ABSTRACT
Before the twentieth century, auditorium acoustics owed very little to science. And it will always remain an art, involving such things as careful balancing of priorities and the incorporation of forms or surfaces beneficial to the acoustics but also acceptable architecturally. For a few nineteenth-century designers, the experience of building many auditoria inspired a feel for good acoustic design, but sadly they chose for their own reasons not to publicize their secrets. Valiant attempts at summaries of acoustic knowledge by interested architects such as Vitruvius (1960) in the first century BC and much more recently Smith (1861) failed to fulfil their promise as serious guides to design. Garnier (1880) for his design of the Paris Opéra concluded that acoustics was ‘nothing but contradictory statements’. It was a fair assessment for the time.
