Buildings for Music: The Architect, the Musician, the Listener from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day

This book establishes how musical taste and style affected architecture, and how in turn buildings and their acoustics influenced musical composition. Michael Forsyth examines the emergence of the purpose-built music room; the evolution of the opera house; the development of Romantic music related to the great nineteenth-century concert halls and opera houses; and the growth of acoustic science. The evolution of the twentieth-century concert hall is paralleled with the emergence of modern music, recording techniques and the influence of cinema design. Finally, present and future trends in music and acoustics are seen beside the growth of electronics and the adjustable auditorium. Buildings for Music draws together architecture, acoustics and musical sociology and presents them in a scholarly but very readable text, beautifully illustrated with contemporary plans, paintings, prints and photographs.