studies, Inc. 64, no. 4 (2003).
[lix] Spiro Kostof, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 111.
[lx] Wright, The Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture, Theology, and Music, 9.
[lxi] A maze in bono refers to a protective, sheltering maze, while a maze in malo bears a demonic overtone that is relatively common in the maze theology. (Ibid., 255.)
[lxii] Ibid., 18.
[lxiii] Ibid., 45.
[lxiv] Ibid., 65.
[lxv] Steven Holl, Stretto House (New York, NY: The Monacelli Press, 1996), 6-9.
[lxvi] Paul Walker, "Stretto," in Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 30 July 1 2005). <http://www.grovemusic.com>
[lxvii] The exact wording Holl used to describe his design process was simply “A particular piece (Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste) of music was chosen.” He did not explicitly explain what exactly he chose the work for, however.
[lxviii] Take the sum any adjacent numbers n and n+1 from the Fabonacci series (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 etc.) and compared it with the sum of the next pair n+1 and n+2, we get closer and closer to the golden ratio. i.e. as n→∞, [(n)+(n+1)]:[(n+1)+(n+2)] →φ. Note that golden section is an irrational number and can never be reduced to a fraction.
[lxix] Ernö Lendvai and Alan Bush, Béla Bartók: An Analysis of His Music (London: Kahn & Averill, 1979), 29.
[lxx] Malcolm Gillies, "Masterworks (I): Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta," in The Bartók Companion, ed. Malcolm Gillies (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1993), 306.
[lxxi] Larry Joseph Solomon, "Symmetry Ass a Determinant of Musical Composition" (Dissertation, West Virginia University, 1973), 144.
[lxxii] An inversion is a compositional device that flips over a melody vertically, resulting in an inverted pitch series. Similar technique called retrograde inverts the melody horizontally, so that the whole tune is played backward. MSPC applied these devices extensively to cope with the core “mirror” idea of the piece. Paradoxically, in an article from the Progressive Architecture it appears that Steven Holl was aware of the actual concept of musical inversion in full. [Michael Benedickt, "Stretto and Style," Progressive Architecture 73, no. 11 (1992).]
[lxxiii] Brian Ferriby, "Harmony and Discord," Dimensions 5, no. Spring (1991): 77.