# Music and Architecture



## Forss (May 12, 2017)

Do you, like me, also sense a _deep_ connection between music and architecture? Music could be recognized as the pure expression of _will_ (metaphysics), and architecture, in like (Schopenhauerian) manner, as the pure expression of _representation_ (physics). This would certainly help shed light on Goethe's famous remark that "Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music."

Debussy's _Deux arabesques_, for instance, always makes me think of the beautiful mosaics of the _Alhambra_ in Granada, Andalusia; and the _Alhambra_, correspondingly, of the beautiful ornamentation of Debussy's _Deux arabesques_.

Do you agree or disagree, and are there any other compositions that makes you think of a particular building or architectural style, etc.?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Frank Lloyd Wright very much identified with the architecture of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony according to Ken Burns, who used the 9th as part of his soundtrack in his documentary of the great architect. Highly recommended. The architect’s sense of space within his structures reminds me of the underlying sense of silence with music.


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

Find that chamber music reminds me of being in a big room at an old "English Stately Home" with wooden panelled walls. Can imagine a quartet performing possibly Schubert!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

M


Forss said:


> Do you, like me, also sense a _deep_ connection between music and architecture?


Yes, apart from structure, both buildings and music are things which you immerse yourself in. Both music and architecture surround you. Furthermore both are art forms which are about space - either dividing spaces up in a building, or distributing performers and audience in space in a piece of music.

I don't understand Schopenhauer so I can't help you there.



Forss said:


> and are there any other compositions that makes you think of a particular building or architectural style, etc.?


The obvious examples are early and recent, which in itself is interesting I suppose. Everyone will think of the way that Monteverdi and the Gabrielis used cathedral architecture, or the way that Xenakis used Paris in his polytope of Cluny. All the polytopes are like this. Or the way Stockhausen and Boulez distribute audience and musicians in the recital space. Some installation artists are also very active in exploring music and architecture - Bruce Nauman is the obvious example.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Judith said:


> Find that chamber music reminds me of being in a big room at an old "English Stately Home" with wooden panelled walls. Can imagine a quartet performing possibly Schubert!


Great chandeliers on the walls with candles, I can see this..............


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

I agree with Goethe that 'architecture is frozen music'. As for music being 'liquid architecture', I'm not so sure.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Tallisman said:


> I agree with Goethe that 'architecture is frozen music'. As for music being 'liquid architecture', I'm not so sure.


I think Michael Flanders got it right when he described Donald Swann's music as defrosted architecture.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

To my crazy ears music can invoke architecture or more organic things like mountains of great trees.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

The aphorism ”Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music", variously attributed to Goethe, Schelling, and Schlegel (who likened Bach's polyphony to gothic architecture), was so widely disseminated throughout the salons of Europe that it attained the status of a cliché. Schopenhauer called it a cheeky joke ("keckes witzwort") and was skeptical about the analogy, owing to the nearly opposite positions of music and architecture with regard to the "Will" in his aesthetic theory. Some years later he quipped, "should one perhaps speak of ruins as a 'frozen cadenza?'".


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## jim prideaux (May 30, 2013)

the Kirche am Steinhof (architect Otto Wagner) outside Vienna is Mahler !.....

an example of what 'enthusiast' (two posts earlier) might be talking about.....he and I possibly sharing the same 'crazy ears' but it makes sense to me...


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

Xenakis incorporated architecture shapes in some of his first pieces didn't he? and I think he worked as an engineer for a famous architect earlier on too


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## Forss (May 12, 2017)

jim prideaux said:


> the Kirche am Steinhof (architect Otto Wagner) outside Vienna is Mahler !.....


The Kirche am Steinhof is strikingly beautiful, and it reminds one of the Wiener Secessionsgebäude of the same architectural movement. Mahler himself even conducted a short motif from Beethoven's _Symphony No. 9_ on the latter's opening.


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## jim prideaux (May 30, 2013)

Forss said:


> The Kirche am Steinhof is strikingly beautiful, and it reminds one of the Wiener Secessionsgebäude of the same architectural movement. Mahler himself even conducted a short motif from Beethoven's _Symphony No. 9_ on the latter's opening.


two years ago my son and I spent a summer's day there and it was remarkable.......I had originally visited it in the rain two years before but with the light, the position on the hill above the Steinhof hospital it has (in my mind and alongside the Postsparkasse) come to represent Vienna at a particularly beguiling stage in history......the musical representation of that atmosphere being Mahler!


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## Forss (May 12, 2017)

jim prideaux said:


> two years ago my son and I spent a summer's day there and it was remarkable.......I had originally visited it in the rain two years before but with the light, the position on the hill above the Steinhof hospital it has (in my mind and alongside the Postsparkasse) come to represent Vienna at a particularly beguiling stage in history......the musical representation of that atmosphere being Mahler!


This makes me so happy! To be able to share such a wonderful thing (i.e. aesthetic enjoyment _as an end in itself_) with one's own son or daughter must, really, be invaluable.


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## jim prideaux (May 30, 2013)

Forss said:


> This makes me so happy! To be able to share such a wonderful thing (i.e. aesthetic enjoyment _as an end in itself_) with one's own son or daughter must, really, be invaluable.


my son (who is a musician) recently pointed out that while he has forgotten things from his younger days one thing he has not forgotten is the day we visited Sibelius' house 'Ainola'....a similar happiness to the one you allude to!

Personally I have found myself searching for Art Nouveau/Jugendstil/National Romantic buildings in many central European cities.....Prague, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Helsinki. Riga and I am convinced that this goes hand in hand with my interest in the music of the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.......


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Forss said:


> Do you, like me, also sense a _deep_ connection between music and architecture? Music could be recognized as the pure expression of _will_ (metaphysics), and architecture, in like (Schopenhauerian) manner, as the pure expression of _representation_ (physics). This would certainly help shed light on Goethe's famous remark that "Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music."
> 
> Debussy's _Deux arabesques_, for instance, always makes me think of the beautiful mosaics of the _Alhambra_ in Granada, Andalusia; and the _Alhambra_, correspondingly, of the beautiful ornamentation of Debussy's _Deux arabesques_.
> 
> Do you agree or disagree, and are there any other compositions that makes you think of a particular building or architectural style, etc.?


I've opened a couple of similar threads in the past here about the similarities between music and architecture, and I'm often thinking about similarities between certain compositions and buildings or styles.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Larkenfield said:


> Frank Lloyd Wright very much identified with the architecture of Beethoven's 9th Symphony according to Ken Burns, who used the 9th as part of his soundtrack in his documentary of the great architect. Highly recommended. The architect's sense of space within his structures reminds me of the underlying sense of silence with music.


It's strange, Frank Lloyd Wright is probably my favorite artistic genius but I don't see any similarity between his works and Beethoven. The architecture of FLW is often very calming and relaxing in its connection to the ground (the choice of materials, the shape, the horizontal lines, the japanese influence) while Beethoven is powerful and big, sometimes even ugly like in the grosse fuge. 
Personally I think certain think of Wayne Shorter as something close in spirit to Wright. I could even make this same comparison before:


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Yes, I can envisage a correlation at times. Much of Webern's music especially brings to mind the geometric and functional aspects of _Bauhaus_ architecture and furniture.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Standing in front of the Nativity facade (_Gaudi's Sagrada Familia_) I can almost hear the angels singing & making music. Inside this cathedral the mighty architecture retains human measures because of the terracotta Christ and on the Passion side Mother Mary and on the Nativity side Stepfather Joseph. There is a wood of organ pipes in the choir, but does the architecture metaphorically sound like music? Yes, sure, but this architecture transcends all such metaphors as well. I can understand the _Gesamtkunstwerk_-aesthetics that strives towards total immersion. Architecture like the _Sagrada Familia_ immerses one totally. A Bruckner symphony does the same. Or a Wagner opera. Or ... you name it.


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## Donna Elvira (Nov 12, 2017)

Resphigi	Church Windows

Feldman	Rothko Chapel


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

The example that invariably comes up in music history classes is Dufay's motet _Nuper rosarum flores_, composed for the dedication of the Cathedral of Florence in 1436. It has been argued that the cathedral's proportions and other of its architectural features, like its double vaulted dome, are reflected in the structure of the motet. Then someone said it isn't the proportions of the Florence Cathedral, but the biblical Temple of Solomon that underlie the motet's structure. There is still apparently an ongoing debate.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)




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