How Architecture Has Changed Music
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ย. 2021
- Architecture, art, and music all have had a close, intertwined relationship throughout history- and this is what this video will be exploring.
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Since a lot of ancient music was never written down, it can be quite hard to unpick the relationship ancient cultures had between music and architecture.
Music in Ancient Greece was often performed in amphitheatres. Amphitheatres were designed to be as echoey as possible while remaining open air- and this was ideal, as the structure of the building itself would amplify voices and instruments to even the furthest audience member.
Little is known about music in ancient egypt, but we can guess that performances would have taken place among the great structures that the ancient egyptians built. The pyramids were designed to lift pharaohs up to the position of gods, and I imagine the music would have had a similar function.
Churches and cathedrals, built all across Europe throughout the medieval period, were places filled with music. Catholicism dominated the cultural landscape, and defined the relationship the public had with music and art in general. The vast majority of common folk in the medieval period were completely illiterate- reading was just not a thing that most people needed, given that the majority of humans worked in farms, and it wouldn’t be until the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries when widespread literacy would begin to take hold. So the clergy, with its goal of spreading the good word of God and Jesus Christ, had to find another way to communicate their religion to the masses without the use of the written word- and the major way they did this was through architecture and music!
The catholic church did everything big- they constructed towering ornate, imposing cathedrals with giant, intricate glass windows to communicate the glory of god to the general public without anyone even having to enter the building. Every single square centimetre of the interiors of these cathedrals were covered in tapestries, frescoes and paintings- all depicting stories from the bible and the various good deeds of Jesus, the apostles, and all the saints. Architecture was there to dazzle and terrify you, and medieval church music, in a way, was designed to do the same thing. The plainchant, one of the many forms of medieval church music, was a very popular style that permeated cathedrals and churches all across Europe. Written for voice with no regards to tempo or time signature, plainchants meandered on for hours, echoing throughout the halls and chambers in a wash of grand, endless sound whose beginning and end would have been hard to locate.
The music was generally set to various lyrics in latin that no commoner of the day would have been able to understand, and this- coupled with the timeless, endless quality of the music, would have really created this feeling of insignificance and tiny-ness in the face of god's grand design.
Nowadays, concert spaces and performance halls are directly designed with sound in mind. The Philharmonie de Paris, one of the major concert halls in Paris, is constructed in an amphitheatre style, with the orchestra in the centre, deep at the bottom, with its music emanating and echoing upwards to the audience above. Everything inside and out is sleek and smooth- not only to fit with the contemporary style, but also to facilitate the easy propagation of sound waves.
The relationship architecture and music have goes beyond just a shared history, in fact a lot of the terms used to describe music- things like rhythm and harmony, are also used in architecture. Rhythm in music describes the way time is divided up through the use of repetition; rhythm in architecture describes the repetition of particular elements on a building’s facade- things like balconies, windows, shapes- anything really. Musical texture refers to how various lines and voices interact with one another to create layers of sound; texture in architecture refers to the physical qualities of materials and how their boundaries interact (rough to smooth, jagged or refined, simple or ornate). And harmony in music refers to how pitches relate to one another to create movement and dynamism; harmony in architecture refers to how all the elements of a building’s composition work together to create balance. It’s more than coincidence that these terms overlap between the disciplines.
Overall, music and architecture have had a very long, sisterly relationship throughout the ages, constantly inspiring and influencing one another, and the people and artists that live within and among them.
--Waltz of the Flowers (by Tchaikovsky) by Tchaikovsky
--Blue Danube (by Strauss) by Strauss
--Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (by Mozart) by Mozart
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Music provided by FreeMusic109 / freemusic109
Really good point, not cringey at all! It might explain why I love both music and architecture, I had never thought of finding a common point between the two, but it’s crystal clear now.
This video was amazing! Do you have any really good sources that talk more about this topic? I've been wanting to read and write about this topic because I find it just so interesting!
SHEEEEEEEEEESH great job as always
I love the idea of a hymn to Spaghetti Monster
Really good video. I notice a distinct lack of mentions of music from outside the western sphere and I would love to see more, such as gamelan which itself has I think quite a religious element to it.
Thats valid tbh thanks bruv