Antonello Cerrito_architecture and music

Table of contents

1

Sunrise and Sunset

AMPHION’S THEATRE

SEMPER, WAGNER AND THE BAYREUTH FESTSPIELHAUS 1_Among Dresden’s Barricades

2_Gottfried Semper, between art and naturalism 3_Theatre in Semper’s architecture 4_Richard Wagner: the dythirambic dramatist

2

5_Bayreuth Festspielhaus

INTERIOIR SOUNDS

MUSIC, PAINTING AND ARCHITECTURE: TRIALOGUE FROM ABSTRACTIONISM TO THE BAUHAUS 1_Abstractionism towards music.

2_Over the Ixtion’s wheel.

3_Pictorial counterpoints 4_Schoenberg and Kandinsky, art of dissonances 5_Mondrian and Music: painting first 6_Bauhaus: Republic of spirit

3

7_Kandinsky’s lectures at the Bauhaus

ALL WE ARE PYTHAGOREANS

LE COURBUSIER AND XENAKIS: FROM HARMONY TO THE ELECTRONIC JEST 1_Le Courbusier and music: first steps.

2_Music, or in other words harmony 3_Iannis Xenakis 4_Counvent saint Marie de la Tourette and the Pans de verre ondulatoires

4

5_Philips Pavillion in Bruxelles

SPACE IN MUSIC AND MUSIC IN SPACE

MUSICAL SPATIALIZATION AND CONSEQUENCES IN PIANO’S ARCHITECTURE 1_Piano and Berio: conversations 2_New music and its space 3_The seat of the I.R.C.A.M.: an acoustical factory 4_The stage set for “Prometeo”: spatial and musical instrument

Conclusion

Notes from the lecture

Sunrise and Sunset The Theorica Musicae by Gafurio, written in 1492, opens with an image on the title page of Tubalcain (biblical founder of music) assisting a number of blacksmiths hammering at anvils.

In an adjacent image, Pythagoras is seen tapping tunes on glasses and bells of differing heights and playing the flute with Filolao.

These two images are the perfect synthesis of one of the most influential aesthetic theories in history. Pythagoras was the first to discover a relationship between music and space, which led to the classical interpretation of harmony and its relationship to music and architecture.

The Greeks realized that the underlying structure behind musical beauty could be used to create beauty everywhere. Music was the proof of the existence of kosmos (universal order), as opposed to khaos (disorder) and proportion provided the rule structure for all arts. However, it was architecture which possessed the same physical possibilities as music. Structure versus gravity was likened to music versus noise. In fact, the Greeks became particularly interested in the application of musical proportion to an architectural creation.

This is illustrated by the erudite Greek engineer, M. Georgiades who proposed a 'musical reading' of the Parthenon in his book Harmony in Architectonic Composition, which describes the discovery of a 'symphony in marble' and marks the beginning of a relationship between music and architecture with proportion as their common chromosome. According to Greek theory, proportion is music.

By the time of Vitruvius, the idea of proportion as the embodiment of religious and theological perfection had begun to decline and be replaced and enriched by new elements linked to functional requirements. The key to proportion was no longer music but the example of mankind itself, seen as a perfectly measured machine.

Prior to the Renaissance, Agostino made a considerable contribution to the relationship

between music and architecture. He was the first to introduce new elements of rhythm and contrast to art and architecture which exploited the concept of counterpoint, the new polyphonic style that was born at the time. According to Agostino music is the perfect art form because it takes numbers as its essence and abstraction as its matter. Of all the arts, only architecture can reach the same level of perfection. Even though the nature of architecture is more physical and imperfect than music, its structure is likewise derived from numerical and proportional components.

During the Renaissance, classical ideas were exhumed in order to offer meaning and force to the new vision of universe and mankind. According to Wittkower, architecture in particular could be raised from the world of imperfect manual arts towards the quadrivium of mathematics (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) through musical inspiration.

He believed that the greatest innovation of the time was Palladio’s fugato, which introduced musical proportion into the architectonic articulation of spaces and the way in which different rooms with different dimensions were linked together in the same building. Moreover Wittkower's studies highlighted how the use of particular harmonic ratios demonstrated Palladio’s knowledge of Zarlino’s theory.

Palladio was however, an isolated case in an era where the relationship between music and architecture was an anachronistic expression of a past aesthetic point of view. A new mistrust had arisen from the proof that Vitruvius's thought was not always demonstrated during surveys of classical architecture. In addition, the use of the human model as a proportional tool was abandoned in favour of the vision of mankind as an integral part of a changeable moving universe.

Kepler’s theory of distancing earth and mankind from the centre of the universe, was much more revolutionary in art then we can imagine.

By the late Renaissance the idea of proportion in the modern sense of the word began to appear. Proportion became a tool for architects to respond to the functional needs of each building and the classical ratios of the Enlightenment and Vitruvius became just authoritative historical precedents that mankind would eventually forget.

Architects began to express the proportions of their art form through closer visual per-

ception rather than mathematical abstraction. Boullez was one of those who denied any parallel between music and architecture.

In short, by the beginning of the 19th Century this subtle link, the classical interpretation of proportion, which had bound together the two art forms for more than 2000 years, was finally broken.

Is it be possible to identify new links between music and architecture from a contemporary viewpoint?

This is the starting point for my research which aims to answer this question.

Conceptualizationm of Palladio’s “Fugato”. Conceptualization made by the author

1

AMPHION’S THEATRE

SEMPER, WAGNER AND THE BAYREUTH FESTSPIELHAUS “La vera arte è suprema libertà, è soltanto seprema libertà può esprimela dal suo seno” R.Wagner

« Quando in quel giorno di Maggio dell’anno 1872 fu posata la prima pietra

sull’altura di Bayreuth, sotto una pioggia torrenziale e un cielo ottenebrato, Wagner fece ritorno alla città con alcuni di noi; taceva e scrutava intanto a lungo dentro di sé con uno sguardo che non si potrebbe descrivere a parole. Cominciava in quel giorno il suo sessantesimo anno di vita: tutto quanto fino allora aveva fatto, era stato solo una preparazione per quel momento».

Bayreuth is and always will be Wagner’s theatre. His music is the only music

that may be played there and the theatre itself is the only place in which the real essence of that music can be wholly perceived. The Gesamtkunstwerk which he had desired for so long goes beyond the limits of stage and sound, becoming part of the space which contains it.

Wagner’s alliance with the architect Gottfried Semper was the final step towards

the conclusion of his vision. A dialogue arose between them which was even greater than the sum of two important and mature artistic visionaries.

In Münich they had already created something new but here in Bayreuth that

common vision finally assumed a built permanence.

Semper’s built works and theoretical ideas were as crucial to the the evolution of

architecture as those of Wagner were to the evolution of music.

However, before analysing the contribution they made to their respective artistic

spheres, we need to examine their thoughts within the context of the era in which they lived.

During the first half of the 19th Century Europe was involved in a series of

events which changed the social order and layout of the whole continent. Following the defeat of Napoleon in (data?), an attempt was made to resurrect the ancien regime with

the Bourbon Restoration. However, many liberals and democrats continued to support revolutionary ideas and the attempt to restore Europe was not at all easy with the new social changes in place.

In Germany the Restoration was particularly rigid and the idea of a new absolut-

ism prevented all the dreams of a democratic evolution.

At that time Wagner was a young professor at the engineering faculty of the

Academy of Fine Arts. When the 1848 revolutionary movement arrived in Dresden he was already a qualified architect.

In 1834 his essay Vorläufige Bemerkungen über bemalte Architectur und Plas-

tik bei den Alten (Preliminary Remarks on Polychrome Architecture and Sculpture in Antiquity) obtained a great academic debate while some of his built works such as the Hoftheater contributed to his fame.

In the meantime Wagner had written his first opera, Die Feen and Das Liebes-

verbot while working as a choir master at the Magdeburg and Konigsberg theatres. Later in Riga he wrote Rienzi while Der fliegende Hollander was completed in Paris between ’41 and ’43 before moving to Dresden.

Wagner and Semper met for the first time in Dresden and became friends,

joining a circle of intellectuals who were convinced that the future of art would be made possible by great social change. Some information about this circle can be found in Wagner’s autobiography ( My life). Moreover, it is also known that both artists became immediately involved in the political life of the city. We can assume, therefore, that Wagner and Semper, together with their friends, helped prepare the way for the revolutionary movements of ’49.

Indeed since 1848 the government had been forced to allow the creation of spe-

cial civil units to permit all the social groups to join the National Guard and Semper was a member of two of them.

“ When revolution arrived I couldn’t deny my Republican thoughts”. This was

Semper’s justification for what happened in ’49. For Wagner, on the other hand, the sound of the city bells had the same meaning as the Valmy cannon had for Goethe.

In Wagner’s autobiography we can find some interesting pages that bear witness to the

role of both artists in the revolution. In particular, there are some nice descriptions of Semper and his part in the erection of barricades in the city.

At the end of the revolutionary movement Semper and Wagner were forced to

escape from the city after a warrant was issued to arrest them as heads of the revolution. Semper went to London and Wagner to Zurich, their friendship divided by history.

However, Wagner himself would later intercede to grant his friend the position of professor in the Federal Hochshule.

Gottfried Semper, between art and Naturalism.

Social inspiration was one of the main aspects of Semper’s theory. In accor-

dance with the positivist thinking of the times, he was unable to imagine an art form that was not the cause and consequence of its social environment. Thus, like a lot of republicans, Semper used his aesthetic theories to justify his revolutionary ideas. Despite the failure of the revolutionary movements, the evolution of science and its naturalistic approach to the study of phenomena led to a general trust in progress as a consequence of technical and material evolution rather than spiritual progress.

Life and each of its phenomena are the consequences of natural laws. By famil-

iarising ourselves with them, we become more knowledgeable about the world itself and that is positivism.

Semper’s aesthetical thought can be synthesized into two different phases.

Since Dresda time until London life his attention was towards polychromic painting and social influence in the art evolution. After the revolution instead his attention addressed two new contents that would have been the main contents of his mature thought. These new contents were applied arts and the concept of functional and technical utility in the creation of the artistic shapes.

When in 1834 Preliminary Remarks on Polychrome Architecture and Sculpture

in Antiquity appeared It shocked the whole academic world. With his experiments indeed

He has demonstrate how architecture of the classical era was actual-

ly polychromatic and not pure and white as the world used to believe. But more than this revolutionary discovery what was really new in his essay was its civil and political contents. For the first time artistic operas were framed into their social environment as consequence of social world in which they was born. The work is not just the opera of an artist but it is consequence of all the Semper’s souls, the artist, the scientist, the republican here live together for the first time and that was the greatness and revolution of his thought.

Semper’s classicism is something new and different. From him Greek art is the

result of the social fight for freedom. The new art would have reached the same perfection just if around It there would have created the same condition of freedom and democracy.

When he arrived in London there He found a world completely different, ta world

that already since a century appeared going faster the Europe. Industrial revolution was the light that switched on the fir of England.

When in 1851 he was in charge for some of the pavilions of Great Exhibition he

saw the result of the modern industry for applied art. The exhibition expired his theory and some of his essays was collected into science, industry and art. In this opera he expressed his confidence toward the new industry. For him the result of the art if his age was not fault of the industry but depended on the lack of ability of modern artist that couldn’t use all the power of industry yet.

Since this moment Semper started to think about a revolution in art in which the

new possibility offered by industry could create new form for new materials. This was the main theme of his most famous theoretical work, the style, in which he managed to apply the theory of fundamental kind in the artistic field.

This was the idea of Courier and the other naturalists of his age according to

which all natural shapes of animals and plants were just the variation of an original fundamental kind. Like nature, art creates shape and the rule of this creation has to be the same of nature. So in art there should have been some fundamental shape and understanding the artistic process means try to trace the path of its evolution in time.

According to Semper in architecture fundamental kinds are temple, church,

theatre etc… here external forces are involved in their transformation and the nature of these forces is not only geographic, social and climatic anymore but there are other forces coming from personal and technical need.

The question Semper tries to answer to is where these fundamental kinds come

from. According to Vitruvio these kinds come from the nature and their laws are their own stylistic lows of eurhythmics symmetry and proportion. But Semper is too artist to close art in a simple naturalism. He think that if is true that nature expires art is also true that there is the finality wanted by the artist and his personal need.

So original kind come from the nature but his evolution is based of his social

and technical need that the element have to follow in the human world.

Theatre in Semper’s architecture

In the XIX century a theatre wasn’t just a functional place for music but He had

an important social meaning as the main bourgeois institution and expression of its new power.

In Semper’s time the classical theatre was the “all’italiana” theatre and its

characteristic were the horseshoe plan and the overlying order of sits. The origin of this kind was the first half of ‘700 when the theatre as courtier event evolved into an entrepreneurial organization. The rent for the aristocratic stages indeed guaranteed money for the whole opera season. In this way theatre used to have a clear hierarchic structure with the richer families to the top and the poorer classes in stalls.

Like its structure, also the way in which opera was represented was different

from the modern idea of classical show. As social event, the opera was just one of the elements in these evenings. Beethoven created a new approach to classical music that evolved from the social entertainment to an aesthetical event that needed to be followed with attention in order to understand all its meaning. It is the modern approach to musical art that the modern theatre has to respect.

Italian theatre wasn’t sufficient anymore in order to guaranteed the new need

of music. Opposite to it some architects such as Shinkel and Gilly and some actors and

musicians such as Tiek and Wagner himself, started to think about a new structure for this building. Among all the option the general idea was reached by them was a return to the classical structure of theatre with the stage in the centre and the semicircle of the auditorium around it. Over the technical need here there is obviously a social and political meaning. Classical theatre indeed is one of the symbol of Greece as democratic high and at the same time music and art is the tool with which is possible reaching not the social order but the mankind as one unique class.

In this debate Semper architecture was one of the main contribute towards the

reaching of a new kind of theatre. Since his first project of the Dresda hoftheater indeed we already can find all the elements of his revolutionary approach. Here for the first time the architect managed to apply an auditorium in semicircle order that artists and intellectuals had already demanded, but more than that the great revolution was the choice of conserving outside the same conformation of the new auditorium, without mask or any kind of coating.

Some of the revolutionary ideas of Semper weren’t applied. It is know that at the end the choice of the semicircle was discarded in favour of a more traditional Italian auditorium. Anyway Dresda theatre in its first conformation was something really new in in it we can already find all the elements of the next works.

Later In England when He was in charge for the project of one of the courts

in the new Crystal Palace in Sydenham he thought about an Odèon ou Halle Musical that could be placed in the centre of the building. About this project there are just some sketches and descriptions. From those we know that Pompei theatres and the classical theatres would have inspired the project but we don’t know if this was a choice of the architect or coming from the commission.

When He arrived in Zurich he was involved in the project of a theatre for Rio de

Janeiro. Here some of the ideas of the Dresda theatre were proposed again such as the semicircle auditorium. But in the new project there are some original elements that would have been important for the evolution of his thought and above all for the conception of Bayreuth theatre.

Here he proposed indeed an exterior that like in Dresda was the boundary of

the internal articulation and about that He designed a central exedra that highlighted this connection with the interior. But above all the great innovation was the choice of a rectangular volume over the stage covered by a pitched roof. In this way he created two independent elements between auditorium and stage and the result was something really new, a new model of theatre as an evolution of the neoclassical thought.

We have to think about the Monaco theatre, the prototype of the following

Bayreuth festspielhaus, as the result of all these reflection and the evolution of the same social, aesthetical and political idea that was the leitmotiv of all his life. Here his ideas was increased by Wagner’s force and the new need of his music. For the first time the musician and the architect indeed found the freedom necessary in order to express all their vision thanks to their patron Ludovic II of Bavaria.

RICHARD WAGNER: the dithyrambic dramatist.

Like Semper also Wagner’s theoretical aesthetic was inspired by the social and

political ideas of their author. Indeed the main theoretical works were created in the time just following the revolution of’48. Like Semper and other artists and intellectuals of his time also Wagner used to believe that future of art has to be connected with the future of society.

In his first works, art and revolution and the artwork of the future he also thought

about the need of a new music for a new society and in the conception of a new word, like Semper, he started watching behind towards the ancient Greece. While Semper used for his theory the example of the classical architecture, Wagner thought about the classical drama and his symbol. In both their theory the ancient Greece is the perfection but this perfection came from the social and cultural level of Greek people. “Art is supreme freedom, and just supreme freedom can express her” .

So the main common element between the musician and the architect was the

Greek theatre. While Semper used his architectonic model for the conception of a new kind of building as the result of new functional and philosophical need, the musician thought about the drama as the gesankustwerk ( the total artwork) and the classical

architectonic model as the worthy container of It.

Like Semper Wagner arrive to the conclusion of a need of a new architectonic

model for theatres in which can be possible the execution of a new gesankunstwerk.

Obviously the new total artwork would have been his opera and his music.

It is possible that the architect and musician used to influence each other during

their life in Dresda and It is not difficult to find other common elements between their visions. Similar is for example their ideas about the contemporary fashion. Different is their approach, philosophical the one of the musician and scientific and naturalistic the other.

BAYREUTH FESTSPIELHAUS

About the Wagner’s theatre in Münich, the composer had thought about a tem-

porary theatre while Ludovic the king wanted a sumptuous theatre for his court. For this reason, Semper design two different project one that should have been placed in the glass palace built in Monaco in 1854 and the other next to the bridge of Isar bridge.

The first one was not approved so in 1866 the architect started working on the

second one. Here the scale was much more monumental even if a lot of characteristic of this project were the same of the first one but introduced in a more ambitious idea. In general, the project resumed some of the choices of the theatre designed by the same architect for Rio de Janeiro during the Zurich time but with some original elements.

Following Semper’s style the exterior traced the shape of the semicircle auditori-

um and like for Rio de Janeiro here as well there is an exedra on the top of that.

The main element in which is possible to trace a clear collaboration between the

architect and the musician is the auditorium in its internal structure.

The structure is the one of a Greek theatre with ascending seats. The choice

had as we know a political and conceptual meaning; but while in the Greek theatre the seats used to extend to the edges assuming a semicircle shape, here wasn’t possible because of orchestra. “ since It is not now the chorus in the almost entirely enclosed orchestra which forms in the chief object of view, but the scenic stage, only presented to the Greek audience as a projecting surface, but used by us in its full depth” .

Like Wagner had already explained in other essays the first need was the

orchestra occultation considered as an intrusion between the audience and the stage.

About that:

“ I have explained in my essay on Beethoven the reason why, through the power

exerted over our emotions by noble performances of ideally perfect musical works, the evil I have denounced might be rendered unnoticeable, as though the sight itself were neutralized. But in a dramatic performance, on the contrary, the very matter in point is to make the sight fully take in picture; an effect which can only be brought about by entirely freeing the vision from the observation of any intervening sense of reality, such as is inevitable when the technical apparatus for producing the picture is obtruded”

For the same reason they need to exclude the possibility of the private seats

through the lateral edges like Italian theatres because from there the audience would have had the perfect prospective of the orchestra. So, in order to create this effect was conceived the mystic golf that is one of the main characteristic of this theatre.

It is a kind of pit in an arc shape between the stage and the auditorium in which

is placed the orchestra which is partly covered by the stage its self. In this way the only thing we see from the auditorium is a curved barrier painted black like the other walls and floors of the golf in order to avoid lights reflection from the scores of musicians.

In these choices is easy to understand the Wagner’s contribute like musician

and orchestra conductor. The terraced structure and the jutting stage have a straight technical motivation. Under the stage indeed had to be placed the brasses while strings in the open part ahead; in this way the sound of orchestra was more muffled allowing the perfect understanding of lyrics sang.

The choice of the mystic golf produced also an important architectonic effect;

with the two portals of the stage, it seems to turn away the scene from the audience.

The other problem they had to solve was about the lateral walls of the audi-

torium, here indeed the lack of boxes had created some walls that were like “ a bare surface which refused to harmonize with the ascending tiers of sittings “. Besides these walls created with the portal of the stage two disturbing corner that had to be solved.

Here is the architect jest. In order to solve the problem of the corner he decided

to create a third portal bigger than the previous ones, with a column for each edge and a door between it and the second portal. Then in order to solve the problem of the lateral walls he decided to repeat this portal for the whole length of the walls at decreasing intervals and width. In this way was possible also to hide the various enters of the auditorium.

The result was: “ a new relation between the spectator and the scenic tableau

works. On taking his set, the spectator straightaway finds that he is in a theatron indeed; simply a place where one my witness a spectacle, and witness straight with his eyes.

Between himself and the spectacle there stands nothing that is clearly perceptible; only between the two proscenium the skill og the architect has produced certain indefinable effect of distance, which causes the tableau o retreat from the spectator, as in a dream; meanwhile, the music, as it comes forth like a spirit voice from “mystic golf”, or like the vapour rising from the sacred bosom of Earth beneath he tripod of the Pythia, induces in him that spiritualized state of clairvoyance wherein the scenic representation becomes the perfect image of real life” .

Over the visual appearance, the theatre result perfectly acoustically conceived.

We have already explained some of the characteristics of the mystic golf. Besides the curved walls of it, have the result of addressing the sound towards the scene its self, allowing a perfect fusion between stage and sound.

Also the whole auditorium is made of wood like the sounding board of a violin

while the portals along the walls create some kind of sound traps in which the sound lapses with a series of reflection avoiding disturbing echo effects.

In regards to the exterior he doesn’t reach the same monumental and elegant

image reached by Semper in the previous theatres for Münich. Here the architect Otto Brückwald hasn’t managed to link the two different volumes of stage and auditorium that seem like two different building, the first technical and complex the second one like a kind of covered court that try to host the audience in the best possible conditions.

In conclusion the collaboration between Semper and Wagner and a new idea

of musical spectacle create at Bayreuth create something really new as a new kind of theatre model that would have been followed in the future in a lot of cases. The Grous-

se Schauspeilhaus of Berlin ( 1919) by Poelzig, the theatre of Werkbund Ausstellung in Colonia ( 1914 ) and the theatre of the Paris exposition ( 1925 ) are all evolution of the main element created at Bayreuth.

Here “ Architecture itself had to acquire a new significance under the inspiration

of the Genius of Music, and that myth of Amphion building the walls of Thebes by the notes of his lyre has yet a meaning “

Comparative chronology. Elaboration by the author.

Model “all’italiana” theatre

Model greek theatre.

Model Semper’s theatre

2

INTERIOR SOUNDS

MUSIC, PAINTING AND ARCHITECTURE: TRIALOGUE FROM ABSTRACTIONISM TO THE BAUHAUS «Invidiavo i musicisti i quali possono fare arte senza il bisogno di raccontare qualcosa» Henri Matisse

In 1906, after twenty years from his death, Wagner was a monument of culture and his influence was not just in music but also in any kind of artistic expression. More than all his idea of Gesankunstewerk, his total artwork found in the following generation a great success.

A common sign of the artistic movement of ‘900 was indeed the dream of a

new kind of dialogue among the arts; poets, sculptors, painters, architects and musicians were not divided by the borders of their respective field. They were these borders them self that had to be broken towards a unique artistic movement able to involve the whole humanity.

«Deepening an art means to establish its limits, while confronting with the others

means to highlight the same interior tension. Each art has its own irreplaceable forces.

We will arrive to join all these forces. From this unity it will be born the true monumental art».

Writers, painters, moviemakers, architects, used to sign manifests of this time and a lot of them used to be involved in different arts at the same time; among musician they started writing their own librettos like Wagner while tor all the artists was necessary try to support their idea with solid theoretical foundations.

Richard Wagner had expressed everything the avant-gardes of ‘900 were trying

to reach: revolution, dialogue among the different arts, thought, will … his figure could be denigrated or hailed but for sure He could not be ignored.

Anyway, in the first twenty years of ‘900, there was a process of respective

inspiration among different arts.

Particularly It is well known the dialogue between architecture and painting and how cubism and abstractionism had influenced modern architecture. But a deep link there

was also between painting and music as an important element for the conception of abstractionism its self.

Here I would like to propose an indirect dialogue between music and architecture with paining in the middle: music inspires painting, painting inspires architecture in that melting pot from which it was rising modern architecture.

Abstractionism towards music Premise to the abstractionism were the new aesthetical reflection inspired by the theosophical art proposed by the EinfĂźblung and the Reine Sichtbarkeit.

Very important were the theatrical innovation that contributed to the spreading in Europe of the symbolist doctrine and also the orientation towards the geometrical symbolism of many theoretical works of this time.

Linked to this trend there was also a revival of the Pythagorean doctrine that had an important role in the abstractionism codification.

Abstractionism was involved in the development of the symbolist thought as straight consequence of the German expressionism and Franch cubism. From the first one it came a non-geometrical Abstractionism whose father was Kandinsky, from the second one a pure geometrical abstractionism coming from Mondrian’s example.

Its main purpose was the liberation of painting from the naturalist reference and the codification of a new pictorial language as straight expression of its author’s sensibility through the tools of colour and shape.

It was a complete revolution in the field of the traditional fine arts that should have been made free from their representative content.

Some historians think that this trend can be explained as a kind of removal from the certainties of science towards a higher knowledge of the spiritual word through the poetical inspiration.

There was an art that before every one was expression of this liberation, it was absolute music.

Over the Ixtion’s wheel

Since the half of the ‘700 the success of the instrumental music created the need of a discussion about the categorization in the musical field. Before vocal music was just the one to be considered among the fine arts of the tradition. Instrumental music indeed was considered just a tool of the voice.

The success of the absolute music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven had leaded to the need of considering it an independent art. The problem was the It was necessary to reconsider the secular concept according to which the fine arts were just the ones of the representation; like vocal music that have the voice in order to have a representational content through the words.

The first who tried to fix this problem was Kant with his concept of formalism. In his work critic of aesthetical judgment he explain that the judgment of beauty is an accord between ratio and imagination. Towards then together we can reach knowledge.

Artworks are made by two main characteristic: formal beauty and representation. Music doesn’t have representational content so It expresses just formal beauty and the pleasure that we perceive is just a physical pleasure caused by the acoustical wave in air.

In conclusion according to Kant absolute music can not be considered as a fine arts because if it has form it messes a content.

Kant’s limit was to consider musical form just in its physical aspect. If form is the main content of music indeed the physical one is not the only form that music expresses.

Hanslick was one the first to consider music as an independent language. According to him music is like an arabesque, an artwork in movement but the difference is that music has its rules and its logic different from the ones of science and history. Music like a panting has a content but its content can’t be express in words or images.

According to Hanslick absolute music is an independent language but without a meaning It is like a language without its semantic content, like a language made just by its grammatical cages.

Schopenhauer had already highlighted the uniqueness of music considering it the only art that can express the cosmic will. According to Schopenhauer art is the only tool

through which it is possible make free us self from the Ixion’s wheel of our existence.

Thanks to art we can be free from the principles of cause and effect, meaning and action, premise and conclusion, space and time.

Music is different because representing nothing it has not with the real world any king of contact. In its freedom, music can express what is over the ideas word its self: the cosmic will that moves everything.

In an easy way this is the same meaning given to music by abstractionists. Music for them was the only art that can lead people in a state of pure perfection made of the beauty of the absolute structure.

Pleasure that is possible to have from music is something similar to Socratic passage from a state of pain to a state of absence of pain. « absolute music has overshadowed all the other art, as among the arts of occidental tradition the pure abstract art überhaupt » .

We can use the same example used by P. Kivy in his Philosophy of music. In order to explain the abstract content of music he speaks about three people, we can imagine their names are Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo.

Aldo is a panting lover but while he likes shapes and colours of renaissance paintings he can not understand what they represent.

Giovanni instead is a poetry lover, especially he likes German poets, but while he loves the sound of the language and poems he can not speak German so He can not understand the meaning of this poems.

Finally Giacomo is a music lover but while he likes the sound of some instrument the beauty of a symphony he doesn’t know any philosophical meaning of that music.

According to Keavy, among them, Aldo and Giovanni are the only ones seeming strange.

Well, if we want to continue using Kivy’s Metaphor abstractionism tried to fix this strangeness of Aldo and Giovanni by creating for their art a new independent language lacking any kind of contact with the real word and his representation.

Pictorial counterpoints

Already Delacroix in his thoughts about painting about his art used to speak about the power of arousing emotions through a particular colours and shapes dispositions. He called this power music in the painting, that can be perceived when we are far from the painting and we can’t understand what it really represent.

Like Delacroix also Gaugin and Matisse later have spoken about a relationship between music and painting.

While music was governed by the rules of counterpoint and form for painting were necessary some rules that needed to be created ex novo; so abstractionists and symbolists before, started to look for these rules and firstly the found there in those Pythagorean and Platonic theories from which music as well was codified.

Geometry reread in its symbolic and mathematical aspects, was considered the equivalent of acoustic for music.

Kandinsky like his predecessors and the other first abstractionist use to thing about music like the superior art. For him music with its freedom could perfectly express the interior world of the artist without without the need of representation of the physical world.

From this point Kandinsky starts his own research towards the codification for painting of a grammatical language made of rhythm and contrast like the musical one. It was a school of pictorial composition based on the elements of shape and colour.

Synthetically this pictorial composition conceived by Kandinsky was made of two counterpoints: the graphic counterpoint based on possibilities offered by shapes and the chromatic one based on colour and its variations.

Between these counterpoints, there was the principle of interior need governing them.

According to Kandinsky this interior principle had to be considered as the result that each artist as artist have to express his art, as son of his age express his world and as creator express his self.

Feeling is the principle of art and a grammatical language can help to express it.

Schönberg and Kandinsky, art of dissonances.

What can be perceived by studying the idea of pictorial counterpoints of Kandinsky is a typical trend towards the idea of contrast.

If we want to fully understand this concept was the artist’s idea of music its self.

According to Kandinsky, music of his age can not be that of Mozart or Bach anymore.

We can listen to this music and we can feel a sense of nostalgia or peace from the chaotic word around us. Music has instead to express this chaos, has to express the complexity of the new human spirit. New harmony is contrast and contradiction and for painting as well artist has to look for colours and independent lines.

The music that Kandinsky has in his mind was Schönberg’s music and the twelve-tone revolution.

We have the possibility to explain his idea of the new music through one of his paintings. In his famous Impression III he describes the emotion of being involved in a Schönberg’s concert. In this painting there is an idea of music express by the tool of painting and in my opinion has a great important in the theme of my essay.

In the painting, there is just a piano and his auditorium but both the figures are just rapid sign on the canvas. The game is between the sonority of yellow and the pause of black.

The idea behind the painting is the violence of musical revolution and It is express by the violence of the painting abstract revolution its self.

Since the beginning in the intellectual world some affinities between the two artists were highlighted. Particularly there was a relationship between their respective way of conceiving art as a revolution. And if there was something really new in Schönberg music the same new experience proposed from his music could be found among Kandinsky’s colours.

Anyway, before meeting, between then there already was a deep respect inspired by their mutual friends.

Tanks to the great number of letters it is possible to rebuild the steps of their friendship.

At the beginning, he was Kandinsky who tried to contact the painter as one of his fan.

Kandinsky used to think about his music as the perfect musical expression of what He was trying to introduce with his art.

We have to say that they were both musician and painters. While Kandinsky could play violoncello and he had been studying music since he was a child, ScĂśnberg used to paint as well.

So between them it is possible to find a great personal affinity. And that was in my opinion the reason of their great friendship.

They were both going towards the same goal even if by walking on different path.

About their theoretical works It is known the great influence that the Manual of Harmony by the musician had on Kandinsky’s mind. They both were looking, in the same time, for a way by which codifying their conviction in the field of their mutual arts.

Mondrian and Music: painting first.

The main difference between Mondrian and Kandinsky was the idea the first one refused for his art any kind of symbolist content. He thought about a pure abstract art that had to be impersonal and universal. His abstractionism was born as a progressive simplification of the natural shape until the absolute planar geometrical structure.

If for Kandinsky at the origin of his art there was feeling for Mondrian this origin was ratio and plastic control. In this vision, as a perfect synthesis of rational control architecture should be considered as the supreme art, but at the origin of everything there was painting that first of all the others had expressed the plastic abstractionism.

According to Mondrian by refusing any idea of form music should be inspired by the neoplastic revolution introduced in painting. Music in SchĂśnberg still had the same idea of form behind the revolutionary harmony.

Traditional sounds themselves were made of form and the acoustical wave of their structure is a limit for their expression. According to the neoplastic revolution music had to thing about a different idea of sound coming from new musical instrument.

Like in picture between colours and no-colours, in music had to be introduced the differ-

ence between sounds and no-sounds. By abolishing the idea of pause music had to be conceived as a continue event flowing through time like plastic elements in the space of the new architecture.

BAUHAUS: republic of spirit.

Buhaus can be considered as synthesis of all the avant-garde movements of the first quart of 20th century. It can be considered as one of the best trial towards the concept of a stylistic union among all the arts.

From these confluence of ideas would have been born a new poetic expression.

The first impression of the Bauhaus was not different from the other new school

of art. The difference was the target toward the achieving of the Bau, the building, the collective architectonic opera.

ÂŤ We are a cooperation of artisans without distinction of class. All together we

conceive and create the new building of the future made of architecture sculpture and painting. It will be built by the hands of million od workers as the symbol of crystal of a new faith Âť .

For this reason, the school had a new didactic structure in which student were

introduced to different sectors of the art and the final building was conceived as a result of a long series of successive steps.

The general idea was to habit the student with the idea of a general concept of

art and a dialogue among all its practical expression.

There was the necessity to involve professors open to this collaboration and

among them Kandinsky was the perfect representative idea of the philosophy introduced by the school.

We had to thing about the school as a community in which art wasn’t just the

result the life style its self. Professor and student used to live together and their collaboration used to continues over the lectures during everyday life.

During the courses there were shows and concerts in which the students had

the possibility to apply their artistic achievement. Theatre as well as music were the field in which it was possible to experience the new artist ideas introduced by the school.

The theatre its self was one of the main contents of Kandinsky’s philosophy. In

his essays, He used to speak about a new idea of theatre as an abstract synthesis of his monumental artwork. Here in the Bauhaus he had the possibility to express this idea with his preparation of Mussorgsky’s pictures at an Exhibition.

The general orientation offered by the school to its students was the idea of the

harmony in his philosophical and practical content. The idea was to habit students to the harmonic expression so music and painting were the tool towards this education through the structures of sound and shape.

Through the school students had the possibility to be educated not just in the

active part of the artistic creation but in the passive part as well: the moment in which perception and sensation had to power to inspire the artwork its self. The culture offered to the student was not just a wealth of experience but the possibility to really perceive the experience of being in this world.

In this idea of education music had the possibility to express its ancient power.

The art was conceived as the perfect tool through which educating student toward the hearing of their perception.

Gertrud Grunow’s lectures were the perfect synthesis of the importance of music

in the revolutionary educational idea introduced by the school.

Gertrud Grunow was one of the Itten’s assistants, she had elaborated a new

teaching approach according which each human being has inside himself a natural equilibrium made by sensation, sounds and colour which could be evocated through special exercise of concentration and movement.

During her course called by Schlemmer “ theory of harmony” she used to asso-

ciate one of the sphere of her chromatical circle with a particular body part and sound, then she asked their student to meditate about the connection between that particular sound plaid at the piano and the relative colour. By introducing some dance rhythm their students were also encouraged on expressing themselves. The reason of this kind of

approach was to lead the students towards the deep knowledge of their selves and their sensation in order to allow them to the real voice of sensorial inspiration.

This experimental approach introduced by Itten and Grunow had a great success during the first years of the school. Great importance indeed was given to their lectures introduced as the great innovation of the didactical method.

Kandinsky himself was influenced by these lectures. For his course, indeed he

introduced a kind of experiments that were very closed to the Grunow’s approach. He tried to focus his attention on the chromatical ratios in order to demonstrate the existence of a hide harmony in the colour as well as in music.

In summary It is possible to trace a thin line in the whole didactical organization

in the Bauhaus. That line was the concept of harmony extended towards all the arts.

Gropius used to speak about a counterpoint among the arts towards the result in architecture of a new idea of spatial composition based on the musical method. That was the final point of this part of my research: the architectural spatial composition as the result of the evolution of musical theory through the research in the field of painting.

While this idea was just introduced by Gropius the one who was able to best

articulate the consequences and applications of this revolutionary way to interpreter the architectural space was just a painter: Kandinsky again.

Kandinsky’s lectures at the Bauhaus

Kandinsky arrived in Weimar in 1922 from Russia. During the first month of the war He was on the Costanza’s Lake where He has finished his work: Point and Line to Plane.

The work was published as a new opera in the Bauhaus Bücher and It represented the completion of the Spiritual in the art edited in 1910.

With this opera Kandisky wanted to complete the creation of a science of the art through with the artist could reach the absolute freedom of expression. The work tried to introduce a method of research through which it was possible reach the codification of this science.

According to its theory art should have been analysing in its fundamental elements. Each of these elements indeed had an interior sound, some kind of unique skills. If we know these elements and their properties we can create art as a composition of them.

Actually was the same concept already introduced in the spiritual of art, but while in this opera the elements considered by Kandinsky were the colours, here he involves in his research also points, lines and surfaces as elements of each shape in art. Let’s try to summarize Kandinsky’s analysis of these elements.

First of all we have the point. It is the fundamental element and if we want to understand it we need to analyse it over his normal contest.

The isolated point indeed, according to Kandinsy, has concentric tension, stability and It tends to fixate on the surface. Its “ fundamental sound” is completed by other secondary skill such as its shape, dimension and position. Thanks to them it is possible reach all the possible artistic effects that could be emphasized by the method of eccentricity, repetition and rhythm.

One of the main characteristic of Kandinsky’s opera is the way in which the artist involved in his research different field from the painting. According to his theory, indeed fundamental elements have the some power in all the field in which they are applied.

In sculpture and architecture the point is the result of the interstation among the planes, but also the element in which corners have their conclusion and planes their beginning.

In regards to architecture, in the Gothic structures for example, some peaks accentuate points at the same way in which in Chinese architecture they are used some curved lined in order to accentuate the rhythm of the roofs.

The points have the same characteristic that in music has the percussive trend; in the piano for example each melody is made by the succession of a series of points.

In regards to the line Kandinsky explains that It is the result of one or more forces applied to a point that push it towards a particular direction. Horizontal, vertical and oblique line are the result of one force while broken lines of two or more forces.

Each of this kinds of line had a specific skill and nature. For example the horizontal line is to Kandinsky expression of coldness as well as the vertical one expression of heat.

Broken lines express conflict and drama opposite the equilibrium of straight lines.

Line has more power than points, because of their temporal content. According to Kandinsky indeed length is expression of time. In order to explain this concept the artist uses once again music and its melodic lines also if here the ratio between space and time has more freedom. Surfaces line much more thick, so they have the same properties considered for lines.

At last the is the plane. It is neutral but at the same time he own a particular resonance coming from the line that constitute it. These lines indess have a major or minor resistance towards the tension the centre of the plane.

Kandinsky has been professor at the Bauhaus from 1922 to 1933 as artist master in the course of wall decoration of the glass. Fortunately a great documentation allow us to have a pretty good idea about his lectures, his subjects, his theoretical approach, and the exercises given to his students.

Kandinsky used to start his course firstly by showing the main principles of abstract after a series of lectures based on the history of art. After this theoretical introduction there was a free painting course, in which the students had to study some operas from the past with a new kind of approach based on the analysis of fundamental elements: point, line and plane.

It is well known from the documents that we have how Kandinsky used to refuse the idea of painting as a decorative tool. So the question is, what could be the role of painting in a school of architecture? « Se le dimensioni della porta sono determinate dalla sua funzione, e così la sua superficie della parete, perché la proporzione è sbagliata? Perché per funzione si intendono esigenze esteriori (ad esempio finestre che garantiscano la massima luminosità, porta abbastanza larga da consentire una possibilità ottimale di movimento, contenuto d’aria nel locale ecc.), mentre non viene considerata l’azione psicologica » .

Kandinsky gives to the painting a sort of psychological action.This action is the effect that shape has in our mind and cold not be neglected by architects.

To sum up, Kandinsky think that the functionalist axiom: max utility = ideal shape was

incomplete because architecture talk to the interior side of our soul, over functionality architects have to stimulate spirit.

According to Kandinsky in architecture we don’t perceive proportion ( this could be only perceived through numbers and drawings ), conversely in a building we perceive tension among the elements that constitute it. We fell the tension among walls, ceilings and floors, as well as among a room, stairs, doors and windows … According to Kandisky buildings are rhythmic, and its rhythm affects our perception.

To me in this idea there is the most important Kandinsky’s contribute to architecture, and from our point of view it is the perfect synthesis on what I have been trying to express in this chapter.

From music Kandinsky and the other abstractionists had borrowed a new way of conceiving their arts towards the codification of a new language. Tension and contrast had begun the new principle in art and if this tension could be recognised in each artistic expression the Kandinsky’s method applied to painting could also be extended to architecture.

Anyway, to make this possible, architecture, as well as painting before, had to be brought back to its “interior sounds”, its fundamental elements. By controlling these elements it was possible to govern its rhythm, common denominator among music, painting and architecture.

Delacroix, freedom leading the people. Elaboration of the authour. The right side is out of focus in order to show the chromatical harmony according to Delacroix’ theory.

W. Kansinky. Spiritual in art.

W. Kandinsky. Impression III ( concert ).

Scheme of the education program at the Bauhaus.

Docents of the Bauhaus. Photo of 1920.

Colo One of the Getrude Grunow’s student during the exercise of renspiration.

Oskar Sklemmer. Costoums for a ballet at the Bauhaus.

Walter Gropius. Total theatre.

3

ALL WE ARE PHYTAGOREANS

LE CORBUSIER AND XENAKIS: FROM HARMONY TO THE ELECTRONIC JEST “L’orecchio può “vedere” le proporzioni. Si può “ascoltare” la musica della proporzione visuale” Le Corbusier

i Le Corbusier and Music: first steps

Le Corbusier was born in a family of musician. It is well known indeed how his mother was a pianist and a music teacher as well as his brother who has been a quite famous musical critic in Paris.

Anyway music have had an important influence on the education of the young

architect.

Emile Jaques_Dalcroze was his brother’s music teacher but it is not difficult to

demonstrate how his theories have affected Le Corbusier him self.

Dalcroze’s theories were focused on the concept of Rhythm as the main ele-

ment not only in music but in the whole nature as well. Rhythm was also considered as the source of the spatial creation through the Euclidean geometry.

Besides, it is well known how Dalcroze’s theories have found a direct architec-

tonic expression through Adolphe Appia’s work. He has designed for Dalcroze a series of projects and sets called Rhythmic Spaces and based on elementary shapes, straight lines and lights. In this works, the artist has tried to reach a body scale coming from the position in movement and rest. So instead of traditional sets with painted background and fake decorations, he proposed a new ideas of sets based on simplicity. Here Light had a fundamental role by creating movement among the static figures of the space. The whole set was conceived as a unique rhythmic jest.

It easy to notice how these theories were very closed to what the Purist move-

ment was trying to introduce in art. In fact several articles were inspired by this debate.

At the same time It is known how great part of the early Le Corbusier’s aesthetic

was affected by Valery’s philosophy. The philosopher used to say that among all the arts just music and architecture can reach the purpose of completely involving humankind

inside the artistic experience itself. Architecture and music in fact give the possibility to the audience to be part of the art work by moving and living inside it.

To Valery architecture and music were the perfect tools through which leading

humankind towards the universe because of number expressed in these two artistic expressions as sensorial geometry.

Music or in other words Harmony.

Le Corbusier used to define himself as a musician who doesn’t know notes. He meant a particular musical quality not musical specifically. That quality was Harmony considered in his ancient and classical meaning but interpreted by Le Corbusier with new and need and contents.

To Le Corbusier music was firstly number and math according to the classical

theories of Leibniz and Rameau, but mostly music was a direct expression of Harmony.

It sounds like a return to the classical theory of proportion and in fact in some

essay Le Corbusier used to regret the times in which architecture was the result of a rational coded process.

However, starting from this classical background, Le Corbusier went towards a

new concept of Harmony as a result of years of reasoning.

In 1931 Le Corbusier was involved in the project of the Soviet Palace in Mos-

cow. The project provided six halls of different size, but more interesting was the studios conducted by the architect for the main one.

Here, in order to guarantee a perfect acoustic and visibility the architect arrived

to the concept of that acoustic hallow that, as he used to explain, it was expression of pure maths and the key of the pure harmony. In fact, thanks to its final shape and its technical innovations, the hall was conceived as a perfect acoustic machine in which each spectator could be reached by the same amount of sound. Math had been the tool through which it was possible to reach this result.

This project actually is fundamental in order to explain Le Corbusier’s idea of

Harmony. About this project in fact the architect used to speak about a personal experience in Venice, when once he had attended a concert in a campiello. Le Courbusier used to say how this experience was important for its architecture because of the concept that it inspired in the architec’ts mind. After this concert Le Corbusier said he understood the secret of some places in which reside a kind of visual acoustic or mathematical consonance.

In other words, the architect came to the conclusion that if in a project every-

thing is in the right place it is possible to create a kind of consonance closed to that of the sounds. That was the tool through which it was possible to dominate the proportion and of the main hall of the soviet palace despite its dimensions.

Later, about the project of Rochamp Chapel, he used to speak about an

“acoustic phenomenon in the shape dominion” in which physics and maths had to be the source of the formal and volumetric animation. In addition, the natural elements of Rochamp had to be considered as interpreter of the same silent symphony as well as the splayed openings were a kind of sounding boards for the light. The results was a new lyricism that as well as the musical one was the product of mathematical combination.

About the Rochamp Chapel I would like to quote the interesting interpretation

made by Amedeo Petrilli.

It is quite famous a drawing of the chapel in which its plan is overlying to the

scheme of the combined tones by Reiner Plomb. In this diagram these tones are represented by a series of squares crossed by their diagonals and their respective intersection on the plane.

The same geometric construction could be considered as a composition of

curved volumes ruled by straight generating lines and the same scheme on which the plan of the chapel was drown.

According to this interpretation the chapel would be a sort of “ environmental

ear” in line with the four acoustic horizons. In other words the architectonic shape of the chapel could be considered as the plastic compliance of its landscape.

This research towards a combination between shape and math would have been

one of the main aspect of the architect’s aesthetic. The purpose was to try to reach in architecture the same equilibrium and flexibility of the musical phenomenon. The result of this long path of research wold have been the conception of the Modulor as an instrument of a new architectonic composition.

About the nature of its instrument and the need from which it comes, we can

find all the necessary information in the introduction of the first volume.

Here about music the architect explain how this art unlike the other has creat-

ed an its own language that has allowed the musical phenomenon to be transmissible across the time.

In order to arrive to this result the whole musical phenomenon was decom-

posed into its few main elements: the notes. In this way despite the fact that the musical phenomenon was inscribed in rigid rules the its language guaranteed to the composer a great and varied richness of expression.

According to Le Corbusier, architecture and the others visual art had always had

a lack of a proper language, and that was the reason because music could be considered up to the others.

The Modulor would have been the instrument through which trying to proportion

all the elements of a new architectonic language.

From this point of you the architect’s philosophy is not far away from the previ-

ous research made by Kandinsky. Anyway here the theory is developed by and architect with a technical knowledge about the creative process n architecture. The result is a language that bring back human and its scale in the centre of the spatial process over a classical attention to numbers and their philosophical nature.

To sum up, Le Corbusier as well as Kandinsky before him, was trying to in-

troduce in architecture a new system of composition; like Kandinsky he conceived the idea of reducing architecture in few fundamental elements as well as the seven notes in music or the ten figures in math.

Nevertheless, at the top of the creative process have to be the artist percep-

tion, but, while Kanidnsky used to thing about just a visual perception, the architect here

introduce his idea of “ visual acoustics” according to a pure functionalism. His Harmony becomes the result of the equilibrium among proportion, optics and function.

Iannis Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis arrived in the Le Corbusier’s studio in Rue de Sèvres 35 in

1947. Before that time he hadn’t had anykind of practical experience in architecture as well as his knowledge if the musical field was limited to the lectures which he had had in Athene.

What it is interesting is that this complex artist in the mean time reached his

complete education in both music and architecture. The result was a mutual inspiration between the two arts towards a true revolutionary thought.

In 1962 he wrote that a composer have to be a pioneer and he is obliged

of questioning everything. That was its attitude towards both architecture and music throughout his entire career.

Actually the whole musical world of the first post-war period was in a condition

of continuing revolution. In less than ten years musician had assisted to the to the rise of twelve-tones music, and then integral serialism, and then aleatory music, timbralismo, happening, neo_Dadaist collages etc… the new music was by now a range of expression from the noice to the silence without a difference between art and reality.

For sure, the young engineer found in the Le Corbusier’s atelier a perfect world

in which express its dual nature. The Studio its self was inspired by a multidisciplinary approach to the matter of art. But what it was the main common element between Le Corbusier and Xenakis was the number ant the mathematical thought. To Xenakis each kind of art as well as each intellectual activity was an expression of a mathematical process and in the name of this aspect each of them have to be conducted towards a path of research and experimentation.

The mathematical thought of Xenakis goes over the pure and abstract numeric

expression; he arrives to the new boundaries of physics and its new orientation towards

the concepts of case and indeterminism. By following this path of research he arrived to the introduction of its stochastic music, one of the most important contribute in the field of the musical avant-garde in the first post-war period.

Nevertheless, more important than this introduction, it was his new concept of

musical space that had a great influence in both music and architecture.

About his first experience in the Le Corbusier’s atelier we have a quite good

knowledge of his activity thanks to the witness that he has left us.

In general the experience allowed him to really understand the creative process

in architecture by confronting it with the musical one that it was the developing in the same years.

Xenakis’ witness about the topic of my essay was the first and the only witness

made by an architect and a musician that used to confront these two arts not form the top but from the button of

their respective creative processes.

He noticed that for both the arts it could be possible to talk about a work form

the global towards the detail. In fact, as well as musicians learn the art of developing their musical speech from a single phrase, architects can apply the same process by deporting from the morphology of the site, the program, the project and its materials.

Nevertheless, in both the arts sometimes it is necessary an opposite process

from the detail towards the global. It was from Le Corbusier that Xenakis learnt how architecture like music could be the result of an analytical process as well as a syntactical one.

Couvent Sainte Marie de la Tourette and the pans de verre ondulatoires

It was Xenakis him self who asked Le Corbusier to be involved in a whole proj-

ect, so Le Corbusier thought about something which suited him perfectly.

The Couvent was the first job in which Xenkais was involved as a straight de-

signer. When he started to work on it, Le Corbusier had already traced the main lines of

his project.

Firstly he designed a series of proposals for the intern articulation of spaces

and paths. Anyway his most important contribute was for the conception of thos pans de verre ondulatioires, which would have been applied in Chandigarth as wele and which have been an imporntat expression for the topic of this essay.

It is important to say that during the same time Xenakis was working on one of

his most important artwork: Metastassis, with which he wanted to get over the integral serialism introduced by his master Olivier Messian.

In this work Xenakis for the first time thought about notes as physical vectors

made by dh/dt, where dh is the variation of the height and dt the variation of time.

There was the need of conceiving for this innovative concept a way in which relate each single element. Here comes architecture; Xenkais introduced the method of the modulor in order to rule his music.

Till then, duration was parallel phenomenon to the one of the sound. The way

how composers used to use it was very closed to the way of physicians in the classical mechanics. For them time was as external phenomenon over the nature of physical rules. The relativistic mechanics has involved it in the essence of matter and energy.

Le Metastassis is the result of this revolution, here the six intervals among the

twelve tones are conceived in durations proportional to the ratios of frequencies. In other words if sequence of intervals is a geometric proportion, duration will be the same. This was the reason because duration needed a system of scale through which trying to apply a sort of additive property among durations. Le Modular offered the possibility to create a ling between time a sound.

To sum up, if architecture had already used music in order to rule its creative

process, this was the first case in which an architectonic method was used in music conceived as a structure without cracks or joints. If Le Modular had expressed the aspiration towards a new compositional language as that one in music, Metastassis was the proof of the accuracy of this concept.

The internal windows of the convent were the result of the reflections previously

applied in music. So, Xenkais chose for elements ( a,b,c and d) proportionate with the golden section and their 24 permutations. This elements, once they were disposed on the faced, represented the variation in time of the same theme.

About the windows in the west side of the building, Le Corbusier had already

thought about a first idea expressed in a sketch that he gave to Xenakis. Here the glass of the window had different height and were placed in vertical posts spaced by regular intervals.

When Xenakis started working on it he had to thing about a possible position of the glasses along the faced, so he turned the faced itself into a sort of straight line in which place the pots like geometrical points. The question was now to choose between a stochastic or periodical disposition.

When he decided for the second option, ( he hadn’t introduced his concept of

musical stochastic yet ), he used much more elements then in the internal windows. He arrived to a total of ten elements that generated 3.628.800 permutation. In order to control such a quantity of elements he introduced the same method that he had already applied in Metastassis.

About this method he used to explain that in music density is a macroscop-

ic perception, a sort of unaware calculation. In music the classical movement such as adagio, allegro, andante are all based on the concept of density that is the number of elements in time.

In order to create a new music and a new language Xenakis thought about

density as a new element in the in the musical composition. Here the problem was to define a succession among different durations. As Xenakis used to say the problem of continuity in transition, as well as that of its speed and its force has always had an important role not only in the musical field but also in plastic arts and architecture.

Philips Pavilion in Bruxelles

In 1956 Louis C. Kalff, architect, engineer and artistic director of the Philips, asked e Corbusier to design a a pavilion for his society in the international exposition in Bruxelles. About the program of the project there was already possible to understand how innovative it was; Kalff’s intention was to create something know by avoiding a usual products exposition and by creating a sort of show with visual and acoustical effect in which it was possible to enjoy the new possibilities of modern technology.

The first idea of Le Corbsier was to create an electronic poem and a bottle that

could contain it. The general result would have been an organic synthesis in which light, colour, imagine, rhythm and sound were joint in order to show the resources of the product made by Philips.

Firstly Le Courbusier thought about a collaboration with the composer Edgard

Varèse. He had already known him in Paris when they had collaborated for the project of an acoustic source for an hypothetical bell tower for the project of the chapel in Rochamp.

It is possible to have an idea on how Le Corbusier was involved in the the

conception of this poem electronic on which he invested a great part of his energy. The show would have last 480 seconds divided in seven sequences of a series of visual events in which it was possible to see the history of human civilization. The whole program was represented by a famous graphic scheme made by the architect.

Over the visual contest, there was then Varèse music in which there was also

a prelude called by the composer Concrete P-H in which the two letters meant Philips but also paraboloides hyperboliques like the striped curves of the architectonic space designed by Xenakis. To sum up the Philips Pavillion was conceived as a synthesis among art, technic, thought and expression.

About the architectonic container of this show le Corbusier at beginning thought

about a simple metallic structure, then he decided to give to this structure an architectonic weight through a specific shape represented in a sketch that the architect gave to Xenakis with the task of translate it in a mathematical vision.

From an architectonic point of view the great innovation was the fact that the

pavilion had to adapt its self to a kind of show that had never been conceived before.

For the project was applied indeed new technics of acoustical and visual transmission, as well as new models of microphones and new system for the light filtering.

The project had to guarantee all these needs. Le Corbusier himself had given to

Xenkais a precise programmatic guide in which it was explained how the model had to be conceived as a container for 400-600 people in which the shape had to be made by a series of plane surfaces for the projection of the movies and curved surfaces for the projection of colours. The whole model then had to be concluded by an extended well in which imagine could appear and disappear by creating the impression of a volumetric depth.

It is interesting how, thanks to Xenakis witness, we have a quite precise idea of

the creative process used for this project.

Firstly, there was the development of the audience that was supposed to be stand up in the main space for 8-9 minutes, from this need it came the idea of a circle with two small tunnels for the entry and the exit.

Then he thought about the necessity to create a space with the lowest reverber-

ation possible; so he arrived to the concept of an auditorium in which all the plane and parallel surfaces were avoided. The best solution was the choice of curved surfaces with variable radius of curvature, perfect also for the projection of the coloured lights.

From our point of view the most interesting part was the way how he conducted

his technical and constructive analysis on those hyperbolic paraboloids that were the main elements in the whole opera.

We had already explained the important role that his composition Mestasis had

had during the project of the pans de verre ondulatoris in the convent a La Tourette.

Well, here for the Philips Pavillion what he had introduced in this new way of conceiving music composition found a new architectonic application. More than in La Tourette here his mathematical abstraction found a poor spatial and three-dimensional expression.

Xenakis for this project has again sensed an analogy between the camps of glis-

sandi of his composition and the ruled surfaces of the pavilion. These camps of glissandi were one of his most important musical intuition, in which he had associated continuous sounds to vectors by thinking at the whole musical score as a geometric space.

It was in this musical score itself that Xenakis must have conceived those hyper-

bolic paraboloids of the future pavilion in Bruxelles, whose geometrical construction was very similar to the constructive technics for the concrete at that time.

The Philips Pavilion was for Xenakis the occasion in which experimenting an

innovative freestanding structure made by these original surfaces that had never been used until then.

In order to trace these complex volumes which were impossible to imagine just

with math Xenakis invented a particular tool made by two metallic sticks linked by a some elastic wires. In this way, he could imagine the structure by tracing the boundaries with this tool and once I would have found his solution, he could draw it with the descriptive geometry.

Actually, the result was a compromise among the original ideas of Xenakis and

the need of constructors; the cones of the first project for example were replaced by other hyperboloids in order to make easier the structural calculations. Also his idea of using a freestanding structure had been questioned until he has found a Belgian company called Strabet whose administrator who was himself a clever engineer specialized in pre-stressed concrete and who fully understood Xenakis’ ideas. So, by applying some changes, they eventually managed to obtain a result very closed to the first project.

From our point of view, the pavilion was the demonstration of how in Xenakis

the creative process, both in music and architecture, was the result of a structural construction, turned then, by his sensibility, into a plastic or musical experience.

The result in Bruxelles was an architectonic expression of the poeme elec-

tronique composed by Le Corbusier. From outside the pavilion firstly attracted people with his silver sails, then inside it surprised them with its neutral space and its virtuosic screen-walls in which architecture, together with the music of Varèse and the imagines of Le Corbusier turned itself into a whole allegoric and apocalyptical show.

About Varèse contribute, it is important to explain how his previous experimenta-

tions were focused on the relationship between music and space. He was one of the first musician to understand how over the three horizontal, vertical and dynamic dimensions, music could be the result of a fourth dimension made by its evolution on space like a fading light in the dark.

In the pavilion designed by Xenakis he had the possibility to express all this

concept by composing a music for a real architectonic organism; moreover, a lot of historians had highlighted the similarity between the graphic schemes of the composition and the final spatial configuration of the pavilion.

From the experience of the Pavillion for Xenakis started a new research about a

possible integration between visual and acoustical arts. As well as picture had found in the cinema the tool through which free oneself from the limits of immobility, music could evolve towards the conquest of space.

If we imagine the speakers of an electroacoustic chain as some punctual sourc-

es into the three-dimensional space, these points can define a space as well as the geometrical points of the stereometry, a sort of acoustical space with the same characteristics of Euclidean one.

Xenakis came to define two different kinds of stereophony, a “static stereopho-

ny” and a “dynamic stereophony”, depending on the movement or the immobility of the acoustical sources.

Through these new tools, it was possible to create a music as an acoustical jest

able to control the mathematical space as well. Furthermore, about the Pavilion, this theory justified once again the choice of the surfaces with variable radius of curvature.

I would like to conclude this chapter with Xenakis’ consideration about the

project. According to him the Pavillion could considered as part of a great vision which represents a first trail of artistic synthesis among sound, light and architecture towards a new “electronic jest” in the field of abstraction. The project can be considered as a first step towards a new conceptual consciousness, a sort of evolution of the abstract thought through the technical infrastructure of the modern electronic tools.

Adolphe Appia. Rhtmical spaces.

Le Corbusier. Soviet Palace. Section of the main hall.

Le Corbusier. Soviet Palace. Acoustical studio.

Acoustical graphic of Reiner Plomb and the plan for Rochamp Chapel.

Rochamp Chapel. Section. Le Corbusier.

Score for Metastassis. Iannis Xenakis.

Models of elementary acoustical structures. Iannis Xenakis.

Counvent Saint Marie de la Tourette. West Front. Iannis Xenakis.

Scheme of the Le Corbusier’s poeme electronique .

Le Corbusier’s scketches for the Philips Pavilion.

First concept for the Philips Pavilion. Iannis Xenakis.

Sketches for the volumetric organization. Iannis Xenakis.

4

SPACE IN MUSIC AND MUSIC IN SPACE

MUSICAL SPATIALIZATION AND CONSEGUENCES IN PIANO’S ARCHITECTURE “La musica è l’architettura più immateriale che possa esistere”

With the project of the centre Pompideau in Paris, Renzo Piano started his

friendship with the composer Luciano Berio and with him, he had the possibility to know the world of the musical avant-garde.

Before this episode, Piano had with music, as himself used to say, the relation-

ship of a humble amateur who doesn’t know at all the essence of the true process of musical composition. With the experience, he started with Luciano Berio an historical friendship that would have lasted until the composer passing in 2003.

About the music, Renzo Piano used to say that as well as architecture he start-

ed knowing it by starting from his technical essence, not from the classical theatres, but from the I.R.C.A.M, that could be considered as a musical factory, a sort of laboratory of musical research.

In Paris, Renzo Piano started to understand, as himself has explained several

times, how closed are all the disciplines of art. If music can be considered the most immaterial among the arts as well as architecture the most material one, these two expressions of the human genius have in common the same logical structural discipline made by colour, detail and vibration.

This conception seems to explain the reasons of his friendship with Luciano

Berio. About him, Renzo Piano used to say that he was a true explorer which has led his art towards the new boundaries of science and math, but with at the same time, has always had a deep connection with the essence of the past, folk history and tradition.

About the friendship between these two Italian artists, very important was an

historical meeting in Rome, with the inauguration of the main hall of Santa Cecilia in the new Audiorium Parco della Musica. With the presentation of the project the two artists started an improvised discussion about music and architecture and their respective way of considering and making art.

About Luciano Berio, from the point of view of this essay, very important was

Renzo Piano

also an interview on Domus that he gave in 2000, an architecture magazine. Firstly, he highlighted the importance of having, for architecture, as well as music, a multidisciplinary approach as constant source of inspiration. Music is a perfect example of transversal art as a tool also of pure philosophical speculation. More than architecture as music in stones, Berio think about music as an acoustic architecture, but he also admits how these are just philosophical tricks; much more interesting would be a studio about the concept of form in both the arts. While musical for is autonomous and self-congratulatory, in architecture, form always refers to something else.

To sum up, Berio and Piano were two artists but at the same time two friends

with a same approach to the nature of art.

Before the meeting in Rome in 2002, they had already met in 1995 together

with the philosopher Tullio Regge. Then they had, for the magazine MicroMega, a sort of trialogue about the relationships among philosophy, music and architecture. Here again, what emerged, was the usual speculation by Berio about the concept of form in the two arts, but at the same time there was a new attention towards the nature of material and tools of those arts. Berio explained how glass and light material in architecture, as well as electronic instruments in music, were more than a reason of a change, the consequence of new need. Music and architecture were not chanced because artists had started to use new materials, conversely, the two arts started changing when artists started to look for these materials.

In conclusion, over the rhetorical aspects of their respective theories, it is pos-

sible to highlight in Piano the tendency to recognise in architecture a sort of immaterial content, and It was this tendency that has led him towards music as pure immaterial art and as a tool through which express this architectonic immaterial content. In the next chapters I will focus on this particular aspect.

Conversely, about Berio, It is possible to notice a particular tendency towards

the definition of a pure architectonic element in the new musical vision. It is that concept of musical spatialization that will be the main topic of the next chapter and that can be considered as the last and most significant boundary between music and architecture in

our time.

New music and its space

By studying the world of the fifties musical avant-guard it is possible to notice

two different currents in the idea of musical spatialization.

The first one has a more conceptual nature and it is about the way of conceiv-

ing the process of composing; conversely, the second one concerns the transmission of music in the physical space.

About the first current, as I have already explained in the previous chapters, it

was Xenakis who started to think about music as an ensemble of structures. The idea of rethinking about music in plastic terms was a common tendency in the musical environment of that time. Paul Klee, for instance, was a constant reference for the musical artists, more than Kandinsky, whose aesthetic was considered too much intellectual.

Anyway, more interesting for the topic of this essay was the second currents for

its straight effects on the physical and architectonic space.

As we have seen in the previous chapter, about the Philips Pavilion in Bruxelles,

here Xenakis had had the possibility to elaborate the concept of an acoustic space in which its sources were considered as geometrical points of a Euclidean space.

Anyway, about this subject, more than Xenakis it was on other composer who

has dedicated a great part of his research on the elaboration of a new physical way of perceiving music: Karlheinz Stockhausen. In particular, In his essay music in space, written in 1958 for a conference in Darmstadt during the Internationalen Ferienkurse fĂźr neue Musik, he has summed all main results of this research.

Firstly, in this opera, he starts with an historical excursus about those cases in

the past in which musical compositions were created in relation to the space of their exhibition. For Istance, he explains that the scores made for the San Marco’s church in the 16th century were conceived in order to exploit the presence of the two choirs and organs in two different parts of the church. These composition can be considered as the

first example in which physical space was a particular component in the musical conception.

Over the Venetian example, he quotes other artists including Mozart and Berlioz

whose architectonic music could be considered as the perfect anticipation of what he was trying to conceive for his art.

After this dissertation about the past indeed, he uses these example in order

to explain what he was trying to do with one of his most famous works: Gesang der j端nglinge. Here music is conceived as the result of the configuration and the movement of sounds in space by considering space its self as the 4th dimention of musical composition.

The whole work is conceived by organizing five groups of speakers placed in

the space around the audience, so It becomes crucial for the perception of the composition to define the orientation, the position and the movement of these speakers. In other words, Stockhausen had understood the need of defining for music a new physical and spatial component.

Stockhausen was one of the first composer to extend the technics of integral

serialization towards all the parameters of sound: height ( harmony and melody), duration ( metric and rhythmic), colour ( phonetics) and intensity ( dynamics ). From here, he arrives previously to the dissociation in points and then to its overcoming through a music conceived in acoustic groups, a sort of acoustic constellation perceived through particular characteristics that link the single elements.

The problem, as Stockhausen used to highlight, was that by transforming all the

characteristics of the sound in the same moment, without one of them stronger than the others, the result was a music that evolves in a static way. The solution could be trying to highlight a particular propriety of sound, but this idea was in opposition to the main principle of a rigid parity among the elements.

So he started to think about the position of speakers in space as a possible ele-

ment through which imposing in music a new source of variety.

Once he had introduced this new element the work should have been to try to

create for this parameter a scale of representation like the others elements of musical composition. The result was a circle whose circumference was made by all the possible positions of the speakers. After a particular experimentation, it would have been possible to try to create a scale of variation in which the single unit would have been the minimum variation of perceptible acoustic distance.

About a possible application of these concepts in the three-dimensional space,

Stockhausen admits how this couldn’t been involved in the system that he had created, because of the necessary experimentations in a spherical space.

From our point of view, this conceptual and practical innovation caused a se-

ries of important changes in the evolution of architectonic space as well. Stockhausen indeed, arrived to the conception of a new architectonic space able to accommodate his new music.

Stockhausen had understood how his innovation had new needs that traditional

theatre could not satisfy, so he started to think about a new possible conformation of his ideal theatre. This theatre should have been made by a spherical ambient with speakers placed in circle and the audience in the centre.

It is not difficult to notice a similarity between this frustration adverted by Stock-

hausen towards the traditional architectonic spaces and the Wagnerian revolution that we had already analysed in the first chapter of this essay. Furthermore, like Wagner before, Stockhausen used to refer to possible social consequences from his musical revolution; by abolishing the traditional way of perceiving music, he imagines a sort of musical events prepared in art galleries or in public spaces in which people could listen to music in every moment of the day.

Obviously, the same revolution had to be applied for instrumental music as well,

over the electronic one. In this case, the solution could be a sort of combination between traditional instruments and speakers. At any rate, the traditional way of placing musical instruments on the stage was outdated, as Stockhausen has demonstrated with the representation of his opera Gruppen when he decided to place the orchestra around the audience in a “U� disposition.

Over the art of Stockausen, during the same years, an other important contribute

on the subject of the musical spatialization was offered by Lucier in 1969 with a famous experiment usually known as ‘I am sitting in a room’. The experiment was quite simple and consisted in reading a text on front of a microphone connected with a recorder; after the reading, a series of speakers reproduced the message while a second microphone recorded it in turn. The whole operation then was repeated until it was impossible to perceive any variation in the sound. This was the text read by Lucier:

« I am Sitting in a Room different to the one you are in now. I am recording the

sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have ».

Well, the result was something very similar to what Lucier wanted to reach.

Recording by recording the text was decomposed until it became incomprehensible and turned into a series of tones without any meaning. These tones were the pure resonances of the room created by the rhythm of the language and they were the proof that in each space we are, there are some specific frequencies that make an acoustic space in which all we are immersed. In other words, the experiment was the proof that, wherever we are, there is already a music around us made by the space its self, all we have to do is just to try to trigger it.

This atmosphere of deep research was the main source of inspiration for musi-

cal avant-garde of that time, and in part is still the spirit that continues to inspire contemporary music. In particular, Berlioz can be considered as the bridge between these autonomous researches and the activity of the I.R.C.A.M. in which the experimentation on the subject of musical spatialization became one of main field of activity.

This was the world that Renzo Piano found when he arrived in Paris for the

project of the Pompideau Centre and the new seat of the I.R.C.A.M. His art would have

been the tool through which turning the new need of contemporary music in an architectonic expression and his architecture, especially the one designed for music, would have been forever affected.

The seat of the I.R.C.A.M. : an acoustical factory The I.R.C.A.M. ( institute de Recherche et de Corndination Acoustique/Musique ) is an institution founded in Paris as musical section of the Centre Pompidou. Thanks to its modern and advanced instrument for the musical experimentation, it is still one of the most important poles in Europe and in the world as centre of research in the field of musical avant-garde. The particular aspect of this institute is the fact that since the beginning it was conceived as a pole of scientific research as well as musical.

Firstly, the project of Piano and Rogers provided the seat of the musical insti-

tution as part of the new building designed for the centre Pompideau ( Plateau Beaubourg ), but subsequently it was conceived as an autonomous element. As Piano has explained himself the project was born as a multidisciplinary collaboration among architecture, math music and acoustics towards the conception of a “musical instrument� combining art, science, creation and research.

The structure would have been built closed to the new Beabourg building, but

then Piano and Rogers have decided to make an underground structure; the reason of this choice are explained by Piano himself. Having been conceived as a pole of acoustical research, one of the problem of the program was firstly about soundproofing. Furthermore, the demolition of the old school in which had to be build the new seat had created an interesting urban space like a new public square that the architects decided to maintain.

The solution, as we know, was a subterranean structure that allowed the acous-

tical experimentation of the laboratories of the institute and at the same time the definition of the overlying square, subsequently called Stravinsky’s square.

Before its extension with the new building designed in 1988 again by Ren-

zo Piano, the seat of the I.R.C.A.M. appeared in surface just through the glass ceiling

and the elements of the ventilation system defined by Umberto Eco as the way through which the underworld population communicated with the outside.

The singularity of this project consists in the way through which Piano and

Rogers have been able to interpret the spirit of expressive and scientific research of the institute turning it in architectural spaces characterized by a great innovative nature.

Among these spaces the one that mostly represents the spirit of the whole project is the Espace de projection or also known as Espro. It is an acoustic hall characterized by a great versatility, through which it can be transformed from a concert hall with 250-350 seats to a recording studio or a room for the acoustical experimentation. The volume of the space indeed, is able to change thanks to three panel on the ceiling that can go down or up from an height of 1.50m to 10.50m. Furthermore, over the space, also the acoustics of the hall is characterized by a great versatility. The walls of the hall indeed are made by a series of panels consisting in three prismatic bulkheads coated by three different kinds of superficial material: absorbent, reflective and diffusing. The result is a total of 171 groups of independent bulkheads that allow the complete acoustical variability of the hall, from a time of reverberation oscillating between 0,6 to 6 seconds, the same acoustical difference between a church and a cinema.

From our point of view, this project is fundamental as expression of a different

approach to architecture, an architecture reduced to a pure acoustical space as a tool of musical and scientific research. For Piano this experience was fundamental in the definition of that immaterial content of his art that would have been a constant in many subsequent projects.

The stage set for “Prometeo”: spacial and musical instrument.

« In un bagliore che si incendia e si vela in accordo con le interne fibre del

suono l’azione del Prometeo di Luigi Nono si consuma, ci consuma e dà forma allo strumento in cui la Tragedia dell’ascolto risplende. E’ dramma della decisione singola

e irrevocabile; vibra nel “tempo dell’attimo, che dà lode alla terra “, che fa del presente l’istante irripetibile, che dà la “debole forza” per “comporre l’infranto “ e sorreggere l’ascolto dell’Angelo. Il luogo di questa sacra polifonia senza religione è edificio e strumento: abita l’arcipelago dello spazio musicale, in esso, in un solo abbraccio, la musica raccoglie chi ascolta e il suono penetra in noi come trasfuso da un’unica fonte. È proprio un abitare possibile e non una visita momentanea. È un con-qui-stare, nel senso di stare qui con: con la musica, l’architettura, il testo, gli strumenti, i sistemi elettronici: in questo, il conquistare assume il suo senso proprio, occupa lo spazio musicale ».

The project of the Prometoe appeared since the beginning as an great event for

the people who had been involved: music composed by Luigi Nono, text written by Massimo Cacciari, set stage designed by Renzo Piano, musical direction by Claudio Abbado, light effects prepared by Emilio Vedova and last, musicians from the Scala. Rarely in Italy, it was possible to create a collaboration among all these excellences coming from different sectors of culture and art.

The Première took place in Venice in the S. Lorenzo’s church, in September of

1984, with the Biennale of that year. The church is an important example of Renaissance architecture and his internal space is divided into two part by three great arches with the altar in the centre. The second representation of the opera took place the next year in Milan in a completely different location: the Ansaldo’s factory.

About this project, before considering Piano’s contribute, it is important to try

to trace the revolutionary way in which Luigi Nono has conceived his opera. About it, Stefano Boeri has written that Prometoe can be considered as pure architecture, but not only for the set stage designed by piano conversely, here is music itself conceived as a space to live in. « living in the sound, listening to the space: this is the musical project of Luigi Nono » .

A great part of the Nono’s reflections about this project can be found in an

essay called verso il prometo, in which the composer try to traces an intellectual and artistic path towards the conception of this opera. By looking at the sketches and schemes

in this book, it is possible to notice the originality of this work that seems to be a sort of project report. Venice here is described from an “architectonic” point of view, its roads, its atmosphere, its sounds.

In order to reach in his composition the same kind of experience, it was neces-

sary to consider the need of a designed spatiality in which space had to be considered as a particular factor of composition. The result was not just a musical experience but a spatial reading as well.

To sum up, Nono’s Prometeo can be considered as the synthesis of the con-

temporary concept of musical spatialization; the spatial control had to be considered as one of the factors of the creative process in music. The role of the architect in this new vision, had to put his art at the service of the new needs of musicians. About his collaboration with Berio, for istance, Piano used to say how the composer was the mind and he was the arm.

For the project of the Prometeo it was Nono who has called the architect that

he had already known in Paris for the project of the seat of the I.R.C.A.M.. The program introduced to the architect was something really original and in a way opposite to a traditional concert hall, in Nono’s vision, indeed, the audience should have been placed in the centre of hall while the orchestra around it. Furthermore, the most difficult aspect was to try to achieve that integration between music and space that Nono had in mind; the acoustic sources had to move from different points and this result could be reached just in part through the modern electronic tools, the main solution indeed would have been a series of stairs and catwalks. As Piano has explained his project would have been an object that was at the same time stage, set, orchestra space and soundboard.

From an acoustic point of view, the whole project was conceived as a big wood-

en musical instrument and for its realization, it was necessary to use the techniques of the modern maritime engineering. The main structure was made by glulam elements, chosen for their acoustic proprieties and because of their quite easy processing and transporting along the canals of Venice. These elements had two functions: they were support beams for the raised floor and vertical supports for the external walls connected

by steel cross members that claimed also the plywood panels and the galleries. These panels were removable and it was possible to choose between curved or straight profiles according to acoustic requirements.

For the audience, initially, Piano and Nono had thought about some rotating

seats, then they have opted for a traditional solution that would have highlighted the “musical archipelago” of the composition.

« quando ci si trova su un’isola interna ad un arcipelago, comunque si volga lo

sguardo non è possibile abbracciare il sistema nella sua interezza, istantaneamente: il campo visivo umano è troppo limitato per permetterlo. (…)È però possibile sentire la presenza di ciò che sta alle spalle. (…) Nasce da questa premessa la concezione di fondo per l’intero impianto scenico: un arcipelago al centro del quale sta il pubblico, circondato da una scena musicale che non può mai essere vista tutta insieme ma che può essere percepita nella sua interezza grazie alla musica »

About this project some critics have highlighted the limits of the architectonic

result. According to Boeri and Croset, architecture here distracts from music and the original pure abstract vision is ruined by the temptation of enriching it with a representative content.

At any rate, Prometeo has demonstrated how it was possible to reconcile, in

a contemporary vision, the processes of musical composition and architecture design.

The result was a new way of reinterpreting both the arts in a new vision inspired by the evolution of the modern philosophy.

Curch of S. Marco in Venice. Plan.

Stockhausen. Sketches for a musical space.

Alvin Lucier during his experiment.

Renzo Piano. Project for the seat of the I.R.C.A.M.

Renzo Piano. Project for the seat of the I.R.C.A.M. Section of the main hall.

Renzo Piano. Panels for the main hall of the seat of the I.R.C.A.M.

Luigi Nono. Sketches for Prometeo.

Renzo Piano. Sketches for the seat stage of Prometeo.

Renzo Piano. Seat stage of Prometeo. Section.

Seat stage of Prometeo.

Seat stage of Prometeo.

Conclusion

Notes from the lecture In Bayreuth we have seen how a new social and representative content for music was the key towards the conception of a new model of theatre. Architecture and music had demonstrated to be then in a particular point in which what it was behind them was not suitable any more to express the aspirations of the present. Nevertheless, that point wasn’t mature enough to leave all the tradition behind ant it wasn’t possible yet to understand where the two arts were going to. To sum up, that point was the end of something, more than the beginning of something else and its justification was a sense of social mission according to which the two arts were expressions of the spirit of the previous revolutionary movements in Europe. The revolution of Wagner and Semper was not against the traditional system of their arts, conversely their revolution was against the ancient regime that had beat them in ’49 and that those systems used to symbolize.

What it was different, at the beginning of ‘900, was the awareness of being

in a new world completely different from that of the past: architecture in the sunrise of Modern Movement and music at the origins of atonality. If the revolution of Wagner and Semper was the end of something, now it was possible to perceive the beginning of something else, but from this new absolute freedom was born the need of looking for new rules. In this research, abstractionists have gone toward music and with them architects too, until the conception of a new idea of architectonic composition.

In this course, it was possible to insert Le Corbusier’s contribute as well, who

was the one who has recognised in architecture new contents over those typically visual by conceiving the idea of a multisensory architecture joint to the functionalist principles.

Furthermore, in La Tourette and Bruxelles, Xenakis and Le Corbusier have shown how numbers or math in general can still be a common element in the codification of a new idea of Harmony between music and architecture.

I have highlighted how, during the second half of the century, whilst music was

enriched by new physical contents, from the acoustic experimentation to the spatial

perception, architecture went towards new psychic and sensorial contents and in these parallel paths, the two arts ended to a mutual inspiration one at the edge of the other.

In conclusion, I have demonstrated how it is possible to recognise a similarity

between the creative processes in contemporary music and architecture but what have we inherited from this lecture as architects?

To me, this experience has consolidated the conviction according to which doing

architecture means to be aware of the multisensory stimulation of a space in which optical aspects are not more important than acoustical and psychological ones, or anything else. Unfortunately, there is not yet a school able to train the architects toward the domain of this art, today the only means to our disposal is a multidisciplinary education.

In a world in which each art seams to go over its own edges, architecture, as

the perfect transversal art, has to be aware of the need of a new multidisciplinary dialogue. If from the collaboration of music and architecture during the last century it was possible to reach in the respective fields great innovation that was possible just because of the approach of those architect and musicians that have shown the humility of the curiosity and the will of going over their own yard by recognising its limits.

In spite of our great heritage from the past, this research has demonstrated how

fortunately in art there is always something to invent, but sometimes this means to listen to what other disciplines are telling us.

Theodor W. Adorno, Wagner, Einaudi, Torino, 2008.

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