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Listening in Circles. Spoken Drama andthe Architects of Sound, 1750–1830Viktoria Tkaczykab
a Theatre Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlandsb Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, GermanyPublished online: 28 Oct 2013.
To cite this article: Viktoria Tkaczyk (2014) Listening in Circles. Spoken Drama and the Architectsof Sound, 1750–1830, Annals of Science, 71:3, 299-334, DOI: 10.1080/00033790.2013.840928
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2013.840928
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Listening in Circles. Spoken Drama and the Architects of Sound,1750–1830
VIKTORIA TKACZYK
Theatre Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands / Max PlanckInstitute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany
Email: [email protected]
Received 27 February 2013. Revised paper accepted 3 August 2013
SummaryThe establishment of the discipline of architectural acoustics is generally attributed to thephysicist Wallace Clement Sabine, who developed the formula for reverberation timearound 1900, and with it the possibility of making calculated prognoses about theacoustic potential of a particular design. If, however, we shift the perspective from thehistory of this discipline to the history of architectural knowledge and praxis, it becomesapparent that the topos of ‘good sound’ had already entered the discourse much earlier.This paper traces the Europe-wide discussion on theatre architecture between 1750 and1830. It will be shown that the period of investigation is marked by an increasing interestin auditorium acoustics, one linked to the emergence of a bourgeois theatre culture andthe growing socio-political importance of the spoken word. In the wake of thisdevelopment the search among architects for new methods of acoustic research started todiffer fundamentally from an analogical reasoning on the nature of sound propagationand reflection, which in part dated back to antiquity. Through their attempts to find newways of visualising the behaviour of sound in enclosed spaces and to rethink both themateriality and the mediality of theatre auditoria, architects helped pave the way for theestablishment of architectural acoustics as an academic discipline around 1900.
Contents
1. Can you hear me? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2992. Re-circling the ancient theatre auditorium. Analogical reasoning and its
persistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3033. Spaces for the spoken word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3074. Theatre architecture meets the ‘physics of sound’. The issue of visualisation 3125. The materiality and mediality of architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3196. Conclusion. From showplaces to lecture halls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
1. Can you hear me?In 1790 the architect George Saunders conducted what at first might seem like a rather
banal experiment. After asking a test subject to declaim a play in an open square inLondon, he preceded to make a series of ever-widening circles around this subject untilthe latter’s voice could no longer be heard (Figure 1a). Saunders went on to conclude thatthe ideal form for a theatre auditorium was a three-quarter circle (Figure 1b).1 What is
1 George Saunders, A Treatise on Theatres (London, 1790), 85–90.
© 2013 Taylor & Francis
ANNALS OF SCIENCE, 2014Vol. 71, No. 3, 299–334, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2013.840928
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especially striking about this experiment, however, is less its outcome than the stronginterest Saunders shows in acoustics – or, as he puts it: ‘In designing a theatre the firstquestion that naturally arises is: in what form does the voice expand?’2
Saunders’ question is all the more surprising as European theatre architecture isgenerally thought to be characterised by the primacy and dominance of the eye. This hasbeen widely attributed to the etymology of the term ‘theatre’, derived from the Greekθέατρον (théatron = showplace). Hence, a number of recent studies have pointed to the‘regime of looking’, the ‘pictorial dramaturgy’ and the ‘drama of seeing’ in early modernand modern theatre.3 Furthermore, the majority of these studies place Western theatrearchitecture under the sign of a more general ‘hegemony of vision’ – one that, despiteextending back to antiquity, only became a radically defining moment during the earlymodern period with the invention of new optical instruments and visual technologies.4
However, a closer look at encyclopaedias and dictionaries shows that it was onlybetween the 16th and the mid-18th century that ‘theatre’ was primarily defined as a site forthe production of visual evidence.5 Subsequently, a number of lexica began to appear
Figure 1. a) Sketch of an experiment conducted by George Saunders in 1790 in London; b)Saunders’ theatre design (unrealized), 1790 (Source: George Saunders, A Treatise onTheatres. (London: I. & J. Taylor, 1790)).
2 Ibid., p. X.3 Cf. Ulrike Haß, Das Drama des Sehens. Auge, Blick und Bühnenform (Munich, 2005); Marie-Madelaine
Mervant-Roux, Figurations du spectateur. Une réflexion par l’image sur le théâtre et sur la théorie (Paris, 2007);Nic Leonhardt, Piktoral-Dramaturgie. Visuelle Kultur und Theater im 19. Jahrhundert (1869–1899) (Bielefeld,2007); Maaike Bleeker, Visuality in the Theatre. The Locus of Looking (New York, 2008); Kati Röttger andAlexander Jacob (eds.), Theater und Bild. Inszenierungen des Sehens (Bielefeld, 2009).
4 David M. E. Levin, Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision (Berkeley, 1993).5 In the Encyclopédie, for example, one reads: ‘Nous avons défini le mot théâtre selon son étymologie, tirée
du grec théatron, spectacle, […], nous dirons qu’on entend aujourd’hui par théâtre, particulierement chez lesItaliens, l’ensemble de plusieurs bâtiments qui, par leur élévation & une disposition heureuse, présentent uneagréable scène à ceux qui les regardent’: Louis de Jacourt, ‘Théâtre’, in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonnédes sciences, des arts et des métiers…, edited by Jean-Baptiste Le Rond d’Alembert and Denis Diderot (Stuttgart,1966 [1751–1780]), XVI, 227.
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Figure 1. (Continued).
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specialising in the performing arts. One example is the German Allgemeines Theater=Lexikon (1839–1842), where under the heading ‘Theater, Theaterbau’ considerableemphasis is placed on the need for a theatre building in which the audience is not onlyable to see but also to hear well. The article goes on to describe recent efforts by architectsto establish the acoustically perfect form and size of theatre auditoria – with conclusiveresults still pending.6 Indeed, in the Europe-wide discourse on theatre architecturebetween 1750 and 1830, the topos of ‘good sound’ can be seen to occur with increasingregularity.7 Whereas theatre construction had formerly taken up only a few pages withincomprehensive books on architecture, around 1750 a number of treatises began to appearthat were dedicated solely to this subject. Some provided overviews on historicalbuildings, others promoted a particular theatre design or discussed specific issues such asacoustics. This interest in acoustics was not only driven by a changing opera and concertculture.8 It was also and above all the newly emerging bourgeois theatre with itspreference for the spoken drama that encouraged architects to develop designs that wouldallow every nuance of the spoken word to be heard.
It therefore seems pertinent to examine the role played by theatre architecture around1800 in a more general history of architectural acoustics.9 As will be shown in thefollowing, the need for a new theatre acoustics led architects to suggest differentsolutions. While the majority of these architects voted for a return to the theories oftheatre design developed by the Roman scholar Vitruvius – thereby giving some of theancients’ major architectural principles a renewed impetus – others began to carry out
6 Louis Schneider, ‘Theater, Theaterbau’, in Allgemeines Theater=Lexikon oder Encyclopädie allesWissenswerthen für Bühnenkünstler, Dilettanten und Theaterfreunde…, edited by Robert Blum, HermanMarggraff and Carl Herlossohn, 7 vols. (Altenburg: Leipzig, 1848 [2nd ed.]), VII, 73–9 (75). Remarkably, thesame lexicon even includes an article on ‘acoustics’. Ibid., I, 43–4.
7 The first to draw attention to theatre acoustics was the Italian art critic Francesco Algarotti (1752), followedby architects such as Enea Arnaldi (1762) in Italy, Chevalier de Chaumont (1763) in France, George Saunders(1790) in Britain, or Christian Ludwig Stieglitz (1797) in Germany.
8 Cf. James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris. A Cultural History (Berkeley, 1996).9 Emily Thompson’s study on The Soundscape of Modernity. Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of
Listening in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge, 2004) has been of great importance for this paper. Due tothe study’s limited period of investigation, however, the importance of 19th-century architectural theories asindicators for an epistemic change in architectural theory remains rather unconsidered. Ando and Beyer alsofocus mainly on 20th-century architectural acoustics – stating that ‘perhaps the biggest event in architecturalacoustics in the second half of the nineteenth century was the birth of Wallace Clement Sabine in 1868!’ YoichiAndo, Architectural Acoustics. Blending Sound Sources, Sound Fields, and Listeners, (New York, 1998); RobertT. Beyer, Sound of Our Times. Two Hundred Years of Acoustics (New York, 1999), 159. Beranek and Forsythprovide broader historical overviews on concert-hall and opera architecture. But with regard to architecturalacoustics they, too, claim that little was known before Sabine’s research. Leo Beranek, Concert Halls and OperaHouses. Music, Acoustics and Architecture, (New York, 2004 [2nd ed.]); Michael Forsyth, Buildings for Music.The Architect, the Musician, and the Listener from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day (Cambridge,1985), 71, 235–53. Barron and Weinzierl have discussed 18th- and 19th-century theatres with the help of acousticmeasurements and reconstructions. Cf. Stefan Weinzierl, Beethovens Konzerträume. Raumakustik undsymphonische Aufführungspraxis an der Schwelle zum Modernen Konzertwesen (Frankfurt am Main, 2002);Michael Barron, Auditorium Acoustics and Architectural Design (London and New York, 2010 [2nd ed.]), 276–332. Among the 19th-century writings on theatre architecture only the German sources have so far receivedbroader attention. Cf. Jochen Meyer, Theaterbauten zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft. Die Diskussion überTheaterbau im deutschsprachigen Raum in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1998). Yet Meyerexplicitly disconnects the architects’ insights from the science of acoustics. Holl has drawn attention to 19th-century theatre architecture as a ‘birthplace of room acoustics’. I share her main argument, but some sources needto be reconsidered in this paper and put in a broader cultural-historical context. Susanne Holl, ‘Phänomenologiedes Schalls. Zur Erfindung der Raumakustik in der Architekturtheorie des Theaters um 1800’, Kaleidoskopien –Special Issue. Surround. Zur Architektonik akustischer Räume, 2 (1997), 31–47; Susanne Holl, ‘Strahl undWelle. Bilder des Schalls um 1800’, in Über Schall. Ernst Machs und Peter Salchers Geschoßfotografien, editedby Christoph Hoffmann and Peter Berz (Göttingen, 2001), 171–98.
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empirical research on the nature of sound by applying and examining new physicalinsights in acoustics. The latter developed new modes of visualising sound propagation inenclosed spaces, while still others coined a new notion of the acoustic materiality andmediality of architecture – long before architectural acoustics was finally established inthe early 20th century as an academic discipline. In this context the above-mentionedexperiment from 1790 by the architect George Saunders assumes an intermediate position,and shall therefore accompany us throughout this paper.
2. Re-circling the ancient theatre auditorium. Analogical reasoning and itspersistence
By walking in circles around his test subject, George Saunders experimentallycorroborated the circular auditorium form of ancient theatres. In his explicit reference tothe Roman scholar Marcus Vitruvius Pollio’s De architectura,10 he even reiterated amisreading of Vitruvius’ theory that at the time was already rich in tradition. In hiswritings on theatre architecture, Vitruvius attempted to harmonise several conflictingprinciples. First of all, he pointed to the need to build theatres in open spaces in order toavoid echoes and other disturbing acoustic effects. And it is here that we find one of themost famous passages in his work:
The voice is a flowing breath of air, and perceptible to the hearing by its touch. Itmoves by the endless formation of circles, just as endlessly expanding circles of wavesare made in still water if a stone is thrown into it. These travel outwards from the centre asfar as they can, until some local constriction stands in the way, or some other obstacle thatprevents the waves from completing their patterns. In the same way the voice makescircular motions; however, on the surface of water the circles move horizontally, while thevoice at once advances horizontally and mounts upwards, step by step. […] Therefore thearchitects of old, following Nature’s footsteps, perfected the stepped seating of theatresafter their researches into the rising of the voice.11
Vitruvius considered sound propagation to be analogous either to a ‘breath of air’ orto ‘water waves’ – two assumptions that refer back to the Aristotelian ‘breath theory’(according to which an inseparable unit of air transports the sound from its source to theear) and Diogenes Laertius’ rather vague analogy between sound and water waves.12 Bothanalogies were only superseded in late 17th-century mechanics. Nevertheless, they helpedVitruvius to reach a partial understanding of phenomena such as interference, reflection,reverberation and echo (in his words, ‘dissonance’, ‘echo’, ‘circumsonance’ and‘resonance’), using physical terms that were still valid for his time.13 It is important tonote, however, that from the nature of sound propagation Vitruvius only deduces that theseats of the theatre auditorium should be staggered, while the idea of the circular form ofthe auditorium is derived not from a ‘physical’ but a ‘cosmological’ architecturalprinciple:
Whatever the size of the lower parameter, locate a centre point and draw a circlearound it, and in this circle draw four triangles with equal sides and at equal intervals.
10 Saunders (note 1), 25 and 48–54.11 Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, translated by Ingrid D. Rowland (Cambridge, 1999 [30–25 B.C.]), V
(3), 66.12 Cf. Olivier Darrigol, ‘The Analogy between Light and Sound in the History of Optics from the Ancient
Greeks to Isaac Newton (Part I)’, Centaurus, 52, 2 (2010), 117–55 (136).13 Cf. also Vitruvius (note 11), V (8), 70.
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These should just touch the circumference of the circle. (By these same triangles,astrologers calculate the harmonies of the stars of the twelve heavenly signs in musicalterms.) Of these triangles, take the one whose side will be closest to the performingplatform. There, in that area that cuts the curvature of the circle, lay out the scaenae frons,and draw a parallel line from that place through the centre of the circle; this will divide offthe platform of the proscenium and the area of the orchestra.14
What is significant here is that Vitruvius’ symmetric dodecagonal figure – consistingof four equilateral triangles inscribed in a circle – refers to antique astronomy (see Figure2).15 Already in his chapter on temple architecture, Vitruvius pointed out that symmetries,
Figure 2. Reconstruction of the Vitruvian auditorium by Bernardo Galiani (1758) (Source: VitruviusPollio, L’ Architettura Di M. Vitruvio Pollione, Colla Traduzione Italiana e Comento delmarches Bernardo Galiani (Naples: Stamperia Simoniana, 1758), appendix, 520).
14 Ibid., V (6), 66.15 Throughout history this description has been interpreted differently. Cesare Cesariano, who translated
Vitruvius into Italian in the 15th century, supposed that the circle was meant to include the whole cavea (the totaltheatre space), whereas the 18th-century Italian scholar Bernardo Galiani determined that the circle denoted theorchestra (the centre of the theatre) only.
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because of their universal character, should be considered literally as analogies:‘Symmetry derives from proportion, which is called analogia in Greek. Proportion isthe mutual calibration of each element of the work and of the whole, from which theproportional system is achieved.’16 Vitruvius’ (mostly Pythagorean) worldview was basedon a harmonious system of ‘ideal proportions’ and ‘perfect numbers’ governing bothcosmic and worldly phenomena – including the human body as well as architecturalconstructions. Hence, the well-proportioned circular theatre auditorium was also supposedto provide a link between microcosm and macrocosm. This cosmological analogy seems,however, to have led away from the physical acoustic criteria mentioned above. Andindeed Vitruvius stresses that the circular (stone) theatres are acoustically imperfect andtherefore need to be supplemented with so-called echeia (ηχεĩα), resonant bronze vesselsinstalled between the seats of the auditoria.17
The fact that Vitruvius’ theory was governed by two different architectural principles– one physical, the other geometric and cosmological – led to a series of misinterpreta-tions in the reception of his work. While Vitruvius’ writings had a moderate influence onlate antique and medieval architecture, it became even more pervasive during theRenaissance. In his De re aedificatoria (1443–1452, published 1485) the Italian architectLeon Battista Alberti refers explicitly to Vitruvius and briefly borrows his concept of theauditorium in the shape of, as Alberti puts it, a ‘moon on the wane’, without calling thisinto question.18 Yet according to the Renaissance scholar, it was acoustics that ‘firstprompted men to make their theatres circular’.19 Alberti thus overlooks the geometricanalogical reasoning behind Vitruvius’ choice of the circular shape, instead dedicatinglarge passages to the wave-like propagation of sound and the architectural methods ofreinforcing sound through appropriate theatre size and a resonating circumvallation.20 Hisscarce references to optical matters, on the other hand, might be understood as an attemptto defend the theatre against the anti-theatrical prejudices of his time, whose main pointsof criticism were the theatre’s visual obscenity and its increasingly pagan character. That
16 Ibid., III (1), 47.17 According to its frequency, the actor’s voice should resonate with one of the vessels to achieve an
‘increased clarity and a harmonic complement to its own tone’. In order to tune the echeia, Vitruvius does notdraw on Pythagorean harmonies, which is to say, on an abstract musical system based on arithmetically ruledintervals, but on the Peripatetic philosopher Aristoxenus’ Elements of Harmony, whose empirical musical systemwas based on human auditory perception. Vitruvius refers to Aristoxenus’ three principal scales of harmony:enharmonic, chromatic and diatonic. Due to their shapes the vessels should resonate with the actor’s voice in theintervals of a fourth, a fifth, sequentially up to the double octave (those were the fixed intervals of each scale). Inlarge theatres, as many as three rows of bronze vessels should be installed (thirteen vessels per row) –corresponding to the Aristoxenian scales. Although the vessels probably did not achieve the required effect, theyillustrate Vitruvius’ interest in the physical-physiological conditions of hearing. Ibid., V (4), 68. On Aristoxenus’musical theory cf. Andrew Barker, Greek Musical Writings. Volume 2. Harmonic and Acoustic Theory, 2 vols.(Cambridge, 1989), II, 119–89. On Vitruvius’ vessels cf. Robert G. Arns and Bret E. Crawford, ‘ResonantCavities in the History of Architectural Acoustics’, Technology and Culture, 36, 1 (1995), 104–35; PanagiotisKarampatzakis et al., A Study on Aristoxenus Acoustic Urns, Presented at the Acoustics of Ancient TheatresConference Patras, 2011, online: http://invenio.lib.auth.gr/record/127577/files/A%20study%20on%20Aristoxe-nus%20acoustic%20urns.pdf (2011).
18 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, translated by Neil Leach, Joseph Rykwert andRobert Tavernor (Cambridge, 1988 [1443–1452]), 270.
19 Ibid., 273.20 Ibid., 268 and 271–3.
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is why Alberti also pointed to the theatre’s potential to ‘cultivate the mind’ and ‘toencourage intellectual energy’.21
In the course of the 15th century, such anti-theatrical prejudices gave way to a morescholarly interest in the theatre as a medium of auditory communication. Throughtranslation and printing, Vitruvius’ theory became even more influential.22 It is thereforevery likely that the Italian architect Andrea Palladio, who had illustrated DanieleBarbaro’s Vitruvius translations, also favoured a ‘tuned architecture’ in his design forthe Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, which was realised in 1585 by Vincenzo Scamozzi (seewww.teatrolimpicovicenza.it). The semi-oval auditorium brings the audience as close aspossible to the stage, and the antique-style cavea is framed by a resonating circumvalla-tion, as described in Alberti’s De re aedificatoria. Here, instead of resonant vases,resonance chambers were installed in the form of three niches in the scaenae frons.Nevertheless, the Renaissance architects did not ultimately resolve the conflict betweenVitruvius’ differing architectural principles. On the one hand, the Teatro Olimpico isclearly designed as a reverberatory space; on the other, the geometric cosmologicalanalogy – expressed visually in the semi-circle stretched to a half-ellipse – still remainsinfluential.23
In 17th- and 18th-century European court culture, architects such as the Galli-Bibienabrothers again focussed on spatial-visual theatre design (see www.perspectiv-online.org),whereby the earlier cosmological analogical reasoning was transformed into a politicalone. The new theatres with their bell-shaped auditoria served to represent the order ofcourt policy. Since, in relation to both the stage and the whole auditorium, the sovereign(the king or duke) should occupy the true centre of perspective, the royal seats wereinstalled in the centre of the first gallery. All other members of the auditorium weresubject to a distorted perspective, or even (especially from the side galleries) a limitedview of the stage. This explains why the architectural treatises of this period containextensive chapters on how to adapt the art of perspective to stage and auditorium design.Issues of acoustics, however, are hardly mentioned at all.24
This development led the art critic Francesco Algarotti to state in 1755 that it wouldbe ‘equally ridiculous in any person to have a theatre built so large, as that people couldnot hear in it, as in an engineer, to make the works of a fortress in such a manner, as that
21 Ibid., VIII (7), 268. The Church Fathers’ polemic against theatre performances was echoed in 15th-centuryItaly. At this time (too) spectacular church plays were transferred to church squares and marketplaces, and non-religious triumphal parades and courtly performances emerged. Cf. Philine Helas, Lebende Bilder in deritalienischen Festkultur des 15. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1999).
22 Vitruvius, I dieci libri dell’architettura di M. Vitruvio. Tradotti & commentati da Mons. Daniel Barbaro(Venice, 1567), 227–47. In acoustic terms, the most important translations were those of Daniele Barbaro (1556and 1567, Venice). Barbaro’s comments on Vitruvius’ resonant vessels also provide a detailed explanation ofAristoxenus’ musical theory. Cf. Ann E. Moyer, Musica Scientia. Musical Scholarship in the Italian Renaissance(New York, 1992), 190–1. Furthermore, in 16th-century Venice, Aristoxenus’ theory of harmony was supportedby a number of scholars whose theories of resonance were transferred explicitly from instrument building toarchitecture. Paolo Sanvito, ‘Die Darstellung der Proportion und ihre Instrumente in der Kunst- undHarmonielehre des Cinquecento’, in Imagination und Repräsentation. Zwei Bildsphären der Frühen Neuzeit,edited by Horst Bredekamp, Christiane Kruse and Pablo Schneider (Munich, 2010), 299–319, 315.
23 Recent acoustic measurements have shown, however, that the Teatro Olimpico may have corresponded wellto the late 15th-century style of vocal interpretation of the ancient drama. Cf. Stefan Weinzierl, Frank Schultz andPaolo Sanvito, ‘Die Akustik des Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza’, Fortschritte der Akustik – DAGA (2011), 163–4.
24 Only the 17th-century architect F. C. Motta criticised his contemporaries for their bell-shaped auditoriadesigns. He advocated a reconsideration of the ancient semi-circular form with its regularly staggered seating, sothat ‘everyone will be able to see and hear comfortably’. Fabrizio Carini Motta, Trattato sopra la struttura de’teatri e scene … (Guastalla, 1676), 23–6.
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they could not be defended’.25 Algarotti felt that most of the architects of his time simplyreproduced the established bell shape of theatre auditoria. Yet for him the bell analogy ismisleading and does not guarantee ideal theatre acoustics as ‘the mouth of a bell answersto the opening of the stage, and the middle box is placed where the clapper of a bell issuspended from’.26 Nevertheless, Algarotti walks into the same trap of analogicalreasoning by advocating a semi-elliptic auditorium that would combine the moderntendency of a large and deep stage with the (allegedly) ideal acoustics of the ancient semi-circular auditorium – thereby ignoring the fact that Vitruvius did not give acoustic butcosmological analogical reasons for this shape.
The same misunderstanding can be found in the architectural theories of Algarotti’scontemporaries, who considered only the Vitruvian semi-circle to be appropriate toamplify the actor’s voice and render the theatre more harmonious.27 Thus, in the late 18th
century, the myth of the ancients’ acoustically perfect theatre auditoria acquired a renewedinfluence. It is therefore hardly surprising that the British architect Saunders alsoconsidered the circular form of his design to be ‘most analogous to the good examples ofthe antique’.28 In order to accommodate about 2,000 spectators, Saunders decided for thethree-quarter instead of the ancient semi-circular form.29 Unlike his colleagues, however,he did not deduce the circular form from a theoretical perspective alone. Rather, he re-integrated the circular form into the setting of his experiment by sounding out the range ofthe actor’s speech.
3. Spaces for the spoken wordWhen describing the conditions of his experiment, Saunders indicated the following:
‘A calm day was chosen for the purpose, and an open plane; the position of speaker andhearer were alternately changed, and the notes made by each compared. A book was madeuse of for this purpose, as the voice was less liable to be altered by reading’.30 Theimportance that the architect attached to the declamation of his test subject was nocoincidence. While most of his Italian colleagues still considered their designs to serveequally well for different genres of performance, Saunders stressed the need to make aclear distinction between ‘our theatres for dramatic representation and the opera; therequisites and accommodations expected in each being very distinct, according to ourusages’.31
25 Francesco Algarotti, An Essay on the Opera (= Saggio sopra l’opera in musica), translated by Anonymous,(London, 1767 [1763]), 97.
26 Ibid., 100.27 Cf. Enea Arnaldi, Idea di un teatro nelle principali sue parti simile a’teatri antichi all’uso moderno
accomodato (Vincenza, 1762), 5–8 and 21–34. Ten years later, F. Milizia argued even more radically against theloges of modern theatres, as according to him, they did not only absorb most of the sound, but also allowed theaudience to continuously whisper and chatter and thereby distract attention from the performance. He, too,suggested reconstructing one of the ancient theatres with their ‘great hearing and seeing comfort’. FrancescoMilizia, Principj di architettura civile (Milan, 1832 [chapter published as Del Teatro 1773]), 436–7.
28 Saunders (note 1), X (preface).29 Saunders designed a theatre with a diameter of 60 feet and a height of 45 feet (from the stage floor). The
speaker should be positioned 17 feet from the centre of the circle, so that the distance from speaker to listenerwould be a maximum of 92 feet in front and 75 feet on either side. The theatre should only have one row ofboxes and two staggered galleries above. Ibid., 85–90. Besides Vitruvius, Saunders’ main reference is the three-quarter circular auditorium of the Grand Theatre in Bordeaux, completed by Victor Louis in 1760. But Saunders’design shows a much larger theatre with a narrower circle segment.
30 Ibid., 4.31 Ibid., 30.
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Here, Saunders is alluding to the fact that by the late 18th century theatres weretransformed from courtly into public institutions. Even smaller European cities wereaffected by a major boom in theatre architecture. As a result, architects were faced withthe need for far more and far larger theatres than had been the case during the earlymodern period, and the paying audience expected to be able to see and hear with equalclarity. Moreover, and most importantly in the present context, a new literary genreemerged, the bourgeois drama, which was clearly distinct from all forms of musicaltheatre. This new genre aimed to educate the audience through the spoken word, and toform language-based, morally uplifted national communities.32
In his well-known essay ‘Was kann eine gute stehende Schaubühne eigentlichwirken?’ (1784), the German playwright Friedrich Schiller describes the aim of the newbourgeois theatre praxis as follows: ‘Each takes joy in others’ delights, which then,magnified in beauty and strength, are reflected back to him from a hundred eyes, and nowhis bosom has room for a single sentiment, and this is: to be truly human’.33 At firstglance, Schiller seems to be referring back to the visual aesthetics of early modern bell-shaped auditoria, which were intended to produce effects of mirroring – although in hisessay it is not just the sovereign, but also the whole audience that should be reflected ineach other. But Schiller does not provide any information on how his ‘Schaubühne’should look with respect to the art of perspective or other optical criteria. Instead, theplaywright focuses on the efficacy of the newly established bourgeois drama (especiallyhis own dramatic work). Accordingly, it was not the visual experience of the theatre thatwas supposed to hold a ‘mirror’ up to the audience; rather, it was the drama, declaimedword by word on stage that was meant to be the key to the human soul.
Schiller was not alone in considering the art of declamation of great importance. Inthe late 18th century the trained voice became crucial for aesthetic education as a whole.In German children’s education, for example, the father’s textbook (that is to say, a purelyvisual medium) was replaced by the teaching mother, who, as suggested in a series ofnewly emerging textbooks, should read the alphabet to the child out loud. The origin ofchildren’s language thus came to be based on the mother’s speech act.34
This hermeneutic shift in the reception of literature occurred simultaneously in actingtheory, too – leading to a new art of declamation (thought of as superior to mere readingand recitation).35 On the one hand, declamation was defined by the targeted application ofan accent-free speaking technique that should be clearly audible and differ from singing.36
On the other, the actor should not simply repeat literature in a parrot-like fashion (i.e.
32 Church leaders, both Protestants and Catholics, argued strongly against the theatre’s new claim toeducation. Theatre makers, on the contrary, compared the moral force of the spoken word on a stage to that ofchurch sermons and school education. Cf. Hilde Haider-Pregler, Des sittlichen Bürgers Abendschule.Bildungsanspruch und Bildungsauftrag des Berufstheaters im 18. Jahrhundert, (Vienna and Munich, 1980),35–71, 367, 85–102; Doris Kolesch, ‘Theater als Sündenschule. Für und wider das Theater im 17. und 18.Jahrhundert’, in Theaterfeindlichkeit, edited by Christopher Wild, Stefanie Diekman and Gabriele Brandstetter(Munich, 2012). 19–30.
33 Friedrich Schiller, ‘Was kann eine gute stehende Schaubühne eigentlich wirken? Eine Vorlesung, gehaltenzu Mannheim in der öffentlichen Sitzung der Kurpfälzischen Deutschen Gesellschaft am 26sten des Junius 1784…’,in idem., Theoretische Schriften, edited by Rolf-Peter Janz et al. (Frankfurt am Main, 1992 [1784]), 185–200 (200).
34 Cf. Friedrich A. Kittler, Aufschreibesysteme 1800–1900 (Munich, 2003 [2nd rev. ed.]), 35–86.35 Cf. Reinhart Meyer-Kalkus, Stimme und Sprechkünste im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2001b), 13–27; Roger
Chartier, Pratiques de la lecture (Paris, 2003), 7–113.36 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Regeln für den Schauspieler’, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethes
kunsttheoretische Schriften und Übersetzungen (Berlin, 1960 [1824]), 86–7.
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learn his part neutrally and by heart); rather, his voice should breathe new life into a rolewith the aim of morally uplifting the listener.37
The importance of declamation in aesthetic education also corresponded to a newinterest in the human faculty of auditory perception. Different fields of knowledge startedto view humans as sensual and experiencing beings – and, here, the sense of hearingbecame a central point of concern.38 Characteristic of this development is Ernst F. F.Chladni’s book Die Akustik (1802), which includes an entire chapter on the human ear.Chladni refers back to knowledge acquired by early modern anatomical dissection, butalso calls for new research on the auditory process as well as on phenomena such as‘spatial hearing’.39 In addition, around 1800, aesthetic, philosophical and physiologicaltheories made use of (still vague) acoustic models such as ‘tuning’ and ‘resonance’ inorder to emphasise the role of the subjective listener.40 Friedrich Schiller, who was also amedical doctor, proceeds in this fashion when, in his Briefe über die ästhetischeErziehung des Menschen (1795), he compares aesthetic perception with a stringedinstrument. Although it may be stimulated through external influences, such an instrumentstill has its own aesthetic ‘tuning’, and responds accordingly to the world perceptible bythe senses. ‘In sight and hearing’, Schiller writes, ‘the object is a form we create (throughour instinct for form and play)’.41
Around 1800 the art of declamation thus served as a tool for human aestheticeducation. In this context the theatre was considered an exceptional place in which theaudience’s attention is fully focused on each auditory and/or visual stimulus.42 Such aconcept of aesthetic autonomy was echoed by the architects’ plea for a theatre that wouldguarantee each member of the audience equal hearing and seeing conditions.43 Despitethis intention, however, the topos of ‘good sound’, which from the late 18th centuryappeared with ever-greater frequency in architectural treatises, also stood for a newpolitics of sound control. Whereas, up until that point, the audience during a performancetended to speak loudly, laugh, applaud spontaneously, whistle and call out, suchdisturbances were now supposed to be eliminated: the audience was expected to sit stilland pay attention to what was happening on stage. Theatre reformers even called for a
37 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, ‘Hamburgische Dramaturgie’ (‘3. Stück’, 8.5.1767), in idem., Werke und Briefein zwölf Bänden, edited by Wilfried Barner, 12 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1985–2003), VI, 181–706 (196).
38 Only in the 1830s, with the help of newly invented methods of (technical) imitation and electro-experimental stimulations of the auditory process, were a number of physiologists able to provide greater insightinto the anatomy of the inner ear, the (human) frequency limits of audibility, and the relativity of hearing norms.Cf. Joseph E. Hawkins, ‘Auditory Physiological History. A Surface View’, in Physiology of the Ear, edited byJoseph Santos-Sacchi and Anthony F. Jahn (San Diego, 2001 [2nd ed.]), 15–22; Julia Kursell, Ohr undInstrument. Zu Hermann von Helmholtz’ physiologischer Grundlegung der Musiktheorie. Habilitation(unpublished) Technische Universität Berlin (2012), 17–18.
39 Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni, Die Akustik (Leipzig, 1802), 215–32. On the 16th- to 18th-century anatomyof the ear cf. Hawkins (note 38), 6–15.
40 Cf. Caroline Welsh, Hirnhöhlenpoetiken. Theorien zur Wahrnehmung in Wissenschaft, Ästhetik undLiteratur um 1800 (Freiburg, 2003).
41 Friedrich Schiller, ‘Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen’ (Letter 26), inidem., Theoretische Schriften, edited by Rolf-Peter Janz et al. (Frankfurt am Main, 1992 [1795]), 556–676 (662).
42 Philosopher J. G. Sulzer, for example, states that ‘der Mensch in keinerley Umständen lebhaftererEindrücke und Empfindungen fähig ist, als bey den öffentlichen Schauspielen […]. Hier ist jeder schon zumvoraus auf das, was er hören und sehen wird, begierig, und zum stärksten Eindruck vorbereitet’. Johann GeorgSulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, in einzelnen, nach alphabetischer Ordnung der Kunstwörteraufeinanderfolgenden Artikeln abgehandelt, 4 vols. (Hildesheim, 1994 [1794]), IV, 254–5.
43 On the concept of autonomy in theatre architecture around 1800 cf. Helmar Schramm, ‘Theatralität’, inÄsthetische Grundbegriffe. Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden, edited by Karlheinz Barck, 7 vols.(Stuttgart, 2005), VI, 48–73 (29–32).
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‘theatre police’ to ensure silence in the auditorium – a task partly accomplished with thehelp of state officials.44 At roughly the same time, theatre architecture started to serve asan instrument of sound censorship. The new constructions were isolated from externalsounds and fitted on the inside with noise-reducing materials. To avoid the clamour of theusually standing audience, seats were installed in the parterre.45 It thus cannot be deniedthat targeted strategies of sound control have indeed hidden themselves behind a topos of‘good sound’, one that promises modern and egalitarian listening conditions whilesimultaneously transforming the audience into silent observers/listeners, while new modesof sound amplification strengthened the actors’ voices. Hence, in order to underscore theculturally defining power of the modern state’s institutions and disciplinary strategies, onemight not only talk about prisons, schools and theatres as ‘panoptic spaces’, but alsoabout ‘panacoustic spaces’ and ‘acoustic surveillance’.46
Saunders’ above-mentioned design for a ‘spoken theatre’ was thus part of a moregeneral ‘sonic turn’ in European bourgeois theatre culture. Although this design remainedunrealised, it had some influence on Benjamin Wyatt’s rebuilding of the Theatre Royal,Drury Lane in London – which, unfortunately, suffered from poor sightlines and badacoustics, the latter probably caused by excessive reverberation within the still unusuallylarge space.47
On the continent, the German architect Friedrich Weinbrenner partly copied Saunders’design when building the Hoftheater in Karlsruhe in 1808. This theatre was financed bythe court, but was intended to serve the ‘verbal and moral education’48 of the public, andcould accommodate approximately 1200 spectators. Weinbrenner almost seems to beborrowing Schiller’s words when describing the need for the new venue: ‘At these publicsites human beings do not only see each other, but communicate, according to the degreeof their literacy, their ideas, tastes, pleasures and displeasures to each other.’49 TheHoftheater design in the antique cavea style features staggered rows of boxes; andbalconies were attached to each row (see Figures 3a and b). Instead of the elaboratelyornate auditoria of the time, Weinbrenner decided in favour of a very pure auditoriumwith a flat ceiling to support sound reflection.50
44 On the 18th- and early 19th-century theatre police cf. Peter Heßelmann, ‘Der Ruf nach der “Policey” imTempel der Kunst. Das Theaterpublikum des 18. Jahrhunderts zwischen Andacht und Vergnügen’, in ‘DasTheater glich einem Irrenhause’. Das Publikum im Theater des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, edited by Hans-Joachim Jakob and Hermann Korte (Heidelberg, 2012), 77–94; Haider-Pregler (note 32), 61–8; Georg-MichaelSchultz, ‘Der Krieg gegen das Publikum. Die Rolle des Publikums in den Konzepten der Theatermacher des 18.Jahrhunderts’, in Theater im Kulturwandel des 18. Jahrhunderts. Inszenierung und Wahrnehmung von Körper –Musik – Sprache, edited by Jörg Schönert and Erika Fischer-Lichte (Göttingen, 1999), 483–502.
45 See, for example, Friedrich Weinbrenner, Über Theater in architectonischer Hinsicht mit Beziehung aufPlan und Ausführung des neuen Hof-Theaters zu Carlsruhe. Mit 3 Kupfern (Tübingen, 1809), 11.
46 Most prominent in the history of the panopticum is Jeremy Bentham’s ‘Panopticon; or, The Inspection-House’ (1787). Foucault, however, points out that Bentham did not only refer to a visually defined architecture,but also to ‘acoustic surveillance, by means of tubes that connect the cells with the center tower’. MichelFoucault, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison (Paris, 1975), 235. Cf. Peter Szendy, Sur écoute. Esthétiquede l’espionage (Paris, 2001), 32–9.
47 Cf. Michael Barron, ‘George Saunders’ “Treatise on Theatres” of 1790 and Optimum Acoustic Profiles’,Acoustics Bulletin, 16, 2 (1991), 14–17 (15–16).
48 According to the building authority’s report, the theatre should serve the ‘Geist der Zeit, Bildung derSprache und des Anstandes’. Friedrich Weinbrenner, ‘Bau Amts Bericht vom 05. Februar 1806, den Bauentwurffür das Jahr 1896 in dahiesiger kurfürstl. Residenz Karlsruhe betreff’ (Landesarchiv Karlsruhe Abt. 422:326), inBriefe und Aufsätze, edited by Arthur Valdenaire (Karlsruhe, 1926), 87. Cf. Claudia Elbert, Die TheaterFriedrich Weinbrenners. Bauten u. Entwürfe, (Karlsruhe, 1988), 56–84.
49 Weinbrenner (note 45), 1.50 Ibid., 10.
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The architect extolled the merits of his design by claiming that ‘even a pistol shotwould not resonate’.51 Nevertheless, his interest in acoustics did not only draw praise. Theplaywright August Klingemann, for example, described the theatre as a ‘noise chamber’
Figure 3. a and b) Ground plan and cross section of the Karlsruhe court theatre by FriedrichWeinbrenner, 1808 (Source: Friedrich Weinbrenner, Über Theater in ArchitectonischerHinsicht mit Beziehung auf Plan und Ausführung des Neuen Hof-Theaters in Carlsruhe:mit 3 Kupfern (Tübingen: Cotta, 1809), appendix).
51 Ibid., 9.
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(Schallgewölbe), and finds fault with the sightlines, which, according to Klingemann,suffer because of the emphasis on acoustics.52 Weinbrenner, in turn, defended himself byclaiming that ‘the theatre should be intended not only for spectators, but also for listeners,indeed that hearing is by far the more important thing in our musical and spoken plays’.53Thus, the architect took the concerns of the literary theatre of his era even more seriouslythan the playwright Klingemann.
Weinbrenner’s focus on ‘musical and spoken plays’ (Ton- und Redespiele) shows onceagain that around 1800 the opera, concert hall and spoken-word theatre, which hadformerly often been combined in one venue, started to be regarded as increasinglyseparate institutions.54 In fact, theatres were now compared more frequently to eitherProtestant churches or lecture halls (which were part of the expanding Europeanuniversity system).55 In 1807 in Karlsruhe, for example, Weinbrenner worked simulta-neously on the court theatre and on a lecture hall for the department of mineralogy andbotany – in both cases he followed George Saunders suggestions for a circular auditoriumin order to facilitate the spoken word (see figures 4a and b).
4. Theatre architecture meets the ‘physics of sound’. The issue of visualisationWhen Saunders wrote his Treatise on Theatres in 1790 acoustics did not yet exist as a
scientific discipline. Nevertheless, the architect could not only look back at ancient soundtheories, but at a new and already a century long debate on the nature of sound, onedominated by two contradictory theories. The first of these was based on the analogybetween sound and light, light being considered as an entity that propagates in ‘rays’ fromits source to the observer.56 Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, for instance, based his so-called ‘echologia’ on the optical geometric law of reflection (i.e. the angle of incidence isequal to the angle of reflection). In his Phonurgia nova from 1673 Kircher stated that‘sound expands circularly or spherically [from its source…]. This circle or sphere cannotbe caused differently than by straight lines originating in the centre of the sound source.[…] And just as light rays get refracted [i.e. reflected], the same happens to sound.’57
52 August Klingemann, Kunst und Natur. Blätter aus meinem Reisetagebuch, 3 vols. (Braunschweig, 1819–1828), I, 43.
53 Friedrich Weinbrenner, ‘Einige Bemerkungen über den Bau und die Form unserer heutigen Theater. VomOberbaudirector Weinbrenner Abendzeitung 17 June 1817’, reprinted in Elbert (note 48), 182–3.
54 18th- and 19th-century theatres still served partly as concert venues, while new concert halls such as the oldGewandhaus in Leipzig (1781) started to be imitated all over Europe. Cf. Weinzierl (note 9), 55–80 and 135–56.
55 Theatre architects referred explicitly to (Protestant) church architecture. Cf. Saunders (note 1), 13; JohannGottlieb Rhode, Theorie der Verbreitung des Schalles für Baukünstler (Berlin, 1800), 60. However, some calledfor different building types, as the emotional speech of the priest was much easier to understand than the‘Conversationston’ of an actor on stage. Cf. Louis Catel, Vorschläge zur Verbesserung der Schauspielhäuser(Berlin, 1802), 22. Among Saunders’ most important works are the Theatre Royal in Birmingham (1793) and hissurveillance of the construction of the Lecture Theatre of the Royal Institution in London (1800–1802). Cf. FrankA.J.L. James and Anthony Peers, ‘Constructing Space for Science at the Royal Institution of Great Britain’,Physics in Perspective, 9 (2007), 130–85. Chladni also drew parallels between the design of theatres and lecturehalls. Ernst F. F. Chladni, ‘Ueber vortheilhafte Einrichtungen eines Locals für gute Wirkung des Schalles’,Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, 35 (1826), 565–70 (569–70).
56 Cf. Darrigol (note 12) and idem., ‘The Analogy between Light and Sound in the History of Optics from theAncient Greeks to Isaac Newton (Part II)’, Centaurus 52, 3 (2010), 206–57.
57 Inspired by Marin Mersenne (Harmonie universelle, 1636–1637, vol. 1, § 25), Kircher imagined soundpropagation in terms of a periodic series of pulses that prompts a compact mass of air to be transmitted from itssource to the ear. He thought that the smoother and harder the resistor (such as a mirror), the more sound isreflected and thereby amplified (in proportion to the number of reflections). Athanasius Kircher, Neue Hall- undThon-Kunst oder mechanische Gehaim-Verbindung der Kunst und Natur durch Stimme und Hall-Wissenschafftgestifftet [= Phonurgia nova…], translated by Agathus Carion (Elwangen, 1684 [1673]), 6–7.
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Figure 4. a and b) Ground plan and cross section of the lecture hall for the department ofmineralogy and bontany in Karlsruhe by Friedrich Weinbrenner, 1807 (Source:Stadtarchiv Karlsruhe 81PBS XV 1430 and 1432).
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Some years later, and in opposition to the reflection theory, Isaac Newton definedsound propagation as a pressure wave that successively sets an infinite number of airparticles into simple harmonic oscillations.58 Most important in architectural terms wasNewton’s observation concerning the spreading and diffraction of wave motions bystating that ‘the Waves, Pulses or Vibrations of the Air, wherein Sounds consist, bend [theair particles] manifestly’. Therefore, sound does not only propagate rectilinearly but alsoin curve-like motions, ‘for a Bell or a Cannon may be heard beyond a Hill which inceptsthe sight of the sounding Body, and Sounds are propagated as readily through crookedPipes as through straight ones’.59
Newton’s wave theory was reconsidered in the course of the 18th century, whenvibrating strings and, later, vibrating air particles were examined in greater detail. In 1701Joseph Sauveur observed that strings only vibrate in the ‘loops’, whereas in the ‘nodes’they remain motionless. He thus determined that fundamental tones (sons fondamentaux)consist of a multiplicity of frequencies (sons harmoniques).60 In 1747 Jean-Baptiste leRond d’Alembert continued in the same vein by applying the partial differential calculusto describe the motion of a string under tension.61 In the same year, Daniel Bernoullipostulated what is now called the ‘principle of superposition’, that is, the coexistence ofvarious simple, independent harmonic vibrations of a string. According to Bernoulli, anyvibrating system could be defined by infinite simple modes of oscillations (sine functionsof time with various discrete frequencies).62 A decade later Joseph Louis Lagrangesuggested that the segments of a stretched weightless string should be understood astightening together a finite series of equally spaced, isolated mass particles. Even moreimportantly, he argued that what happens to string particles also happens to fluids andgases when sound propagates through them and causes (successive) variations in pressureand temperature within these media.63 Subsequently, Leonard Euler considered soundpropagation as a wave of disturbances that prompts energy variations in an infinite
58 Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in Two Volumes, translated by AndrewMotte (London, 1729 [1726, 3rd ed.]), II (Sec. VIII, prop. XLI–XLIV), 166–167. For a more detailed discussionof Newton’s theory of sound cf. Olivier Darrigol, ‘The Analogy between Light and Sound from Malebranche toThomas Young’, Physis. Rivista internazionale di storia della scienza 46, 1–2 (2009), 189; Darrigol (note 56),222, 234 and 244.
59 Isaac Newton, Opticks or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light, Basedon the 4thed. [London, 1730]. With a Foreword by Albert Einstein, and an Introduction by Edmund Whittaker(London, 1931 [1730]), Qu. 28, 362–3.
60 Joseph Sauveur, ‘General System of Sound Intervals and its Application to Sounds of all Systems and allMusical Instruments’, translated by Robert Bruce Lindsay [= Système général des intervalles des sons, et sonapplication à tous les systèmes et tous les instrumens de musique], in Mémoires de l’Académie Royale desSciences de l’Institut de France, edited by Robert Bruce Lindsay (Stroudsburg, 1972 [1701]), 88–102, Sect. IX,349–56.
61 Jean-Baptiste Le Rond d’Alembert, ‘Recherches sur la courbe que forme une corde tenduë mise envibration’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles Lettres de Berlin, 3 (1747), 214–9; idem., ‘Suitedes recherches sur la courbe que forme une corde tenduë mise en vibration’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale desSciences et Belles Lettres de Berlin, 3 (1747), 220–49.
62 Daniel Bernoulli, ‘Sur le mélange de plusieurs espèces de vibrations simples isochrones, qui peuventcoexister dans un même système de corps’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences et des Belles-Lettres deBerlin, 9 (1755 [1753]), 173–95; idem., ‘Réflexions et éclaircissemens sur les nouvelles vibrations des cordesexposées dans les Mémoires de l’Académie de 1747 et 1748’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences et desBelles-Lettres de Berlin, 9 (1755 [1753]),147–72.
63 Joseph Louis Lagrange, ‘Recherches sur la nature et la propagation du son’, in Oeuvres complètes deLagrange [Miscellanea Taurinensia], edited by Joseph-Alfred Serret and Gaston Darboux, 14 vols. (Paris, 1867–1892 [1759]), I, 39–148.
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number of discontinuous air particles. He attempted to provide functional equations forthe (up to three-dimensional) propagation of sound.64
By the late 18th century most architects were aware of the new definitions of sound inphysics, whereby sound was now conceived as a medium-dependent periodic fluctuationof pressure over time. But the problem of how to adapt these definitions to constructionphysics as well as to the issue of sound reflection still needed to be resolved. This ledphilosophers such as Johann Heinrich Lambert to state in 1763 (as Kircher did a centuryearlier) that sound propagates ‘spherically’ from its source, but on encountering anobstacle it seems to behave in a ‘ray-like’ fashion. Hence, for phenomenological reasons,Lambert still suggested applying a geometric notion of sound that is ‘equivalent to therays of light. […] It is only a question of habit to get used to the terms sound ray, acousticray or phonic ray.’65
In 1782 the architect Pierre Patte also dedicated himself to this issue in his Essai surl’Architecture Théâtrale, which includes an eighteen-page chapter on acoustics, whereasthe chapter on optics only takes up six pages. Patte judged the ancients’ circular auditoriato be acoustically too reflective; he also discussed several theatres of his own time, all ofwhich he felt to be acoustically imperfect.66 In search of the ideal form for an auditorium,the architect tried to amalgamate the wide range of theories on the nature of sound incirculation at the time. He started by referring to the ancient Greek analogy betweensound and water waves, eventually conceding that ‘this effect occurs only when the soundtravels vertically, as for example in a suspended bell’.67 If sound was conveyedhorizontally, however, as is the voice when leaving the actor’s mouth, it behaveddifferently – here, Patte mentioned the Stoic analogy between sound propagation and a‘breath of air’. Furthermore, he referred to both the above-mentioned reflection theory andthe wave theory of sound by noting how sound may be thought to travel ‘either bycompressing contiguous molecules of air due to their elasticity and divisibility, or bypenetrating them [the air molecules] like light rays’.68 Yet despite the intense inquiry intothe nature of sound, Patte finally decided to limit himself to geometric rules alone: ‘Godcreated the universe by mere geometry, thus sound must also obey geometric rules’.69With the use of the word ‘geometry’, Patte was not referring back to Vitruvius’ theory of
64 Leonhard Euler, ‘De la propagation du son’, Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences de l’Institut deFrance, 15 (1766 [presented 1759]), 185–209. For the history of 17th- and 18th-century theoretical acoustics cf.Clifford Truesdell, Leonhardi Euleri Commentationes mechanicae. ad theoriam corporum fluidorum pertinentes.Leonhardi Euleri Opera Omnia 2, 13 (Zurich, 1955), 19–72; Clifford Truesdell, The Rational Mechanics ofFlexible or Elastic Bodies, 1638–1788. Introduction to Leonhardi Euleri. Leonhardi Euleri Opera Omnia vol. Xet XI seriei secundae (Zurich, 1960), 118–315; Robert Bruce Lindsay, ‘The Story of Acoustics’, The Journal ofthe Acoustic Society of America, 39, 4 (1966), 629–44 (631–8); Beyer (note 9), 13–14, 32–40; Elizabeth Garber,The Language of Physics. The Calculus and the Development of Theoretical Physics in Europe, 1750–1914(Boston, 1999), 31–62. For a cultural-historical contextualisation of the wave equation cf. Bernhard Siegert,‘Schüsse, Schocks und Schreie. Zur Undarstellbarkeit der Diskontinuität bei Euler, d’Alembert und Lessing’, inDas Laokoon-Paradigma. Zeichenregime im 18. Jahrhundert, edited by Inge Baymann et al. (Berlin, 2000),291–305; Holl (note 9) 171–98.
65 Johann Heinrich Lambert, ‘Sur quelques instruments acoustiques’, in Mémoires de l’Académie Royale desSciences de Berlin (1763–1770), 87–124 (97).
66 Pierre Patte, Essai sur l’architecture théatrale, ou de l’ordonnance la plus avantageuse à une salle despectacles, relativement aux principes de l’optique & de l’acoustique (Paris, 1782), 50.
67 Ibid., 12.68 Ibid., 12.69 Ibid., 13–15.
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harmony, however. Instead, he followed Kircher and Lambert by applying the laws ofoptical reflection to acoustics.70 This enabled the architect to visualise on paper thebehaviour of sound in enclosed spaces, while in his time the wave theory of sound stillcould not be represented visually. With the help of spectacular drawings, Patte found theideal shape for a theatre auditorium to be elliptic (Figure 5). Here, the architect clearlyignores the fact that an elliptic theatre usually accommodates more than one actor and oneaudience member – thus echoing the architects of the Baroque period who designed theirtheatres for a single audience member (the king).71 Despite this oversight, Patte’s essay
Figure 5. Ground plan and cross section of an elliptic theatre auditorium by Pierre Patte, 1782(Source: Pierre Patte, Essai sur l’architecture théatrale, ou de l’ordonnance la plusavantageuse à une salle de spectacles, relativement aux principes de l’optique & del’acoustique (Paris: Moutard, 1782)).
70 Patte followed his teacher F. Blondel, who also voted for a shift from the ancient theory of harmony to puregeometric calculation and the study of ‘catoptrics’. François Blondel, Cours d’architecture, enseigné dansl’Académie Royale d’Architecture, 6 vols. (Paris, 1698 [2nd ed.]), V, 754–87.
71 Before Patte, already Vittone (1766) and Dumont (1772) had argued for an elliptic auditorium, based onEuclidean geometry. Cf. Meyer (note 9), 117–23.
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still had a notable influence on European theatre architecture. In 1802 it prompted theGerman architect Carl Gotthard Langhans, among others, to design an elliptic auditoriumfor the Königliche Nationaltheater in the Berlin Gendarmenmarkt. Unfortunately, thistheatre went down in history as being the most reverberant theatre of all time and fell preyto critics.
Among the latter, however, the geometric law of reflection remained persistent. Thedramaturge Johann Gottlieb Rhode, for example, compared theatres with speaking tubes.But instead of applying the recent research on speaking tubes by Euler and others, Rhode,too, only made use of geometric tools for visualising sound reflection.72 He supported afan-shaped auditorium with amphitheatrically staggered seats, cut by two (possiblydiverging) straight sidewalls (Figure 6). Rhode’s design even acquired notoriety throughthe support of Chladni, who pointed out that sound does not only propagate rectilinearlysince each point on a sound beam functions as a new centre for a secondary sound wave.Due to a lack of a reliable theory of sound reflection, however, Chladni also advocated theimage of a spherical multitude of ‘sound rays’ and the optical law of reflection – at leastprovisionally.73
‘We are a far cry from having cracked all problems’,74 stated the physicist SiméonDenis Poisson in 1808 when reflecting upon the state of knowledge of architecturalacoustics.75 According to Euler’s calculations, for example, the intensity and velocity ofsound could vary at any point of a wave front (due to the arbitrary character of wavepropagation), but Poisson stated that under observation they seemed to be the same. Forconstruction physics, he thus argued in favour of a partial concordance between the(geometry-based) ray model and the mathematical wave model of sound propagation –although he warned against predicting the behaviour of sound in any three-dimensionalspace.76 According to Poisson, this was only possible in isolated cases such as plainsurfaces, for which the optical law of reflection may be applied.77 Nevertheless, architectssuch as Carl Ferdinand Langhans still considered the optical laws of reflection to betransferable without restriction to acoustics. In 1810 Langhans examined his father’sabove-mentioned failure in the book Über Theater, oder Bemerkungen über Katakustik inBeziehung auf Theater. Like most of his colleagues, Langhans argued that the moderndrama – with all its fine nuances of language, and the actor’s habit of speaking at differentvolumes – required that the architect turn his attention all the more radically from opticsto acoustics.78 As the title of his book suggests, however, his solution was called‘catacoustics’. Langhans proudly presented his ability to predict all types of soundpropagation in enclosed spaces through a series of drawings on paper in which hegraphically simulates the traces, but not the velocity of the travelling sound. All that was
72 Rhode (note 55), 7 and 20.73 Chladni (note 39), 215–9, 237–9 and 249.74 Siméon Denis Poisson, ‘Mémoire sur la théorie du son’, Journal de l’École Polytechnique, 7 (1808), 319–
92 (319).75 Ibid., 319.76 Ibid., 323.77 Ibid., 352. Perhaps inspired by the discussions on elliptic theatre auditoria taking place in architectural
circles, Poisson also studied the ellipsoid of revolution and mathematically proved that the intensity and velocityof sound in one centre of the ellipsoid is equal to the sound reflected by the concave surface in the other, whereasat any other point within this space the intensity is lower. Ibid., 353–8.
78 Carl Ferdinand Langhans, Ueber Theater oder Bemerkungen über Katakustik in Beziehung auf Theater(Berlin, 1810), 8.
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required, he believed, was to prolong these drawings ‘with the imagination’ into a cubicaldimension (figures 7a and b).79
5. The materiality and mediality of architectureAround 1800 architects were in search of new modes of predicting and visualising
sound propagation in enclosed spaces. Yet, most of them still did so on drawing boards,far from the building sites, and considered themselves ‘reasoning architects’.80 Already in
Figure 6. Ground Plan of a fan-shaped theatre auditorium by Johann G. Rhode, 1800 (unrealized)(Source: Johann Gottlieb Rhode, Theorie der Verbreitung des Schalles für Baukünstler(Berlin: Heinrich Frölich, 1800).
79 Ibid., 22.80 Langhans calls himself a ‘denkender Architekt’. Langhans (note 78), 3.
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1790 George Saunders had argued against this rather abstract geometry-based approach,which bears, according to him, the danger of being susceptible to the formation of falseanalogies. The architect pointed to the long-standing paradoxical approach of Kircher andhis followers, who ‘after explaining the progress of sound to be undulative, go oncomparing its properties to that of light [in terms of the law of reflection]’.81 ForSaunders, however, Newton’s wave theory marked a clear rebuttal of the ‘ray model’ ofsound. Accordingly, he called for new investigations into sound propagation and ‘the
Figure 7. a and b) Graphic simulation of sound reflection in circular and elliptic theatre auditoriaby Carl. F. Langhans, 1810 (Source: Carl Ferdinand Langhans, Ueber Theater OderBemerkungen Über Katakustik in Beziehung Auf Theater (Berlin: GottfriedHayn, 1810)).
81 Saunders (note 1), 3 and 11.
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nature and form of the obstacles it meets with’.82 His decision to perform the above-mentioned experiment in an empty square in London may thus also be interpreted as anattempt to make a clean sweep for a more empirical approach to architectural acoustics.
Figure 7. (Continued)
82 Ibid., 19.
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From a contemporary point of view, Saunders’ experiment on audience positioningalmost corresponds to the constant sound level profile for a human speaker in an openspace in the shape of a 220° segment of a circle. But this profile is based on a singlesound source instead of an interacting group on stage, and it is valid for direct sound only.The experiment does not help define the acoustically perfect shape of a theatreauditorium, which still depends on its reflective power.83 Yet, instead of focussing onthe traditional laws of reflection, Saunders examined how sound propagates in differentdensities of air, and he studied the conductive and reflective powers of materials such aswood, stone, plaster, woollen cloths, oil paintings, metals etc. – thereby drawing attentionto what in relation to architecture are now called secondary structures.84 However, all thisdid not prevent him from finally concentrating on the primary structure of his design andsticking to the long-standing tradition of the circular auditorium.
It is therefore no wonder that Saunders’ design called critics to the scene who weresearching for new (experimental and theoretical) methods in architectural acoustics.Chladni, for example, refers in 1826 to an experiment conducted one year earlier by thephysicists Ernst Heinrich and Wilhelm Weber, who had visualised standing wavesproduced in a circular vessel when mercury is constantly dropped into the vessel (figures8a and b).85 The two physicists considered their experiment a rather limited model forsound reflection in theatres as it only provided a demonstration for a single punctualexcitement of the mercury surface.86 Accordingly, they felt that a ‘hardworking architect’was still needed to calculate all the reflecting, diffracting and resonating effects in atheatre.87 Chladni, however, took the experiment as valid evidence against a circularauditorium.
In 1829 the architect Johann Wetter also found fault with the outcome of Saunders’experiment, as it served to define the ultimate distance of the spectator at the back, but notnecessarily the three-quarter circular shape, which, according to Wetter, was still bound to‘the fetters of antique architecture’.88 In search of a more appropriate solution, Wetterprovided the most intense discussion on architectural acoustic theories of his time.Following the studies of physicists Pierre-Simon Laplace, Siméon Denis Poisson, ErnstF. F. Chladni and Jean-Baptiste Biot, he judged that sound did not propagate entirelyspherically – arguing that different layers (densities, temperatures and humidities) of air inthe auditorium provoked specific forms of sound propagation.89 Wetter also stressed thatthe law of reflection could only be partly applied, as sound is additionally reflected(although with less air pressure) in every direction, and the reflexivity of auditorium walls
83 Barron (note 47), 15–17.84 Saunders quotes Joseph Priestley’s Experiments and Observations Relating to Various Branches of Natural
Philosophy, vol. 2 [= Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air] (1781, p. 208). Saunders (note 1),9, 15–23.
85 Chladni (note 55), 569.86 Ernst Heinrich Weber and Wilhelm Weber, Wellenlehre auf Experimente gegründet, oder über die Wellen
tropfbarer Flüssigkeiten mit Anwendung auf die Schall- und Lichtwellen (Leipzig, 1825), 238–46. For a moredetailed discussion of Chladni’s reception of the Webers’ Wellenlehre see Holl 2001 (note 9) 171–98 (192–8).
87 The Webers claim that the behaviour of sound must not only be studied with regard to obstacles (walls,columns etc.), but also with regard to the enclosed air of a building, which was most responsible for (what theycall) reverberation. Ibid., 543–6.
88 Johann Wetter, Untersuchungen über die wichtigsten Gegenstaende der Theaterbaukunst, die vortheilhaft‐esten Formen des Auditoriums, und die zweckmäßigste Anordnung der Bühne und des Prosceniums, in optischerund akustischer Hinsicht. … (Mainz, 1829), 4–5, 13 and 16–26.
89 Ibid., 19 and 42–55.
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was dependent on their surface texture and their distance from the stage, since in largetheatres sound dies away before reaching the back walls.90 Wetter was thus the first toconsider sound propagation in temporal rather than spatial terms. As a result, he
Figure 8. a and b) Sketch of standing waves produced in a circular vessel when mercury drops inconstantly, by Heinrich and Wilhelm Weber (Source: Ernst Heinrich Weber and WilhelmWeber, Wellenlehre auf Experimente Gegründet, oder über die Wellen tropfbarerFlüssigkeiten mit Anwendung auf die Schall- und Lichtwellen (Leipzig: GerhardFleischer, 1825), appendix, figs 53–54).
90 Wetter refers here to Johann Andreas von Segner, Einleitung in die Naturlehre (Göttingen, 1746), 413.Wetter (note 88), 63–8.
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concentrated on visualising the reflectivity of the proscenium walls close to the stage, andthe direct sound from the stage to the audience (Figure 9).91
In 1838 Wetter’s theories were supported by the Scottish engineer John ScottRussell’s discovery of the ‘isacoustic curve’, which is still in use today. Russell showedthat the model of straight sound lines might indeed be applied to direct sound
Figure 8. (Continued).
91 Wetter (note 88), 40–1 and 59–62. Wetter refers here to Biot’s idea of resonating proscenium walls, whichis in turn based on Félix Savart’s experiments with resonating surfaces and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s reports onsoundboards in Italian opera houses. Wetter probably profited from the German translation of Biot’s Traité dephysique expérimentale. Cf. Jean Baptiste Biot, Traité de physique expérimentale et mathématique, 4 vols. (Paris,1816), II, 186; idem, Lehrbuch der Experimental=Physik oder Erfahrungs=Naturlehre, translated by Gustav T.Fechner, 5 vols. (Leipzig, 1825 [1816]), II, 132.
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Figure 9. Cross section of a theatre design by Johann H. Wetter, 1829 (unrealized) (Source: Johann Wetter, Untersuchungen über die wichtigsten Gegenstaendeder Theaterbaukunst, die vortheilhaftesten Formen des Auditoriums, und die zweckmäßigste Anordnung der Bühne und des Prosceniums, in Optischerund Akustischer Hinsicht. …. (Mainz: Joseph Stenz, 1829)).
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propagation. Accordingly, the seats of a theatre auditorium need to be staggered (row byrow) in a curved shape, so that each listener’s head is visible to the actor on stage and allaudience members ‘see and hear the speaker with equal clearness and repose, so as to givehim patient and undisturbed attention’.92
To return to George Saunders, it is therefore less the circular form of his auditoriumdesign that is striking than his empirical approach to architectural acoustics. In this regard,his method already shows parallels to the essay on Theatre Acoustics (1913) by WallaceClement Sabine, who is considered the founding father of architectural acoustics. Around1900 – although the nature of sound propagation had now been examined more closely,both mathematically and experimentally – architects still made use of the analogy oflinear sound beams (at least as a working hypothesis) and provided prognoses in two-dimensional sketches. The physicist Sabine complained about ‘the fallacy of the notuncommon representation of the propagation of sound by straight lines’.93 He pointed tothe fact that ‘the method of rays, although a fairly correct approximation with large areas,is misleading under most conditions’,94 as perfect ray-like reflection only occurs when thewavelength of sound is comparatively short in relation to the reflective surface (i.e. highfrequencies), whereas long wavelengths (low frequencies) cause deflections.
To oppose this trend, Sabine’s experiments on sound propagation were not conductedin an open square, as Saunders’ had been one hundred years earlier. Like Saunders,however, Sabine was searching for experimental methods of simulating the propagation ofsound in enclosed spaces; and, equally important, it was again in theatres for spokendrama in which Sabine carried out some of his most important experiments.95 In 1909, forexample, he was asked to improve the acoustics of the New Theatre in New York, whichhad been designed and constructed by the architects John Merven Carrère and ThomasHastings (Figure 10a). Due to disturbing echo effects in the upper balcony, Sabine movedthe boxes from the first to the second level – thereby transforming the first level into asingle balcony filled with seats. He also reduced the excessive height of the auditorium bymeans of an oval canopy around the central chandelier (Figure 10b). With the help of theshadowgraph method of visualising sound propagation in theatre models, Sabinesimulated the varying progression of sound through the auditoria at 0.07–, 0.10– and0.14–second intervals after its departure from the source (Figure 10c). This method ofphotographing the sound waves and their echoes consisted in removing the sidewalls ofthe model and letting sound pass through. This was then instantaneously illuminated bymeans of a light created by a somewhat distant electric spark: ‘After passing through themodel, the light falls on a photographic plate placed at some distance on the other side.The light is refracted by the sound waves, which thus act practically as their own lens inproducing the photograph.’96
92 Although explicitly developed for spoken–drama theatres, the first to apply Russell’s curve was Americanarchitect Dankmar Adler in his design for an opera house, the Auditorium in Chicago, in 1889. John ScottRussell, ‘Elementary Considerations of some Principles in the Construction of Buildings designed toAccommodate Spectators and Auditors, Read before the Society of Arts for Scotland 16th May 1838’, TheEdinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 27 (1839), 131–7. Cf. Forsyth (note 9), 235–43.
93 Wallace Clement Sabine, ‘Theatre Acoustics’, in Collected Papers on Acoustics by Wallace ClementSabine, edited by Frederick V. Hunt (New York, 1964 [1913]), 163–97 (183).
94 Ibid., 184.95 ‘It should be said, parenthetically, but nonetheless emphatically, that throughout this paper by theatre is
meant an auditorium for the spoken drama […]’. Ibid., 175 and 190.96 Ibid., 180.
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Figure 10. a and b) The New Theatre (New York) before and after Sabine’s acousticalimprovements; c) Model simulation of sound propagation in the New Theatre before(left column) and after (right column) Sabine’s acoustical improvements (Source:Wallace Clement Sabine, ‘Theatre Acoustics’, in Collected Papers on Acoustics byWallace Clement Sabine, edited by Frederick V. Hunt (New York: Dover Publications,1964 [1913]), 163–97).
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Among Sabine’s most important discoveries, however, is the reverberation equation,which is still in use today. Reverberation time is the time that reflections of a direct soundrequire to decay by 60 decibels below the level of the direct sound. It can be calculated bythe quotient of the room volume in relation to the total sound absorption by room surfacesand absorbing sound obstacles. Through his attention to sound absorbing material, Sabinecould thus prove what the architect Saunders had already discovered experimentally: thatnot only the primary structure (form and size) but also the secondary structure (the
Figure 10. (Continued).
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material of the surfaces) is responsible for a room’s acoustic properties.97 Or, as Sabineputs it: ‘The rapidity with which the sound dies away depends on the size of the theatre,on its shape, on the materials used for its walls, ceiling, and furnishing, and on the sizeand distribution of the audience.’98
Important in the present context, however, is not only the fact that in 1790 thearchitect Saunders had already assumed (hypothetically) what in 1900 the physicistSabine could prove quantitatively. More to the point, what links the two men is an interestin the function of theatres, namely, the communication between actors and audience. Thearchitect Saunders had already searched for new ways of visualising the range of anactor’s voice – thus being less focussed on the theatre building itself than on theperformance of the spoken word, which is to say, less focussed on theoretic concepts ofsound propagation than on its real effects in theatre praxis. The same approach was latertaken up by Sabine, who determined, for example, that his own physical presence in theexperiment influenced the results of his measurements. Through his attention to thehuman being in the situation of performance, Sabine also refuted the long-standing mythof the ideal acoustics of antique amphitheatres. The circular cavea, Sabine remarks,exhibited amplifying properties only when empty. As soon as all the seats were occupiedby the (sound absorbing) audience, this amplification (consonance) effect was greatlyweakened. Otherwise, he argues, the ancients would not have invented megaphonemouthpieces and resonant vessels to amplify the voice.99
One can conclude from this that the human being in Sabine’s research occupies theposition of a sound-absorbing unit of data and, as such, manifests the acoustic medialityof theatre (understood as the concrete production and perception of sound). The boundarybetween architecture (as a medium for the listening audience) and the audience as amedial component of room acoustics thus becomes blurred. However, already earlier –namely, with George Saunders in 1790 – there had emerged an understanding ofarchitectural mediality that was linked not only to theatre buildings, but also to thepresence of the actors and the audience found within it. And it is this understanding ofmediality and space (which proceeds from the practice of theatre) that finally becamedefinitive for the physical discipline of room acoustics. Accordingly, Friedrich Schiller’scall for a mass medium for the human being found resonance in the discovery of theatrearchitecture as a sound medium and, at the same time, as a medium that produces anddefines the human being as a sound source and as a sound absorbing entity.
6. Conclusion. From showplaces to lecture hallsTo sum up, I would like to focus on the different analogies applied to theatre acoustics
that run through this paper. As has been shown, Vitruvius introduced to theatrearchitecture two conflicting analogies: the geometrically represented analogy betweenthe well-proportioned circular theatre space and the cosmos, and the (weak but physical)analogy of water in wave-like sound propagation. Both analogies were suited to bevisually imagined and translated into architectural constructions. They experienced a long
97 Saunders (note 1), 15–23. Besides Saunders, the architect Joseph Henry also conducted experiments withdifferent sound absorbing material with the help of a tuning folk in 1857. Cf. Thompson (note 9), 25–8 and38–41.
98 Sabine (note 93), 170.99 Sabine (note 93), 189–90. The earliest account of the absorbing quality of audience members can be found
in Catel (note 55), 23.
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afterlife in theatre architecture. Due to a scholarly interest in the spoken and musicaldrama in the early Italian Renaissance both analogies merged into each other. Here, therevival of the water analogy in wave-like sound propagation acquired even greaterrelevance – thereby facilitating a misinterpretation of Vitruvius’ initially cosmologicallyand geometrically motivated circular auditorium form (Alberti, Palladio, Scamozzi). Fromthe mid-16th century well into the 18th century, court theatre architects transformed theVitruvian circular auditorium into a bell-shaped auditorium and reloaded Vitruvius’geometric analogical thinking with a new political significance. Although the art criticAlgarotti had warned of such analogical reasoning in theatre architecture, the new designswere also based to a considerable degree on (from now on) physical analogies, so that theancient analogy between sound and water waves was then revitalised and amalgamatedwith analogies between light and sound reflection. The classic circular auditorium shapewas thereby either cited (Algarotti, Weinbrenner) or criticised by applying the optical lawof reflection to sound propagation (Patte, Langhans, Rhode).
It was George Saunders who, in 1790, called these conflicting and misleading theoriesinto question and pleaded explicitly for an empirical approach to acoustics. He challengedthe geometric understanding of sound propagation by referring to the wave theory ofsound and thus to a new notion of sound propagation as a medium-dependent andtemporal phenomenon. By focussing not only on the form and size of an auditorium, butalso on its construction materials and the physical presence of the audience, he starteddeveloping a new understanding of architectural acoustics. And it is this complexunderstanding of architectural acoustics that later helped Sabine establish the discipline.Accordingly, Saunders’ and Sabine’s methodological approaches show parallels withregard to the demand for new (experimental) methods of examining, predicting andvisualising sound propagation, and for their shift of interest from the primary to thesecondary structures of the auditoria.
To be sure, Saunders’ attempt to redefine architectural acoustics was still in itsinfancy, and his experimental method of ‘walking in circles’ echoed, once more, the long-standing tradition of the ancients’ circular auditorium. And even his colleagues, who triedto correct Saunders’ design by carrying out new experiments and by applying the newmechanical theories on sound to building physics, did not yet succeed in establishing clearmethods of analysis for architectural acoustics. It might therefore be overstated to claimthat the discipline of architectural acoustics was already (pre-)invented around 1800within theatre architecture.100 It was only around 1900 that Sabine’s pioneering insightsinto architectural acoustics helped establish this field of research as a scientific discipline.And further criteria to analyse the acoustic qualities of auditoria were only established inthe course of the 20th century.101 Nevertheless, it might still be said that architecturalacoustics in Sabine’s time did not appear out of thin air and that European theatrearchitecture, beginning in the late 18th century, laid, at least, the epistemic foundations forthis. As has been shown in this paper it was not by coincidence that architects started toinvestigate into the acoustics of theatre auditoria at a time when a form of bourgeoistheatre emerged that bore the name of an educational and literary theatre, and whichestablished the discourse of ‘spoken drama’. It might therefore be said that it was theplaywrights and theatre makers who first called for more attention to auditory
100 Cf. Dieter Ullmann, ‘Zur Geschichte der Raumakustik im 19. Jahrhundert’, Sudhoffs Archiv, 73, 2 (1989),208–15; Holl 2001 (note 9).
101 Cf. Barron (note 9), 258–75 and 471–5.
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communication in theatre praxis. Immediately afterwards, theatre architects implementedthe idea of a theatre that would be tailored to the senses of hearing as well as sight. Inspite of the etymology of ‘theatre’, architects thereby preferred to align their theatres with‘lecture halls’ rather than mere ‘showplaces’. Yet, it was less architectural terminology ortheory itself than the departure from theory for the sake of a new enthusiasm for empiricalapproaches and the physics of construction that led architects to reconsider acousticsaround 1800. In this context, almost all architects repeated a formulation that was firstcoined by Chevalier de Chaumont in 1767 – namely, that in order to build a good theatre‘one must not only be an architect, but all the more a physicist’.102 However, architectswere not primarily trained as physicists, which often led them to practice physics in anidiosyncratic manner. In view of this, a closer study of the curricula of 19th-centuryacademies and schools for architecture would be necessary, as the increasing need forarchitects trained in disciplines such as construction physics challenged the academictradition of architecture as a liberal or fine art.
AcknowledgementsThis paper stems from the research project ‘The Making of Acoustics in 16th- to 19th-
Century Europe’ (based at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin[MPIWG], funded by the Volkswagen Foundation). I especially thank everyone whodiscussed earlier ideas on this topic with me during the MPIWG colloquium in November2011, the workshop ‘L’image du son: analogies entre son et image’ (May 2012, organisedby Sophie A. de Beaune, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez and Koen Vermeir, Laboratoire SPHERE/CNRS, Paris) and the symposium ‘The Art of Listening’ (July 2012, organised byChristian Thorau and Hansjakob Ziemer, Berlin Radialsystem). I would also like to thankBen Carter for his help in smoothing out the English and my colleagues Julia Kursell andCarolyn Birdsall (University of Amsterdam), Stefan Weinzierl (Technische UniversitätBerlin), Etienne Benson (University of Pennsylvania), Marie-Madeleine Mervant-Roux(ARIAS/CNRS, PARIS) as well as the referees of this article for commenting on earlierdrafts.
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