# Concert Hall Design



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

We went to our big concert, with Emma Kirkby & Michael Chance & Norwich Baroque, in Norwich Cathedral, and we enjoyed ourselves, BUT the cathedral wasn't after all the ideal venue we'd expected.

*In its favour *-

*Lots of loos for the interval (the ladies' race to be first in the queue).

* Beautiful stonework, stained glass & artwork.

* Atmosphere & history - very suitable for the Stabat Mater(s).

*Downsides:*

* Poor acoustics. The ensemble sounded soft & a bit 'distant', and when Dame Emma was singing, I felt sorry for the people who were not, like us, sitting at the front.

* Poor sightlines. A lot of people were sitting in the side-aisles or near pillars & must have seen little.

* Dusty atmosphere. Taggart got a tickle in his throat in the middle of Michael Chance's rendition of Vivaldi's Stabat Mater, which meant we were both distracted with surreptitious swigs of water bottles, silent unwrapping of mints etc. A lady was taken out, violently sick, and we wondered if the poor air was a cause.

* Wooden chairs, with no cushions.

* You had to walk the length of the cloister to *reach* the loos!

*Despite this, it was a fab concert & NB, Dame Emma & Michael Chance were all wonderful.
*
I'm not posting this to grumble, but to prompt discussion about what makes a really good concert hall, and for what type of music. Have you any real examples of excellence? Or of its opposite. Where should the stage be? Should seats be tiered? Ventilation? Parking?

I'm just hoping to hear your views. Thanks in advance for any replies. And if not - thanks for reading this far! 
Live long & prosper.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Ingenue hasn't mentioned parking. We arrived reasonably early and got parked easily in a nearby (10 min + walk) and reasonably cheap car park. When we left, there were still spaces available so it would have been all right to have arrived a little later.

The staging was a little primitive - orchestra standing - little dais's for double bass and cello and for the soloists.










The harpsichordist has disappeared off to the side to play chamber organ.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

While it would not sell well at all, it is better in cathedrals if the musicians are all in the choir loft: this of course puts them behind the audience in the pews on the ground level with nothing to see, but offers (usually) much better conditions for the audience to hear clearly. (organ recitals, by dint of the location of the instrument, are as such.)

I saw a performance of Britten's Curlew River in Rockefeller Chapel, University of Chicago. The building is a 20th century Gothic cathedral built of stone. The musicians were playing from the altar area, and I opted to go up into the choir loft. The sound could not have been better.

I've found in less than perfect halls, often the uppermost gallery seats are where everything again comes clear and well balanced, the sound having enough time to travel and mix, coming up and through the hall.

Most Baroque pieces for the church were composed with the specific site in mind, the acoustics well-known to the composer. Dense polyphony can only go at a certain tempo before it turns, by cause of the longer decay times, to mush. The wise composer would set the tempo just so, and often the activity would thin or cease, allowing time for the sound to clear.

The physical trappings you listed are of course quite nice and they do have a psychological / sentimental effect, but I'd rather hear the concert you heard either in the appropriate church space for which it was composed, or a good concert hall.

I don't so much care for the idea of in-the-round seating in contemporary halls, but imagine if done right, there is no imbalance wherever you sit.

Older halls have columnar supports for the balconies; modern technology allows for large unsupported spans, no sight lines blocked, and creating none of those somewhat dirty secret sound pockets which some otherwise great halls suffer from.

Aesthetic ambiance of a hall can be quite something, but I will take the cleaner contemporary hall which is well-tweaked to the nth degree with its acoustics at the fore.

Just a few halls which are world famed for their fine acoustic:
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Auditorium Theater, Chicago, Illinois (architect, Louis Sullivan)
Teatro Colón, the main opera house in Buenos Aires


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

What an interesting & detailed reply, PetrB. Thank you! :tiphat:


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Okay, so it's me, Ingenue, Taggart, and PetrB online right now.... You know, wandering around the forum, commenting on/liking each others' posts....  

I agree with PetrB about the loft idea.... I recently went to see Ann Schein play a couple of Chopin's works. It was a small performance in quite a small hall, so there were quite a few empty seats. For the first half, I sat near the left middle. There was no orchestra that time, but deciding that I might get better sound from the loft, I sat there for the second half of the performance. The sound was much clearer there, so when I am able, I will sit up high when attending concerts and such.  

Well, good luck on finding your new seats! I hear there are numerous concerts going on in Britain year-round.... Yes, New York and Boston have several great concerts, but the UK outnumbers them.... Oh, Ingenue, Taggart, will you not take me with you to every single concert in the UK?!  Kidding, of course!,


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

mstar said:


> Okay, so it's me, Ingenue, Taggart, and PetrB online right now.... You know, wandering around the forum, commenting on/liking each others' posts....
> 
> I agree with PetrB about the loft idea.... I recently went to see Ann Schein play a couple of Chopin's works. It was a small performance in quite a small hall, so there were quite a few empty seats. For the first half, I sat near the left middle. There was no orchestra that time, but deciding that I might get better sound from the loft, I sat there for the second half of the performance. The sound was much clearer there, so when I am able, I will sit up high when attending concerts and such.
> 
> Well, good luck on finding your new seats! I hear there are numerous concerts going on in Britain year-round.... Yes, New York and Boston have several great concerts, but the UK outnumbers them.... Oh, Ingenue, Taggart, will you not take me with you to every single concert in the UK?!  Kidding, of course!,


Send this woman an airplane ticket RIGHT NOW!  Of course, I'd love to tag along, tour and culture glut along with y'all.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Send this woman an airplane ticket RIGHT NOW!  Of course, I'd love to tag along, tour and culture glut along with y'all.


YES! Yes, I second that, PetrB!!! The four of us attending every singe concert that we can, running from hall to hall all day, reluctant to set about to our own ways after a long night of some opera, but then meeting again and repeating the events of the previous day (with different concerts, of course, all the time!) over and over again, until we know every single concert there ever was in all of England!!!

(Okay, now you three know why I like Rachmaninov so much.... Some people call it being a dreamer, some people call it being a Romantic. I call it liking Rachmaninov.  )


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

Abravanel Hall is a great venue. Having been in both the audience and on the stage, it is a pleasure on both sides. One quibble is the lack of a center aisle. I hate crawling over people to get to my seat in the center. Even worse, I have having large butts in my face as people crawl over me to get out.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Growing up in Greater Boston, I was privileged to spend a lot of time in Symphony Hall, which is acknowledged worldwide for superb acoustics. It was built on the then traditional "shoebox" model with wide tall stage opening, narrow balconies rear and sides, lots of plaster, niches, scrollwork and statuary for sound diffusion, and relatively uncomfortable, thin leather-covered seats.

In the '60s, acoustics pretended to be a further advanced science than it was, and a lot of dreadful halls resulted (Avery Fischer (nee Philharmonic) Hall in NYC is just one such. They tried odd wider-than-deep halls which mostly didn't work, some surround halls, some of which worked (Berlin), subtle electronic resonance augmentation (Royal Festival Hall), and a lot of other things all over the map. The likelihood of an interesting hall having decent acoustics today is much higher then 30 years ago. 

That said, churches and cathedrals are often dreadful, because their central plans have more to do with tradition and worship than sound (why would a concerthall have a narthex?). We do owe the invention of the concerto grosso/concerto (and antiphonal music in general) to St. Mark's in Venice -- whose double choir lofts, above and to each side of the altar, encouraged composers to experiment with two forces having musical dialogues.

(Extraneous question: Do the "Bells of Norwich" refer to Norwich Cathedral?)

cheers -


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

GGluek said:


> Growing up in Greater Boston, I was privileged to spend a lot of time in Symphony Hall, which is acknowledged worldwide for superb acoustics. It was built on the then traditional "shoebox" model with wide tall stage opening, narrow balconies rear and sides, lots of plaster, niches, scrollwork and statuary for sound diffusion, and relatively uncomfortable, thin leather-covered seats.
> 
> In the '60s, acoustics pretended to be a further advanced science than it was, and a lot of dreadful halls resulted (Avery Fischer (nee Philharmonic) Hall in NYC is just one such. They tried odd wider-than-deep halls which mostly didn't work, some surround halls, some of which worked (Berlin), subtle electronic resonance augmentation (Royal Festival Hall), and a lot of other things all over the map. The likelihood of an interesting hall having decent acoustics today is much higher then 30 years ago.
> 
> ...


Well done, (and thank you I thought about St. Mark's and all that, but you have put it forth more than well. Here too, music written for this site, whether it is music by Giovanni Gabrieli or Igor Stravinsky (Canticum Sacrum),








the composers knew to leave enough time for the sound to travel, and to occasionally clear. You could say it is working the problem well, or taking advantage of a unique situation -- the acoustics taken into consideration and very much dictating / determining the nature of the musical activity.

Robert Moran's Requiem; Chant du Cygne, was composed for a cathedral with a similar floor plan, also with a long decay time. Four small orchestras, each with its own choir, placed at the four far points of its compass, are in play, both antiphonal and sometimes simultaneously overlapping. Similarly, none of the music is rapid, and there are stops in activity for travel and decay time, and to occasionally allow the sound to clear.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

This is great, amigos! Just got back on to the site after you-know-what & would love to 'like' all these posts, but can't at present till full service is restored. I feel very bereft.

Still - like-like-like-like-like-like-like-like.... 

Please take the one that was meant for you! 

18.52: Hurray, the 'like' function is back, so bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!
What fun!


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

GGluek said:


> (Extraneous question: Do the "Bells of Norwich" refer to Norwich Cathedral?)










Still worth saying.

Not entirely. Norwich was reputed to have a church for every Sunday in the year and a pub for every day in the year so church bells would be common. Given the lyrics of Sydney Carter's song, it may also refer to the tower of St Julian's church which was destroyed in the Second world war.

Thanks for all the lovely comments. Shame the like function isn't working.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Taggart said:


> ...a church for every Sunday in the year and a pub for every day in the year.


That sounds like a more than interesting confluence, making for ceaselessly drunk worshippers?


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

Of course churches and cathedrals are designed for optimal sound! Worship involves lots of music and spoken words, and the larger the church, the more ingenious the design had to be in a time before amplification. In fact the shoebox-shaped concert hall is an imitation of the cathedral. 

However, placement within the hall is important. Your musicians were sitting in the apse. Why I cannot imagine. The apse is designed for a priest to whisper in Latin to God. Much better to be in the choir loft or near the pulpit which is usually about where the transept is, well forward enough to allow the sound to come out from the front and fill the hall.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

For all the atmosphere they offer, I don't like churches for concert venues for all the reasons above.

The best I've seen so far is Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, though its more of a recital venue than a concert venue.

Clear, crisp sound.
Breathtaking, light-infused space.
Steeply teired seating.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

PetrB said:


> That sounds like a more than interesting confluence, making for ceaselessly drunk worshippers?


Trouble is, they used to shut the pubs on Sundays!



hreichgott said:


> Of course churches and cathedrals are designed for optimal sound! Worship involves lots of music and spoken words, and the larger the church, the more ingenious the design had to be in a time before amplification. In fact the shoebox-shaped concert hall is an imitation of the cathedral.
> 
> However, placement within the hall is important. Your musicians were sitting in the apse. Why I cannot imagine. The apse is designed for a priest to whisper in Latin to God. Much better to be in the choir loft or near the pulpit which is usually about where the transept is, well forward enough to allow the sound to come out from the front and fill the hall.


No it just looks like the apse - it's in the nave just forward of the rood screen and in fact its just about in the area of the transept. Norwich doesn't have a choir loft - it has a choir - behind the rood screen. I think this is a problem with all medieval cathedrals where all the action took place in the choir and round the high altar -they didn't have the sound lines of more modern - post 1500 - buildings.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Cavaradossi said:


> For all the atmosphere they offer, I don't like churches for concert venues for all the reasons above.
> 
> The best I've seen so far is Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, though its more of a recital venue than a concert venue.
> 
> ...


VERY NICE! -- now if there were only an unobstructed view of nothing but landscape and sky as seen through those windows.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

PetrB said:


> VERY NICE! -- now if there were only an unobstructed view of nothing but landscape and sky as seen through those windows.


That's actually a sunken garden behind the stage. Because of the steep angle, access to the stage is from the basement and you enter the seating area from the main floor. The window wall faces the CIM campus, which could be distracting with students going back and forth. I think access to the garden is restricted, at least during recitals. The landscaping has filled in a bit more since this photo was taken. It's nicely lit at night too.

Here's an exterior view, just as striking:


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

They've just put some more pics up on facebook. This one shows the view from the back:










Whereas from the front










Note the tomb which hindered people's entrances from that side.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

PetrB said:


> ....Just a few halls which are world famed for their fine acoustic:
> Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands
> Auditorium Theater, Chicago, Illinois (architect, Louis Sullivan)
> Teatro Colón, the main opera house in Buenos Aires


Ahem. Wiener Musikverein. Cleveland Severance Hall, Boston Symphony Hall.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Vaneyes said:


> Ahem. Wiener Musikverein. Cleveland Severance Hall, Boston Symphony Hall.


And local upstarts here -- Disney Hall, Soka Performing Arts Center... :tiphat:


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Taggart said:


> They've just put some more pics up on facebook. This one shows the view from the back:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I & T, thank you for your concert report/review. The venue is what it is. Cost and appearance usually prohibit churches/cathedrals from doing "acoustic repairs". I've seen some sparingly use clear plastic buffers, so as not to infringe too much on the aesthetics. Whether they do much good....

I do find *two problem areas that venue must improve upon.

*Purifying the air. This is not something to fool with. A safe healthy environment is number one.

Adding to what Petrb mentioned, a better plan for presenting the talent must be formulated. Namely, suitable platform and seating. Instruments above the soloists. Often, the altar can take care of most of this issue.

Thank you again. It's not often we receive such a thorough aftermath. :tiphat:


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

Another local building that has great acoustics is our state Capitol building. The interior has a three storey interior hall that is clad in marble. The reverb in there goes on forever. You haven't lived until you have played in a bagpipe band directly under the dome in the dead center of the building. The harmonics and echoes give an eerie playing a duet by yourself feel. A good sharp cut off will echo for ten seconds or more as the sound bounces around the hall and the side corridors and side galleries.


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