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It's been a while since I've made a thread for pretentious discussion on a BS subject, so here's one about the relationship between music and architecture


Dixon Hill
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I know that at least Blume and I discussed this a bit last year, and I want to see if anyone else has any thoughts on it. Do you find that certain music sounds like what certain architecture looks like? What's the root of this perceptual phenomena? Some variant of synesthesia? Isn't there some quote by Goethe on the subject that people who want to seem deep post on their Facebook pages? Is that all that I'm doing, in a more convoluted way?

This

sounds like this

4qr2puqeofekorrf.jpg

and no, it's not just because The Big Lebowski put them together. There's a real parallel between them. Did the Coens feel what I feel? Am I crazy? High? What's the deal?

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Probably due to what David Hume calls the "Association of Ideas," which for him is a way of saying the association of various sense perceptions. Thus, we might associate a given smell with a childhood memory or such. We associate space with emptiness and a solo flute with solitude--Williams cements this connection in SW. Big brick buildings we might associate with royal music or cathedrals with sacred music, etc.

More than just the big picture connections, we might associate certain sonic groupings and approaches with smoothness, roughness, jaggedness, etc. The connection, then, with various architectural designs could naturally flow from these associations.

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Probably due to what David Hume calls the "Association of Ideas," which for him is a way of saying the association of various sense perceptions. Thus, we might associate a given smell with a childhood memory or such. We associate space with emptiness and a solo flute with solitude--Williams cements this connection in SW. Big brick buildings we might associate with royal music or cathedrals with sacred music, etc.

More than just the big picture connections, we might associate certain sonic groupings and approaches with smoothness, roughness, jaggedness, etc. The connection, then, with various architectural designs could naturally flow from these associations.

I agree with this, it is basically conditioning. you hear a connection by being exposed to it over time.

It's actually an interesting question and I would be interested to know if people not raised on Western tonalities would agree the music clip fits the architecture. I doubt it but it would be interesting.

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I heard a dude named Eric Whitacre frequents here too, under the guise of "TheGreyPilgrim"...

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Probably due to what David Hume calls the "Association of Ideas," which for him is a way of saying the association of various sense perceptions. Thus, we might associate a given smell with a childhood memory or such. We associate space with emptiness and a solo flute with solitude--Williams cements this connection in SW. Big brick buildings we might associate with royal music or cathedrals with sacred music, etc.

More than just the big picture connections, we might associate certain sonic groupings and approaches with smoothness, roughness, jaggedness, etc. The connection, then, with various architectural designs could naturally flow from these associations.

I agree with this, it is basically conditioning. you hear a connection by being exposed to it over time.

It's actually an interesting question and I would be interested to know if people not raised on Western tonalities would agree the music clip fits the architecture. I doubt it but it would be interesting.

The second part of what Tom says is far more compelling than the first. As I said in the original post, I'm not interested in mere associations (the piece and house both being used in The Big Lebowski). That all sort of goes without saying I think. Musical tropes and whatnot. What I mean is the experience of listening to a piece of music, and visualizing it in an architectural way, and finding that it bears similarity to something. I suppose it's just based on aesthetic qualities like you suggest - smooth, rough, glassy, stony, etc.

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4qr2puqeofekorrf.jpg

I don't know about musical connections, but that image above brought me back to Jakarta in Indonesia for a moment.

(blurry pic, I know)

xglj02.jpg

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