Concert Halls and Opera Houses Music, Acoustics, and Architecture [Hardcover]

This illustrated guide to 100 of the world's most important concert halls and opera houses examines their architecture and engineering and discusses their acoustical quality as judged by conductors and music critics. The descriptions and photographs will serve as a valuable guide for today's peripatetic performers and music lovers. With technical discussions relegated to appendices, the book can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in musical performance. The photographs (specially commissioned for this book) and architectural drawings (all to the same scale) together with modern acoustical data on each of the halls provide a rich and unmatched resource on the design of halls for presenting musical performances. Together with the technical appendices, the data and drawings will serve as an invaluable reference for architects and engineers involved in the design of spaces for the performance of music.

he first question any lover of classical music usually asb an acoustician is, Which are the best halls in the world? The response-the three halls rated highest by world-praised conductors and music critics of the largest newspapers were built in 1870, 1888, and 1900-always prompts the next query: Why are those so good while many halls built after 1950 seem to be mediocre or failures? You will find answers to these questions in this book the result of a half-century's research into the very complex field of acoustics of halls for music. The dialog re-enacted above bears a close resemblance to another illustration that typically troubles music lovers. They frequently aslCh. 1 - Music and Acoustics / Ch.2 - The Language of Musical Acoustics / Ch.3 - 100 Concert Halls and Opera Houses / Ch.4 - Acoustics of Concert Halls / Ch.5 - Acoustics of Opera Houses / Appendix 1 - Terminology, Definitions, and Conversion Factors / Appendix 2 - Acoustical Data for Concert Halls and Opera Houses / Appendix 3 - Technical Data, Equations, and Sound Absorption / ls;