Music And Buildings, Building For Music

Until the advent of recorded music, it would have been self-evident that all music requires a space. The buildings that provided this space have been both modest and grand. Some were designed specifically for the enjoyment of music, while others were connected more with displays of earthly or religious power, to which music was an adjunct. This chapter discusses music and buildings to show how other social and aesthetic factors come into play. It also discusses the long relationship between music and architecture before exploring concert halls from two different viewpoints: as learning buildings and as obdurate buildings. So-called art music and its buildings thus became locked into a two-way relationship that proved to be quite obdurate. When new buildings were designed, they were tailored to the requirements of a fixed canon of musical works, while composers who wrote new music were confronted with a spatial apparatus rooted in a century-old tradition.