The Silenced Listener: Architectural

Acoustics, the Concert Hall and the

Conditions of Audience

Lewis Kaye ab st ract

T he author considers the

relationship between architec-
ture, acoustics and audience.
The author proposes we think of

A
audience in a more active sense
and attend to conditions of audi-
ence. This dynamic approach
coustically architected space resounds in ity [2]. For example, the British demonstrates how changes
a very social manner, its physical conditions technologically acoustician Hope Bagenal and his in architecture designed for
sound both are related to social
manipulated to resonate and reverberate in ways that are as colleague Godwin Bursar found
changes in practices of listening
culturally implicit as they are materially audible. When consid- that changes to interior church ar- and inluence how people come
ering such space, the goal is the optimization of the moment, chitecture after the Lutheran Ref- to experience sound. Such an
generally the collective moment, of aural experience. Funda- ormation, speciically those to the approach reveals contemporary
mental to this is not only how architectural acoustics techni- Thomaskirche in Leipzig, were not acoustic architecture as biased
toward music as spectacle,
cally manages sonic qualities such as reverberation but also merely aesthetic but relective of a with conditions of audience that
how it organizes bodies in space. Spatial organization involves broader social and cultural shift in demand a silenced and attentive
what we are supposed to listen to and how we are supposed the relationship between church listener.
to listen: We are to attend to music performed onstage in a and community:
focused, attentive and silent manner. Beneath such assump-
The encroachment of galleries and
tions are the social relations of musical spectacle. The modern
boxes [on previously open cathedral
concert hall, as an exemplar of acoustically architected space, and church spaces] . . . was due to the Lutheran system of gov-
physically frames a persistent, idealized and hegemonic prac- ernment, which placed the church under the town council. But
tice of listening by the way it organizes sound as spectacle. It it also showed the importance and popularity of the church as
allows for a concept of audience as a passive and objectiied a building, and we must remember that it created the acoustic
conditions that made possible the seventeenth century develop-
mass of consumers. In other words, acoustic architecture, by ment of Cantata and Passion. The building became in fact a kind
speciically setting out to materially organize the moment of of religious opera house [3].
aural experience in a very particular way, comprises an en-
semble of technological practices that constitute very speciic Bagenal and Bursar thus implicitly raise the question of how
social and historical conditions of audience. changes in architectural form not only created the acoustic
This notion of audience differs from that generally found in conditions necessary for the development of new musical
communication studies or media sociology, where audience is forms but also how these acoustic conditions relected new so-
typically thought of as an objectiied entity. Their commonsen- cial values about how we should experience sound. In essence,
sical notion ascribes a label to a group of people sharing a com- what they are referring to here are new conditions of audience
mon media experience [1]. There is certainly an architectural and demands for a new way of socially experiencing sound.
connotation here in that such shared experience necessarily This idea of a religious opera house preigured a later at-
requires some level of spatial organization, but it is one more tentiveness to secular music as a spectacle demanding rever-
implied than explicit. Absent is any conscious consideration ence, as discussed by Jonathan Crary in his assessment of the
of the actual material conditions of the moment of experi- Bayreuth Festspielhaus, designed by Richard Wagner and ar-
ence and the implications these conditions might have for chitect Gottfried Semper and built in the mid-1870s [4]. While
the experience itself. By attending to the speciic architectural primarily concerned with visual practices, Crary nonetheless
and spatial conditions that frame the experience of sound, acknowledges sound and aurality in a way that actually helps
we get past a static understanding of audience to one that is dissolve conceptual boundaries between different forms of
more dynamic and variable: We move away from thinking of sensory experience. The very nature of spectacle necessarily
an or the audience to thinking about conditions of audience. involves the coordinated organization of various sensory ele-
We no longer simply presume an audience’s shared experi- ments. Drawing as one might expect on Guy Debord, Crary
ence but rather focus attention on the socially and historically argues:
inlected patterns through which such experience comes to
Spectacle is not primarily concerned with looking at images but
be organized. rather with the construction of conditions that individuate, im-
The relationship between architecture, musical form and mobilize, and separate subjects, even within a world in which
the social relations of church music highlight this variabil- mobility and circulation are ubiquitous. In this way, attention
becomes key to the operation of noncoercive forms of power.
This is why it is not inappropriate to conlate seemingly different
optical or technological objects: they are similarly about arrange-
Lewis Kaye (educator), Department of Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, ments of bodies in space, techniques of isolation, cellularization,
Waterloo ON, 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5, Canada. E-mail: and above all separation. Spectacle is not an optics of power but
<lewiskaye@sympatico.ca>, <lkaye@wlu.ca>. an architecture [5].

© 2012 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 22, pp. 63–65, 2012 63
 Applied to sound, Crary’s “spectacle” hall is an exemplar of an architecturally He notes a shift away from instrumental
foregrounds the relationship between organized and acoustically optimized training toward the “appreciation” of
contemporary musical performance and space that privileges the performer. professionally performed music now
what are nothing less than architectural The design of a typical concert hall is easily accessible through phonograph
techniques of social control. Acoustics is, in principle no different from that of recordings, a change that ultimately
of course, one such technique. In other Bayreuth, the only signiicant difference helped reify divisions between profes-
words, the architectural acoustics of spec- being what is physically onstage [8]. With sional and amateur musicians.
tacle directly involve the organization of few exceptions, modern musical perfor- Architectural acoustics helped concret-
conditions of audience. mance is intended as both an aural and ize, to borrow a concept from Christian
Wagner was interested in creating spec- visual spectacle, designed to grab and Norberg-Schulz [12], these new aural
tacles that would completely subsume the hold attention at both levels. It is a goal relations, reinforcing cultural attitudes
experiencing subject. His demand for a so obvious that the principal technologi- toward music that stressed a particular
high degree of attention from his audi- cal practice that underpins the design of understanding of quality, authenticity
ences guided all aspects of the design of modern concert halls is rarely ever ques- and the authority of the professional
his opera house. To focus attention on tioned. These conditions emphasize at- composer and musician. Architecturally
what was transpiring onstage, he hid the tentive listening by effectively silencing speaking we might say the home became
orchestra from public view, a decision listeners. a space to either dabble or consume
that had the effect of leaving “the source Such conditions result in the treat- while the acoustically optimized concert
of the music unidentiiable and hence ment of audience members as passive hall became the proper venue for the ex-
mystiied” [6]. The sound was meant to units of absorptive mass. Leo Beranek, perience of the spectacle of profession-
envelop the audience and emotionally one of the foremost contemporary ac- ally performed music.
empower the visual narrative unfolding ousticians, and his colleague Takayuki Practices of architecture, particularly
onstage. Music and architecture thus Hidaka have quantiied the acoustic ef- as they pertain to the formal organization
worked in support of visual spectacle, fect of audience members by compar- of spaces for sound, are intimately bound
producing an intense and authoritative ing the absorptive qualities of human up with the practices of listening they fos-
aesthetic experience. The design of the beings to that of variously upholstered ter. Acoustic architecture, in particular,
Bayreuth Festspielhaus also incorporated chairs [9]. Even the differential inlu- produces very controlled conditions of
other fascinating and salient social fea- ence of seasonal clothing is taken into audience predicated on the idea of spec-
tures. For example, Semper account, as audiences in the winter tend tacle. As the 18th-century Italian phi-
to wear more clothing than those in the losopher and art critic Count Francesco
placed the audience on one single “class- summer. Measurements showed the ab- Algarotti longed for, the modern concert
less” level, a feature anticipated by Wag- sorption coeficient for a full audience hall has become a “rationally designed
ner himself . . . [building] community by sitting in medium-upholstered chairs to theater that . . . no longer constitute[s] ‘a
leveling the tiers of the traditional the-
ater, erasing class difference, and creat- be quite close to that of an empty audito- place destined for the reception of a tu-
ing a “mystic gulf” between the audience rium with fully upholstered chairs. While multuous assembly, but as the meeting of
and the stage [7]. perhaps a sensible approach for acous- a solemn audience’” [13]. Yet what if we
ticians, as it aids in the prediction and were to turn the count’s idea on its head?
As with the Thomaskirche, new ideas development of models of how sound By considering the conditions of audi-
about social relations contributed to new will propagate inside a concert hall, the ence and the aural relations of spectacle
architectural forms, new ways of socially very idea that human beings are placed present in the modern concert hall, we
experiencing sound and hence new con- on the same level as pieces of furniture also raise the question of how we might
ditions of audience. seems quite troubling from a sociological organize and conigure space differently
The example of the Bayreuth Festspiel- perspective. so as to produce new conditions of au-
haus reminds us that what is hidden from Architectural acoustics, and the condi- dience and aural relations. Examples of
view is as important as what is visible and tions of audience it propagates, resounds this, in fact, abound.
that the arrangement of bodies in space with notions of the mass audience as a Brian Eno’s brilliant Ambient series of
is tantamount to the social organization passive group of receivers. The linear records is a notable example of music
of the physical conditions through which model of communication implicitly as- designed for nontraditional spaces and
those bodies come to hear. By hiding the sumed by science and engineering treats listening experiences and could be said
orchestra, Wagner made a speciic and asymmetrical power relations as a cul- to cultivate nontraditional conditions of
conscious choice about how the sound tural norm. Moreover, this model and its audience. In the liner notes to Ambient
was to be experienced. Putting a musical values are present in related media prac- 1: Music For Airports, Eno states, “Ambi-
performer onstage in front of a group of tices such as broadcasting and recorded ent Music must be able to accommo-
people involves no less a decision about music. Emily Thompson correctly con- date many levels of listening attention
the nature of sonic experience, albeit nected the emergence of architectural without enforcing one in particular; it
one that today seems mostly to be taken acoustics in the U.S.A. at the beginning must be as ignorable as it is interesting”
for granted. Just as Wagner’s choice mys- of the 20th century and a concomitant [14]. We can hear other transformative
tiied the source of the music, what our shift in the culture of listening toward approaches in practices ranging from
current hegemonic form of musical per- the consumption of professionally per- sound installation to electronic media
formance hides, and indeed mystiies, formed music [10], noticing a shift fos- art [15]. Nevertheless, such exceptions
is its own conditions of audience. With tered by the emergence of a range of new seem to prove the rule that traditional
some variability, this type of staged per- sound technologies. Similarly, Mark Katz musical performance, and the practice
formance is the generally accepted and writes about how the domestication of of architectural acoustics, tends toward
unquestioned model of Western musical the phonograph inluenced U.S. musical privileging a single, well-deined source
performance today. The modern concert education in the early 20th century [11]. transmitted to an undifferentiated mass

64 Kaye, The Silenced Listener

of passive, silenced consumers. This at- 3. Hope Bagenal and Godwin Bursar, “Bach’s Music 14. Brian Eno, Ambient 1: Music for Airports, LP, US
titude is still deeply embedded in con- and Church Acoustics,” Journal of the Royal Institute of Editions EG, EGS-201 (1978).
British Architects 37, No. 5 (11 January 1930) p. 157.
temporary culture; it is built into our 15. See, e.g., Brandon LaBelle, Background Noise:
4. Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Perspectives on Sound Art (New York: Continuum,
movie theaters, our living rooms and, of Spectacle and Modern Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT 2006). My own site-speciic sound art leans in this
course, our concert halls. Modern acous- Press, 1999). direction, seeking to blur distinction between what
tics has merely elevated such conditions 5. Crary [4] p. 74–75.
is composed, and hence to be listened to, and what
is there and thus will be heard. See You Are Here, com-
of audience to the status of scientiic missioned as the oficial MP3 audio guide for To-
6. Crary [4] p. 251.
ritual. ronto’s irst Nuit Blanche art event in 2006 at: <www.
7. Frank Lentricchia and Jody McAuliffe, Crimes of ccca.ca/nuitblanche/nuitblanche2006/artists/d1.
Art + Terror, (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, html>.
acknowledgments 2003) p. 14.

Many thanks to the reviewers of this paper. Their 8. The social stratiication of audience sections, how-
thoughtful comments and insightful criticisms on an ever, is an architectural feature that has certainly re- Manuscript received 2 January 2012.
earlier draft contributed much to the inal product. turned to the modern concert hall.
9. Leo L. Beranek and Takayuki Hidaka, “Sound Ab-
sorption in Concert Halls by Seats, Occupied and
Lewis Kaye is a Toronto-based sound artist, me-
references and Notes Unoccupied, and by the Hall’s Interior Surfaces,” dia sciences researcher and educator. Currently
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 104, No. 6, an instructor in the Department of Commu-
1. Vincent Mosco and I have argued that the schol- 3169–3177 (1998).
arly usage of the term audience in the ield of com-
nication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier Univer-
munication studies traces back to the inluence of 10. Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Ar- sity, he studies and teaches on the relationship
commercial broadcasters and their desire to assess chitectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in Amer- between technology, space and aurality, digi-
the demographic characteristics of radio listeners. ica, 1900–1930 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). tal culture and the materiality of media art.
See Vincent Mosco and Lewis Kaye, “Questioning the
Concept of the Audience,” in I. Hagen and J. Wasko,
11. Mark Katz, “Making America More Musical His most recent major artwork is Through
through the Phonograph, 1900–1930,” American the Vanishing Point, a sound installation
eds., Consuming Audiences? Production and Reception in
Music 16, No. 4, 448–475 (1998).
Media Research (Cresswell, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000). based on the work of Marshall McLuhan, ex-
2. See, e.g., Peter Vergo, That Divine Order: Music and
12. Christian Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space & Ar- hibited at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin
chitecture (New York: Praeger, 1971). and the Centre Culturel Canadien in Paris
the Visual Arts from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century
(New York: Phaidon, 2005). 13. Thompson [10] p. 46. in 2011.

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