It’s a little-discussed fact that the tempo of classical music compositions slowed in direct response to the ability to build larger performance spaces. As building techniques allowed larger halls to be constructed, their reverberation times forced composers to downshift tempo in order to retain musical intelligibility.
We have learned much about acoustics since, but we are in danger of losing this and other lessons...
The exacting conditions of certain acoustic spaces are now well recognised and big, reflective spaces have played as large a part in prompting the development of steered beam loudspeakers as recording studios have in sound isolation and control. And I’ve come across some ingenious moments along the way.Among them is a shopping mall in I visited Hong Kong, where the ambient music system used down-facing line arrays set in the ceiling to avoid reflections from several storeys of glass shop fronts. I’ve also sat in Tom Hidley’s infrasound (9Hz capable) studio control rooms, where there is as much physical space beneath the room floor as above it, in the quest for single-figure frequency performance. And in Philip Newell’s rooms, you can find near silence when you stand between monitor loudspeakers that are capable of unleashing hell. Priceless, all of it…
Space and danger
There is no comparable audio experience to standing inside a choir. Classical, gospel, even Welsh rugby players offer a very different experience if you can infiltrate their space. Even better is to be able to move among the performers, varying the ‘mix’ as you do.
A rare opportunity to do this is offered by Janet Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet art installation. A new take on Thomas Tallis’ Spem in Alium (a choral work for eight choirs of five voices, composed to mark the fortieth birthday of Queen Elizabeth I in 1575), Canadian installation artist Cardiff uses 40 speakers to represent each member of a recording of the Salisbury Cathedral Choir.
Forty Part Motet is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada and Inhotim in Brazil. It also tours, finding itself in some wonderful acoustic spaces – including the Rideau Chapel National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa) and the converted church that houses Fabrica in Brighton, England.
The recording of the choir was made at SoundMoves in the UK by Cardiff’s collaborator George Bures Miller and studio owner Steve Williams. ‘I want the audience to be able to experience a piece of music from the viewpoint of the singers,’ Cardiff explains. ‘Every performer hears a unique mix of the piece of music. Enabling the audience to move throughout the space allows them to be intimately connected with the voices. It also reveals the piece of music as a changing construct. As well I am interested in how sound may physically construct a space in a sculptural way and how a viewer may choose a path through this physical yet virtual space.’
I’m all for sound finding a place in any aspect of art. But while Cardiff certainly understands architectural occasion and the music she is using here, I am unconvinced she has properly considered the acoustics of her display spaces or those of the sound playback. ‘I placed the speakers around the room in an oval so that the listener would be able to really feel the sculptural construction of the piece,’ she says. ‘You can hear the sound move from one choir to another, jumping back and forth, echoing each other and then experience the overwhelming feeling as the sound waves hit you when all of the singers are singing.’
It’s all true and it works well. But why an arbitrary oval? Does she care where the speakers sit in the acoustic space? Does she take into account the size of the venue or phase cancellation between the speakers?
Art and artifice
In contrast to public performance, the beauty of the recording studio is in a unique chemistry of art, technology, performance and magic. Even interior design has a significant part to play in catalysing music making. Some of the most amazing and inspiring moments of recorded music are the product of these (and a few other complicating) factors.
Even after the decimation visited by ‘affordable’ technology and ‘project’ rooms, there are fantastic recording studios scattered around the world. Alongside Tom Hidley’s pioneering control room experiments and Philip Newell’s non-environment rooms, there is a spread of alternative approaches to acoustic control and compatibility between different rooms – and with the outside world.
But after these fantastic voyages into building alternative recording ‘environments’, it is true that very many recordings are made, mixed and even ‘mastered’ in bastard bedroom acoustics. Limited efforts to control acoustic issues are underwritten by limited understanding of what they are and what they mean.
For some recordings, these rooms aren’t too wide of the mark – especially when their characteristics and shortcomings are understood and addressed. But there is a broader loss of hard-won expertise and opportunity at large and it could cost us dear…
It’s reassuring to look at those falling classical tempi. It says that composers were listening to the results of their efforts. They were learning as well as using the technology that brought them bigger concert halls. Today, there is so much to hear that we often no longer listen.
Are you paying attention, at the back?