Symphony Hall Research Articles

Lift Every Voice: Resonating Music, Words, and Legacy (Featuring The August Wilson Symphony) by Kathryn Bostic et al.

Reviewed by: Lift Every Voice: Resonating Music, Words, and Legacy (Featuring The August Wilson Symphony) by Kathryn Bostic et al. Patrick Maley LIFT EVERY VOICE: RESONATING MUSIC, WORDS, AND LEGACY (FEATURING THE AUGUST WILSON SYMPHONY). By Kathryn Bostic et al. Conducted by Lucas Richman. Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh. January 20, 2018. The very idea of “The August Wilson Symphony”—composed by Kathryn Bostic and given its world premiere by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in January 2018—seems an appropriate way to honor a playwright for whom music was so vital. The concept does court some danger: the music so influential to Wilson was the African American tradition of blues, full of danceable, popular rhythms, and far more at home in a smoky bar than a symphony hall. “The August Wilson Symphony” risks wrenching this African American bluesman playwright out of social and aesthetic context. Bostic and the orchestra, however, proved too deft to fall prey to that or any other pitfalls. Instead, the symphony and the program that enveloped it, Lift Every Voice: Resonating Music, Words, and Legacy, captured the soul of Wilson’s work and mission. Hosted by Phylicia Rashad and conducted by Lucas Richman, it was an evening that joined Wilson’s American Century Cycle in celebrating the struggles, triumphs, anxieties, and joys of black life in America, while also honoring the playwright who rendered that experience so vibrantly. Bostic’s symphony would open act 2 of Lift Every Voice after the evening’s first half skillfully established the program’s mood and investments. The Percussion Ensemble from the Pittsburgh Cultural Arts Collective opened the show with a drum call. Under the direction of Thomas Chatman, five drummers in African dress pounded out furious syncopated rhythms on dununs and djembes, frequently urging audience members to participate with call-and-response claps. Not only did the drum call signal to the audience that they were constitutive members in the collective efforts of Lift Every Voice, but it also importantly ushered Africa into Heinz Hall. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s home is a gorgeous space built in the tradition of European symphony halls, but Wilson was deeply concerned with the resonance of Africa in the experience of black Americans. This drum call made clear that Lift Every Voice would not lose sight of Africa. The next two sections of the program honored Martin Luther King Jr. during the week of his birthday. A lush performance of “Lyric for Strings” by George Walker, a favorite composer of Coretta Scott King, followed a stunning a cappella rendition of “Take My Hand,” reportedly King’s favorite hymn. Vocalist Anqwenique performed “Take My Hand” with power and nuance, flowing smoothly through a lengthy vocal register with arresting elegance. Rich-man led “Lyric for Strings” with confident grace. The composition is at once somber and honorific, like a eulogy focusing on moments of pleasure. An onstage photo slide show of Dr. King smiling, casual, and occasionally celebratory underscored the effect: this was a eulogy mindful of his important work, but concerned more so with his warm personhood. “Lyrics for Strings” features one moment of foreboding dread before returning for a joyful conclusion, reminding us on this night not to forget the tragedy and struggle inherent in King’s legacy. From elegy, the program moved to jazz with a performance of “Teenie Time”, a composition of orchestral swing by Jay Ashby honoring photographer Teenie Harris who hailed from the same Hill District of Pittsburgh as Wilson. Victoria Luperi’s clarinet lead the way as Alton Merrell’s ticklish piano danced around the song’s periphery. A slide show of Harris’s photos documenting life in the Hill District complemented the performance’s hometown warmth. With the inclusion of “Teenie [End Page 113] Time,” Lift Every Voice signaled again that it had no intention of bowing to pressures of European classical music; instead, this song employed a full orchestra in a secondary position, supporting the distinctively modern and American bopping jazz. Click for larger view View full resolution Kathryn Bostic, composer of “The August Wilson Symphony,” performing “State of Grace” with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. (Photo: Pittsburgh Symphony.) The mood shifted as Bostic took the...

Pre-Sabine room acoustic design guidelines based on human voice directivity.

With the work of Wallace C. Sabine on the lecture hall of the Fogg Art Museum and concert hall of Boston Symphony Hall, a foundation for the field of architectural acoustics as a science was laid between 1895 and 1900. Prior to that, architects employed various notions in acoustic design. Previous studies by the authors have reviewed 18th and 19th century design guidelines that were based on the quantification of the perception threshold between direct sound and first order reflections, with these guidelines being followed in the design of several rooms with acoustical demands. This study reviews an alternate metric guideline, based on the directivity and propagation distance of the human voice, which was utilized in several halls also during the 18th and 19th centuries. The related acoustic experiments tested how far sound was perceivable towards the front, sides, and rear of a speaking person. These ratios were used in the acoustical design of at least five lecture halls, four theater halls, one opera hall, and one concert hall, constructed in Germany, England, and the USA. These historic designs, and comparisons to modern measures and guidelines, are reviewed.

Inter-aural cross-correlation measured during symphony orchestra performance in big concert halls

Spatial impression in concert hall listeners is known to depend on lateral reflections causing differences between the sound at the left ear and the right ear. Such differences can be measured, e.g., by the so-called inter-aural cross-correlation IACC in a binaural signal pair, i.e., a signal pair from microphones placed in the ear canal entrances. IACC data from binaural impulse responses (BRIR) are commonly reported. In contrast, little attention has been paid to running IACC, i.e. IACC(t), during music performance. Therefore, in 2011 this author launched the Binaural Project in 2011 in order to collect binaural signal data from concerts with symphony orchestras. An analysis of IACC(t) from more than 600 minutes of binaural recordings during concerts in many big concert halls is presented. Several famous halls, including Boston Symphony Hall, are included in the data. Among the questions to be answered are Can we observe from the data that concert halls make a difference to IACC(t)? If so—is this variation small or big compared to the variation from one moment to another, bar to bar, movement to movement, from one orchestra to another, and so on? On the other hand, if we cannot observe significant hall-to-hall differences, several new questions would arise, including How can we maintain that listeners are able to perceive hall-to-hall differences in ASW and LEV? And why do not the reported hall-to-hall differences in IACC from impulse responses (ISO-3382) make an observable difference to running IACC(t)?

Constellation: A hybrid active accoustic system

Constellation is a hybrid active acoustic system that has been used in rooms ranging in size from a virtual reality cave to a sports arena. Constellation has been shown to control both the effective absorption of a room as well as the effective cubic volume. This paper will review how early reflections, effective absorption, and effective cubic volume have been controlled in rooms of various sizes. Recently, there has been a trend of larger classical ensembles performing in smaller venues. If the strength of the room is held constant, but the cubic volume is cut in half, the reverberation time is also cut in half. If a room has exclusively physical acoustics, it is impossible to replicate both the strength and reverberation time of a symphony hall in a space that is considerably smaller (such as a rehearsal room). A special emphasis will be made on how Constellation is uniquely suited to address this challenge.

Iconic architecture and place-specific neoliberal governmentality: Insights from Hamburg’s Elbe Philharmonic Hall

As a global travelling idea, iconic architecture plays an increasingly important role within transnational urban policy discourses. Nonetheless, the locally specific geographies of governmental rationalities and technologies often remain vague and inexplicit, although they have a profound impact on the powerful processes of iconic architectural production. This aspect can be made particularly clear with regard to the case study of Hamburg’s Elbe Philharmonic Hall – the new iconic concert hall on Hamburg’s redeveloped waterfront. Thus, the case study on hand emphasises the locally distinct ways in which place-specific ‘arts of government’ are tied to contemporary processes of neoliberal urbanisation. Drawing on the Foucauldian notion of governmentality, the paper first lays open the contingent rationalities of the Elbe Philharmonic Hall project and discloses how fundamental transformations within geopolitical and geo-economic discourses gave rise to local policy objectives that emphasise the need to translate Hamburg’s urban change into an ‘adequate’ urbanistic shape. Second, the paper reflects on how place-specific discourses and practices of civic commitment and patronage become instrumentalised for the public legitimation and political enforcement of the project and thus become integral parts of a post-political regime of neoliberal governmentality.

Remembering Franz Wright

Remembering Franz Wright Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright Click for larger view View full resolution In the ninth month after Franz died, I was asked if I would like to contribute something to a memorial feature in his honor. I was faced with an immediate difficulty involving shared reality. To contribute, I went along with the premise. I slept on the couch for several weeks, facing the chair, the one still there for Franz, to coax out a few of the days I might uniquely offer, private sketches, testing my interest in getting back. There are days that come to me. Some were months or years. Here are a few notes: A day in December the first year we were married and living in Waltham, Franz called me to say he had gotten a job at the independent movie theatre down the street. He said it didn't matter where he was anymore or what he was doing, he could write the poems while sweeping up popcorn. New Year's Eve, a drunk woman wouldn't leave the lobby until someone gave her a light. There was a scene, threats. Franz followed her out. I think Franz introduced the idea to me of driving her forty miles north to Gloucester in an ice storm at 1 a.m. before getting her to come up the stairs and meet me. I recall a congenially rough [End Page 163] voice, apologies, laughing. We left. It was dark in Gloucester of hilly one-way historic streets and none of us knew where her friend lived. How many times passing the same houses, the gas station. And then we were there, her friend opening the door in his socks, a neat votive candle-lit apartment behind him. As a work-study student at the Emerson College Library, I checked out a book for Franz, twice. I knew his name, that he was the translator of The Unknown Rilke, a book I had fallen in love with even after failing the oral presentation for which I bought it. My roommate had Franz for a composition class. She said he read books to them for the entire two-hour period. He put the library book on the counter. I don't remember the title of the book either time. His soft low voice, his downcast eyes; who could blame me if I imagined talking to him alone someday, maybe reading German poems together. When Franz bought us tickets to hear Mahler's 2nd Symphony "The Resurrection" at Symphony Hall in Boston, he typed up the German along with his own synopsis in English then tore these into strips that he handed me at the beginning of each movement. Click for larger view View full resolution On the phone when I was still living in Boston, on the verge of moving in, Franz told me he wanted nothing but to watch baseball with me. I had to borrow a TV. We watched football too, and a lot of movies. Eight years, four apartments later, during the week, after writing alone at home all day, Franz picked me up from my job at the translation agency; we made dinner and sat in the living room to watch the news, then CSI and Law & Order episodes until we couldn't find any more. The next evening we walked to the video store and rented movies, made popcorn, did the dishes, went to bed, things like that. Another evening, a recovery meeting. On the weekends, Franz drove us along the winding 117 from Waltham through to Concord for lunch and a walk in the woods or to our apple orchard and then west on Route 20 until the sun went down. This takes place in eternal time. But there was an end to it. [End Page 164] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 165] Year unknown, one weekday evening Franz stretched out on the couch. At the end of the movie: What if you were one time to sit in this chair, I suggested, having been seeing a therapist, and I could stretch out on the couch. Why hadn't I said something sooner—of course! But nobody liked...

A possible acoustic design approach for multi-purpose auditoria suitable for both speech and music

In several auditoria, it has been observed that the reverberation time is longer than expected and that the cause is a horizontal reverberant field established in the region near the ceiling, a field which is remote from the sound absorbing audience. This has been observed in the Boston Symphony Hall, Massachusetts, and the Stadthalle Göttingen, Germany. Subjective remarks on their acoustics suggest that there are no unfavourable comments linked to the secondary sound field. Two acoustic scale models are considered here. In a generic rectangular concert hall model, the walls and ceiling contained openings in which either plane or scattering panels could be placed. With plane panels, the model reverberation time (RT) was measured as 53% higher than the Sabine prediction (frequency 500/1000Hz), compared with 8% higher with scattering panels. The second model of a 300 seat lecture theatre with a 6m or 8m high ceiling had raked seating. In this case, the amount of absorption in the model was increased until the point was reached where speech had acceptable intelligibility, with the early energy fraction, D⩾0.5. For this acceptable speech condition with the 6m ceiling, the measured mid-frequency T15 was 1.47s, whereas the Sabine predicted RT was 1.06s. The sound decay was basically non-linear with T30>T15>EDT. Exploiting a high-level horizontal reverberant field offers the possibility of acoustics that are better adapted as suitable for both speech and unamplified music, without any physical change in the auditorium. Using secondary reverberation in an auditorium for a wide variety of music might also be beneficial.

Maria Gordon Buse, MD: A Family Affair Through Six Decades of Diabetes Discovery.

Maria Gordon Buse, MD, is a product of wartime Europe. She completed her professional education in four languages on three continents and continues a nearly 60-year career as an investigator, educator, and practicing endocrinologist. This brief reprisal is written collaboratively by her biological offspring and intellectual progeny, an appropriate reflection of a career where family and work were joyfully intertwined in an irresolvable way. Maria Gordon Buse was born Maria Felice Gordon in Budapest, Hungary. Her mother, Elizabeth Szana, was the “great beauty” of her social circle, and her father, Geza, was an earnest accountant who tried his hand at several failed entrepreneurial activities before buying a cafe on the Danube near the symphony hall. In that venture, Elizabeth’s charms and Geza’s practical business acumen resulted in a successful enterprise that was a gathering place for students, artists, and the middle class in Budapest. Maria was raised speaking German in the home and only learned Hungarian when she went to school. She mastered French as a third language in middle school. Maria loved poetry, literature, theater, art, music, walking in the woods during trips to the nearby mountains, and ice skating. She aspired to become a poet and a journalist. She was 16 in 1943 when German troops occupied Budapest. Through the intercession of friends, Maria and her mother took refuge in a cloister, and her father, in a monastery. Her mother was fearless about going out into the city through bombings and gunfire, leveraging her many social connections to find food and supplies. Maria never takes for granted how lucky she and her family were to survive. As the Allies approached to “liberate” Hungary, she recalls laughing at the sky, seeing the showering bombs as symbolic of their impending freedom and the justice that the Axis powers would face. …

Reverberation theory obscures real physics in concert halls

Wallace Sabine posited sound in a room to be a uniform field, in equilibrium, varying but slowly with respect to time required to traverse the space: the “reverberant” field. It easy to demonstrate that such is not so, especially in rooms like occupied concert halls. But then, Sabine designed the Boston Symphony Hall, a paradigm of acoustic excellence. If that hall be regarded as a physics experiment, never has it been replicated by Sabine’s followers, even with extensive emendations to his concept of reverberation. The real physics of concert halls involves non-equilibrium manifestation of physical acoustics with respect to bounding surfaces, particularly proximity effects on stage and resonant scattering about the audience.

Sound and Architecture – Mutual Influence

Sound exists in architecture and architecture exists in sound. The process of how the two have influenced each other can be observed throughout history and has brought us the most surprising outcomes. The article presents research results on the interconnection of sound and space, in the aspect of their intertwining influence in introducing physical changes in interiors and transformations in music. The objective was to present and scientifically describe a process in which both buildings and sound effect each other, inspiring new solutions, forming innovative structures and becoming both factors and subjects of their constant interaction. This correlation was investigated within a broad timeframe of European history, from the distant past – ancient Greece and Rome – to the recent future – a “vineyard” configuration of Berlin Philharmonic Hall. Several research methods were used, ranging from case and literature studies aimed at data gathering, to comparative and graphical analysis, discussion, and finally, the synthesis and critical analysis in the concluding part.A great example of the discussed phenomenon is the development of religious chant resulting from a long reverberation time in sacral buildings, creation of the polychoral technique connected to the architectural arraignment of St Mark's Church in Venice or the popularization of the “shoebox” configuration for music halls, as a consequence of wooden structural system's limitations. Let us have a closer look at the process of mutual influences between architectural space and inner sound.

Guest editors’ introduction to the special issue on “performance spaces for music: Acoustical and psychological measurements and their interactions” honoring Dr. Leo Beranek.

This special issue of Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, & Brain, entitled Performance Spaces for Music: Acoustical and Psychological Measurements and Their Interactions, is dedicated to Dr. Leo Beranek not only in acclaim of his 100th birthday in 2014 but also in recognition of his lifelong contributions to the field of architectural acoustics. The significance his work as a researcher, consultant, and author is manifested in countless ways and seems impossible to overestimate. His books, Music, Acoustics, and Architecture (1962), Concert Halls and Opera Houses: How They Sound (1996), and Concert Halls and Opera Houses: Music, Acoustics, and Architecture (2004), represent one of the most important textbook series in concert hall acoustics, and has significance far greater than the sum of its parts. The impetus from reading these works ranges from fuelling an individual's interest and enthusiasm for concert hall acoustics to building bridges between experts from different fields collaborating on concert hall projects, allowing both scientists and practitioners to figuratively stand upon Leo Beranek's giant's shoulders so as to see a little further.There is no doubt that the initial publication of Beranek's book in 1962 on concert hall acoustics triggered ongoing research on how sound is perceived in auditoria. This ranges from the initial works of Hawkes and Douglas (1971) in London, United Kingdom; the works by the Gottingen group (e.g., Gottlob, 1973); and research in Berlin, Germany; (Wilkens, 1977) to more recent works by Barron (1988) in the United Kingdom and Lokki, Patynen, Kuusinen, and Tervo (2012) in Finland. Their studies and many others have refined the fundamental ideas that Leo Beranek had put into discussion.Scientific research on panel reflector arrays, audience absorption of grazing sound (also known as the seat dip effect), and interaural cross correlation as a predictor of spatial perception of sound all carry the distinctive signature of Leo Beranek's work as a consultant on many outstanding projects. Just to name a few, these projects include the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall, the New National Theater (also in Tokyo), the Philharmonic Hall in New York, The Koussevitzky Music Shed (formerly The Tanglewood Music Shed) in Massachusetts, and the Frederic R. Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, Israel.To the present day, Leo Beranek is an active member of the acoustics community and continues to give lectures to an audience that eagerly absorbs the concepts he describes. One of the outstanding characteristics of these talks may be their clarity and the da Vinci-like simplicity that make the distinct multidisciplinarity of architectural acoustics seem easy to grasp. This achievement becomes clear when the diversity of the articles in this special issue are taken as a tangible example.This special issue begins with a biography that briefly chronicles Leo Beranek's life, illustrating the incredible development from his early days in farm-town Iowa to the present day being a world renowned expert of acoustics, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, and the founder of Bolt, Beranek, and Newman-just to name a few corner points of his multifaceted career. In his article, Leo Beranek shows in an unparalleled way how a long experience in the field allows him to present complex relations in a clear way with a distinct view to the core essentials.The editors of this special issue are in debt to the authors who have provided such a circumferential collection of papers that are worth the reading. Moreover, the support and enduring commitment from all the reviewers was of great assistance to the authors and editors, who together brought this special issue to completion after months of hard work.Organization of the Contributions: The Communication ChainThe order of manuscripts in scientific periodicals is often categorized by the severity of the review process undergone. …

Concert hall design: Some considerations.

Briefly discussed is the change in architectural design of concert halls from early in the 20th century to the present time. The growth of sound in a concert hall is reviewed with emphasis on hearing the direct sound clearly. Next comes the desirability of hearing early lateral reflections, that is, those from side walls. The strength (loudness) of the orchestral sound follows with emphasis on the degree of seat upholstering and the cubic volume of the hall. It is shown that in a large number of successful concert halls, the midfrequency, fully occupied, reverberation time (RT) and the ratios of the volume to the total surface areas are nearly the same even though the volume per seat varies over a wide range. The bass index for a number of halls is discussed in relation to the weight of side walls and added sound absorbing materials. The need for surface irregularities is emphasized. Finally, maximum and minimum seating capacities for shoebox-shaped, surround-shaped, and fan-shaped concert halls are suggested.Brief History (Beranek, 2004)The highest-rated halls acoustically were built before 1901. They are Grosser Musikvereinssaal in Vienna, Austria; Symphony Hall in Boston, Massachusetts; and Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. All three are shoebox in shape and have lightly upholstered seats. To listeners, the sound in them is beautiful, almost luxurious, because of the rich reverberation, the quantity and quality of early reflections that give breadth to the music, the balance of tone among the orchestral sections, and the loudness (sound strength) that brings listeners to their feet following a fortissimo conclusion. Also, the sound is nearly uniform in about 90% of the seating areas and the players clearly hear each other, certainly in Boston and Vienna.Since the advent of the Berlin Philharmonie Hall in 1963, architects and owners have often placed beauty and novelty of architecture above acoustics. In Berlin, Germany, nearly half of the audience is seated behind and to the sides of the stage. That hall has been a success even though the orchestral balance differs considerably from one seat location to another because the sounds of the various instruments are radiated in different directions and because the listener is much closer to one part of the orchestra than to others. Nevertheless, many listeners enjoy being to the rear or sides of the orchestra so they can see the gestures and facial expressions of the conductor. Some say that at these locations they feel as though they were part of the performing group. A negative factor is that with the piano lid up, listeners seated at the stage rear hear only the low string notes. This is also true for soprano voices, where the high tones are only projected forward.Clarity of the Direct SoundWhen a musical note is suddenly sounded on the stage, say by a violin, the sound radiates outward from the instrument and then strikes walls, ceiling, and audience. Each surface then reflects a sound wave that subsequently bounces around the room from one surface to another. At a listening position in Boston Symphony Hall located just off the center line and two thirds the distance from the stage to the main-floor rear wall, that is, 26 m (85 ft) from the stage, the rise in the energy density following the arrival of the first seven strongest reflections at a central seat is shown by the heavy line in Figure 1. The zero point on the bottom scale is the time at which the direct sound arrives. The direct sound of a played note will usually continue throughout the 70-ms span that follows. The dashed curve D(t) shows the rise in energy density that would occur if the equivalent energy were to be fed gradually into the hall instead of arriving in separated reflections.The first reflection is from the lowest sidewalls and the undersurfaces of the first balconies. The second is from the undersurfaces of the second balconies and their fronts. The third is from the back of the stage. …

Studies on the perception of bass in four concert halls.

The importance of bass to the overall sound quality in concert halls was highlighted at the opening of the Philharmonic Hall in New York in 1962 (Beranek, Johnson, Schultz, & Watters, 1964). The hall provided almost no immediate lateral reflections, and bass could barely be heard on the stalls (Barron, 2009). The parenthetical comments brought up particularly the weakness of the cellos and the double basses. Apart from critique, this observation led to the discovery of the seat-dip effect (Schultz & Watters, 1964; Sessler & West, 1964). The seat-dip effect is the term assigned for the attenuation at low frequencies due to sound propagating almost parallel, that is, at near-grazing angles to the surface formed by the tops of the seat backs. The seat-dip effect is characterized by a main attenuation dip between 80 and 300 Hz, and an attenuation bandwidth that can extend up to 1 kHz.The seat-dip effect is objectively present in all concert halls with seats, but in many halls no noticeable lack of bass is perceived as such. In particular, the shoebox-shaped hall are generally characterized by a rich bass in the stalls (Schultz, 1965). This indicates that the seat-dip attenuation is corrected as the sound energy distribution in the concert hall develops over time. The lack of bass in the direct sound is compensated by reflections that contain the bass and arrive at the listener at nongrazing angles. This phenomenon is referred to as seat-dip recovery or correction.However, it remains unclear when the bass should arrive at the listener's ears. It was hypothesized that the seat-dip effect could be compensated by increasing the reverberation time at low frequencies (Schultz & Watters, 1964; Barron, 1995). However, Bradley and Soulodre (1997) found that the perceived level of bass is not related to the reverberation time at low frequencies. More recent evidence suggest that the bass should arrive with the early reflections (Beranek, 2011; Davies, Cox, & Lam, 1996; Patynen, Tervo, & Lokki, 2013; Soulodre & Bradley, 1995). Furthermore, Kahle (1995) suggested that sound energy arriving between 80 and 160 ms augments the perception of low frequencies. Additionally, Bradley and Soulodre (1997) linked the perceived level of bass to both the early sound level and late sound level. The phase of the reflections may also alter the perceived level of bass (Laitinen, Disch, & Pulkki, 2013; Lokki, Patynen, Tervo, Siltanen, & Savioja, 2011).It is scarcely understood how the seat-dip effect influences the perception of bass. Orchestral instruments that have their tuning range within the seat-dip attenuation range, such as double bass, tuba, and cello, may lack bass and articulation due to the seat-dip effect. For example, Bradley (1991) estimated that the attenuation of the double bass due to the seat-dip effect can be as much as 6 dB. Barron and Marshall (1981) observed that spatial impression is reduced in the presence of lateral reflections that contain the seat-dip attenuation. Davies et al. (1996) obtained a threshold of audibility for the seat-dip attenuation to be 5.7 dB in the 200 Hz octave band of the early energy over 0 to 40 ms. Although the seat-dip effect is generally considered to hamper the perception of bass, recent psychoacoustic research suggests that if the early reflections retain the bass, the lack of bass in the direct sound may actually enhance the overall perception of bass (Walther, Robinson, & Santala, 2013).In addition to the seat-dip effect, the perception of bass in concert halls is affected by other factors, such as the residual absorption by the seats, walls, floor, and ceiling (Beranek, 2004, 2011). In general, hard thick surfaces absorb less bass than thin panels. Second, the vibrations of the stage floor have been proposed to augment the sound of the double bass and the cello connected to the floor via pins. So far, the augmented bass has been shown to be audible at the stage, but not among the audience (Abercrombie & Braasch, 2010; Wulfrank, Lyon-Caen, Jurkiewicz, Brulez, & Kahle, 2013). …

Classical musicians’ perception of room acoustic conditions.

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted)When designing rooms for performance or rehearsing of classical music, listening to and understanding musicians' needs and preferences is of crucial importance for achieving a successful result. The first comprehensive study including musicians' opinions about room acoustics was carried out by Leo Beranek as part of his preparation for the design of Philharmonic Hall in New York. Beranek interviewed (among others) 23 notable musicians about their evaluation of existing concert halls around the world. Beranek's results were published in his book, Music, Acoustics and Architecture in 1962 with the latest edition being (Beranek, 2004). For more than half a century, this book has been a major corner stone in the architectural acoustics literature. Another study on musician's opinions about room acoustics was carried out as part of the author's PhD study back in the 1980s (Gade, 1981). Extensive interviews with 32 experienced, professional musicians- conductors, soloists, and orchestra players-were conducted in the attempt to provide a vocabulary for description of musicians' room acoustic experiences. A summary can be found in (Gade, 1989). Also, Meyer (1994) gives valuable insight into the acoustic needs of musicians based on many years of research and his own practical experience as a musician. More recently, Dammerud (2009) has conducted a comprehensive study on stage acoustics in concert halls which also gives a deep insight into the room acoustic aspects experienced by orchestra musicians. Even after several decades of research and consulting in this field, the author still believes that the subjective aspects-or subjective parameters-contained in the literature mentioned above cover what most musicians experience as the important factors relating to the acoustics of the rooms they play in. In the following, these parameters will be written in italic.Since the 1970s, many attempts have been made also to find objective parameters, which can provide a quantitative evaluation of some of the subjective acoustic parameters of concern to musicians when they play-and listen-in concert and rehearsal halls. The obvious goal is to be able to evaluate through measurement and to predict through calculation using 3D models the acoustic quality of such rooms. An overview of the journey toward this goal-as of 2010-was described in a paper presented at the International Symposium on Room Acoustics in Melbourne (Gade, 2010).However, the scope of this article is different. We will not dwell on objective sound field properties or acoustic measurements, but rather elaborate on musician's ways of expressing their room acoustic experience and how they often associate this with the design features they see in halls or rehearsal rooms.For the acoustician, it is often a dilemma to handle musician's views on room design, as these are often related to metaphors or associations based on nonacoustic experience rather than on physical causation, and sometimes this may lead to conflicts in opinion that challenge the diplomatic skills of the acoustician. The dilemma here is that the musician knows best what he feels while the acoustician should know more about physics and psycho acoustics. That is also why the best dialogue is often established if the acoustician has some musical experience and the musician has some technical interest.Subjective Acoustic Aspects Noted by MusiciansThe first room acoustic aspect most musicians notice when entering a hall or rehearsal room is the degree of Reverberance or Fullness, and this quality seems to remain the most important acoustic feature to soloists. Like most acoustically conscious lis- teners, musicians notice the complementary property to Reverberance being Clarity. When Reverberance is excessive, the sound is unclear, wet, boomy, muddy, and often too loud, while it is normally easy to distinguish each note and the individual instruments in rooms with high Clarity and modest Reverberance. …

Laymon Miller, distinguished consultant in noise control engineering at Bolt Beranek and Newman

Laymon Miller was employed in Harvard’s Underwater Sound Lab (HUSL), under the direction of Professor F. V. Hunt during World War ll. When that laboratory closed, Laymon joined the consulting staff at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN). Laymon became BBN’s leading expert on the reduction of noise and vibration in ventilating systems. One of his important jobs was noise reduction at New York’s Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall. He also became expert in vibrations transmitted through the earth. In particular, he designed the vibration isolation pads used to reduce the transmission of railroad track vibrations into adjacent buildings in a number of cities, including Boston’s Back Bay and Montreal. Practically every important building acoustics project that came into BBN received his attention. He gained the reputation of more chargeable consulting time each month than any other employee. Besides mentoring numerous new BBN employees he taught highly sought after courses on noise reduction for architects, building, industrial and plant engineers, as well as for other acoustical consultants.

The Search for Excellence in Auditorium Acoustics

The scientific approach to room acoustics is now well over a hundred years old. Yet two concert halls from the nineteenth century (the Musikvereinssaal, Vienna of 1870 and the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam of 1888) are still viewed as among the best in the world, as is the first product of a scientific approach (Boston Symphony Hall, Massachusetts of 1900). Has a century of research and building new auditoria failed to make any progress? One is reminded of the situation with violins, modern violin makers fight to compete with the reputation of Stradivarius’ violins built 300 years ago. With auditorium acoustics, the search has been long, with bursts of activity at certain times often in response to new experimental techniques. Considerable progress has been made but the search is not over. This article hopes to elaborate on the challenges involved.

Variations V: “Escaping Stagnation” Through Movement of Signification

Variations V, a collaborative event by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and composer John Cage, premiered on July 23,1965 at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts as part of the New York Philharmonic's French-American Festival. Following Edgard Varese's Hyperprism, Pierre Boulez's Improvisation sur Mallarme II, and Elliot Carter's Second String Quartet, Variations V contrasted greatly in composition and media with the pieces of the first half of the Philharmonic's program. Instead of orchestral instrumentalists performing live on their trumpets, cellos, and violins, recorded and radio sounds filled the concert hall through six speakers "distributed around Philharmonic Hall" (Hughes "Leaps" 1965:10); the choreographed movements of seven dancers occupied the stage; and filmed images projected on a screen behind them. The performance was an over­ whelming multimedia display, with no immediate connection between the various modes of artistic expression. This was not the case, however, as performances of Variations V in the 1960s depended on a complex interface for the production of simultaneity between visual and aural media, as woven by multiple voices of artistic authority. This interface may initially be traced to Cage and Cunningham, and their shared desire to create a performance in which movement on stage set sound into motion. However, multiple collaborators contributed their electronic designs to make performances of Variations V possible. To begin, a team of sound engineers created technology to mediate between motion and sound. The first piece of equipment was a fifty-channel mixer built by Max Mathews-an innovator in the field of computer and electronic music-one year prior to the French-American Festival in 1964, for Cage's New York Philharmonic premiere of Atlas Eclipticalis. Cage then called on a Swedish research scientist at Bell Labs, Wilhelm (Billy) Kluver, to construct a series of photocells. Whenever a dancer passed in front of a light source on stage and interfered with a cell's reception of that light, the interruption would trigger a change in sound. To add to this method of electronic sound activation were twelve high capacitance antennae constructed by Robert Moog, yet another innovator of electronic music; each one taken into consideration by Cunningham when he devised his choreographic design. Sounds emanated primarily from two types of sources: tape recorders and radios. All of the tapes were created by Cage before the premiere and

Leo Beranek and concert hall acoustics

Dr. Leo Beranek’s pioneering concert hall research and project work has left an indelible impression on the study and practice of concert hall design. Working as both scientist and practitioner simultaneously for most of his 60 + years in the industry, his accomplishments include dozens of published papers on concert hall acoustics, several seminal books on the subject, and consulting credit for numerous important performance spaces. This paper will briefly outline a few of his key contributions to the field of concert hall acoustics (including his work regarding audience absorption, the loudness parameter G, the system of concert hall metrics and ratings that he developed, and other contributions), his project work (including the Tanglewood shed, Philharmonic Hall, Tokyo Opera City concert hall, and others), and his role as an inspiration for other leaders in the field. His work serves as the basis, the framework, the inspiration, or the jumping-off point for a great deal of current concert hall research, as evidenced by the extraordinarily high frequency with which his work is cited; this paper will conclude with some brief remarks on the future of concert hall research that will build on Dr. Beranek’s extraordinary career.

Legendary Conductors of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (review)

Legendary Conductors of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. 5 vols. DVD. Disc 1: Charles Munch. Maurice Ravel, Ma Mere l'Oye (Suite), (February, 1958); Claude Debussy, Iberia (October, 1961), La Mer (October, 1958). Disc 2: Erich Leinsdorf. Franz Schubert, Symphony No. 9 in C Major (March, 1963); Robert Schumann, Symphony No. 4 in D minor (November, 1962); Richard Wagner, Parsifal - Good Friday Music ( January, 1964). Disc 3: Erich Leinsdorf. Ludwig van Beethoven, Egmont Overture (April, 1969); Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5 in E minor (April, 1969); Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Serenade No. 9 in D major ( January, 1963). Disc 4: William Steinberg. Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 8 in C minor ( January, 1962). Disc 5: William Steinberg. Franz Joseph Haydn, Symphony No. 55 in E flat major (October, 1969); Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 7 in A major (October, 1970) and Symphony No. 8 in F major ( January, 1962). [London]: ICA Classics, 2013 ICAB 5115. $99.99.This five DVD set focuses on the three conductors of the Boston Symphony Or - che stras during the 1960's - Charles Munch (1949-1962), Erich Leinsdorf (1962-1969), and William Steinberg (1969-1972, although two selections from a concert he guest conducted in 1962 are included). These broadcasts are important not only in that they allow comparison of the styles of three very different conductors, but also because of the pioneering work of WGBH in the field of televised concerts.These groundbreaking tapes were a part of the semi-regular broadcasts of the BSO that began in 1955 and continued through the 1970's at the rate of about one every other month. ICA has begun a program of bringing out a significant number of these from the pre-Seiji Ozawa years (during which the shows were called Evening at Symphony) featuring the regular conductors as well as guests such as Pierre Mon - teux and Claus Tennstedt. To those who are historically inclined, the opportunity of seeing some of the legendary but somewhat forgotten players of that era is reason enough to own this set. Just among the winds, clarinetists Gino Cioffiand Manny Valerio, trumpeter Roger Voisin, horn player James Stagliano and English horn player Louis Speyer (whose career stretched back to the premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps in 1913) were joined by the next generation including Ralph Gomberg on oboe, bassoonist Sherm Walt and flautist Doriot Anthony Dwyer. Dwyer's case is particularly interesting - as the first woman to occupy a first chair in a major American symphony, she represents a major change in the culture in the industry, although it is curious to see that there were other women performing on these broadcasts on cello and horn - one wonders who they were and how they came to be engaged as substitutes.The first of these concerts in 1955 was televised from the Kresge Auditorium at M.I.T., but by the time of these performances recording had moved to Harvard's Sanders Theatre where it remained until 1963 when Symphony Hall was finally equipped with permanent broadcast facilities. The technical evolution of these concerts from the earliest to the latest in this set is remarkable, although perhaps the biggest surprise is that the quality of the direction and camera work was so high to begin with. Tapes of sports events from this period, for example, are extremely primitive looking today with their inflexible and distant camera work not to mention the lack of continuity. These broadcasts were directed beautifully, with closeups, section features and panning shots that demonstrate true knowledge of the music on the part of the directors (David M. Davis in the earlier years and William Cosel later). Even the lack of color in all but the last selections does not detract from the highly polished appearance. Occasionally some extra musical moments intrude - the fire engine passing by between movements of Debussy's Iberia, the re-tuning between movements of the Schubert Symphony no. 9, etc.The three conductors profiled in this collection all came to the BSO with different agendas and personalities and each was fairly conservative in his programming. …

Liverpool, Philharmonic Hall and London, Barbican and Regent's Hall: Mark-Anthony Turnage

In a baffling case of unhelpful scheduling, major new works by Mark-Anthony Turnage were showcased by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra in concerts held at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool and London's Barbican, respectively, on the same evening – 7 February 2013. Apart from necessitating an explanation for the composer's absence from the RLPO concert in their season's programme book, this double booking resulted in audiences being unable to experience live performances of two of Turnage's most substantial recent orchestral pieces. Surely one of these significant premières could have been rescheduled to another date – or, if not, a different time of day, creating a sporting chance to experience both events? Fortunately, the LSO concert was broadcast, enabling those of us who chose to attend the Liverpool concert to catch the London première retrospectively.