Music building for a small liberal arts college

Abstract

Lebanon Valley College, Annville, PA has had a strong music program for many years. Recently it felt the need for new facilities to complement the program. The new building was occupied in the fall of 1975. It contains a 400-seat recital hall, band room, organ-choral room, faculty offices and studios, classrooms, and individual and group practice rooms. The building was designed by Bogar and Bink, Lemoyne, PA. The acoustical consultant was engaged early in the planning process. This made possible a high degree of interaction between the architect and consultant throughout the planning, design, and construction process. This paper reviews the acoustical design considerations and solutions to the many room acoustics, sound isolation, and mechanical system noise control problems typical of a music building. Measured data on ambient noise and room-to-room noise reduction will be shown, in comparison with the design criteria. One unusual feature of the recital hall is the methodology of varying easily the hall reverberation time for small and large group performances. Measured reverberation times versus calculated will be shown.