In Wednesday’s (10/16) New York Magazine, Justin Davidson writes, “A concert hall is a facility designed to generate indelible memories…. Music can happen in a shed or a subway station. A violinist remains just as talented in her bedroom as on the stage of Carnegie Hall. But a great hall lies at the convergence of architecture, acoustics, and music. For the audience, the pleasures of seeing, hearing, and inhabiting a beautiful space merge in multisensory intensity. How high the ceilings rise, how intricately the walls curve and fold, how far the balconies extend, how steeply the floors are raked, how many seats fill how much square footage and what material they’re upholstered in—all these separately humdrum factors conspire to loft a crescendo so that it reaches the ear and hums through the body’s wires. We ask homes to give us comfort, offices to coax us into productivity, hospitals to help us heal; what we demand of concert halls is a regular opportunity to be moved…. Why do concert halls still matter?… A room that’s consecrated to music is one where people come together, sit in quiet communion, listen rather than shout, and focus for a couple of hours… Such an institution is one of the few sacramental spaces we have outside of explicitly religious buildings.”
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