The Well-Tempered Architecture

Abstract

Virtually all well-structured music, music that pleases the ear and moves the spirit, is full of patterns. Music is a primal medium of expression, and while some musicians in every age push the envelope of contemporary practice, there have emerged over the centuries common patterns of song structure, motifs, and even scales to which our ears have become accustomed. As it turns out, these musical patterns aren't so much constraining as they are liberating. Each level of structure imposes a discipline that limits a musical work from being something else and thus distinguishes one music piece from another. Similarly, all well-structured software-intensive systems are full of patterns. Architectural patterns serve the same role as song structure; design patterns and musical motifs are at the same level of abstraction; programmatic idioms and musical rhythms and scales are isomorphic.