ABSTRACT
I call architecture “petrified music.” Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music. — Goethe (1829)
Good architecture is like a piece of beautifully composed music crystallized in space that elevates our spirits beyond the limitation of time. — Tao Ho (1980)
Rudolf Wittkower, in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1962), outlines the genesis of the relationship between architecture and music. He describes musical concepts of harmonic proportions and balance derived by Pythagoras and subsequently applied to architecture. Alberti is quoted as writing: “The numbers by means of which the agreement of sounds affects our ears with delight, are the very same which pleases our eyes and our minds.”
