Architecture in motion: A model for music composition.

摘要

Speculations regarding the relationship between music and architecture go back to the very origins of these disciplines. Throughout history, these links have always reaffirmed that music and architecture are analogous art forms that only diverge in their object of study. In the 1 st c. BCE Vitruvius conceived Architecture as "one of the most inclusive and universal human activities" where the architect should be educated in all the arts, having a vast knowledge in history, music and philosophy. In the 18th c., the German thinker Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, described Architecture as "frozen music".;More recently, in the 20th c., Iannis Xenakis studied the similar structuring principles between Music and Architecture creating his own "models" of musical composition based on mathematical principles and geometric constructions.;The goal of this document is to propose a compositional method that will function as a translator between the acoustical properties of a room and music, to facilitate the creation of musical works that will not only happen within an enclosed space but will also intentionally interact with the space. Acoustical measurements of rooms such as reverberation time, frequency response and volume will be measured and systematically organized in correspondence with orchestrational parameters. The musical compositions created after the proposed model are evocative of the spaces on which they are based. They are meant to be performed in any space, not exclusively in the one where the acoustical measurements were obtained.;The visual component of architectural design is disregarded; the room is considered a musical instrument, with its particular sound qualities and resonances. Compositions using the proposed model will not result as sonified shapes, they will be musical works literally "tuned" to a specific space. This Architecture in motion is an attempt to adopt scientific research to the service of a creative activity and to let the aural properties of enclosed spaces travel through music. 'We have two ways of positing the outside world. Numbers. Through their effect there is a plurality of individuals: sympathy, order harmony, beauty, etc. [...] in short, everything that is of mind. Space. This gives us objects "having extension" In the spatial world the images of the numerical world are projected, first by nature itself, then by men and above all by artists. It can be said that our duty on earth and during the whole of our life consists precisely in this projection of forms issued forth from numbers, and that you, the artists, fulfill that moral law to the highest degree. Not only is it possible to appeal simultaneously to geometry and to numbers, but to do so is the true purpose of our life.' Andreas Speiser (Full text of this dissertation may be available via the University of Florida Libraries web site. Please check http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/etd.html)