Article ID: CBB001451116

Listening in Circles. Spoken Drama and the Architects of Sound, 1750--1830 (2014)

unapi

The establishment of the discipline of architectural acoustics is generally attributed to the physicist Wallace Clement Sabine, who developed the formula for reverberation time around 1900, and with it the possibility of making calculated prognoses about the acoustic potential of a particular design. If, however, we shift the perspective from the history of this discipline to the history of architectural knowledge and praxis, it becomes apparent that the topos of `good sound' had already entered the discourse much earlier. This paper traces the Europe-wide discussion on theatre architecture between 1750 and 1830. It will be shown that the period of investigation is marked by an increasing interest in auditorium acoustics, one linked to the emergence of a bourgeois theatre culture and the growing socio-political importance of the spoken word. In the wake of this development the search among architects for new methods of acoustic research started to differ fundamentally from an analogical reasoning on the nature of sound propagation and reflection, which in part dated back to antiquity. Through their attempts to find new ways of visualising the behaviour of sound in enclosed spaces and to rethink both the materiality and the mediality of theatre auditoria, architects helped pave the way for the establishment of architectural acoustics as an academic discipline around 1900.

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Authors & Contributors
Walton, Benjamin
Trippett, David
Davies, James Q.
Peter John Weise
Fanny Gribenski
Lockhart, Ellen
Concepts
Acoustics
Architecture
Sound
Physics
Technology
Music
Time Periods
18th century
17th century
Early modern
19th century
16th century
20th century
Places
Europe
United States
England
London (England)
Italy
China
Institutions
Académie Royale des Sciences (France)
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