Musique et architecture

Introduction

Architecture is conceived as the art to manage the space, and language of the music to float it time. Architecture becomes established over time, the music lives in the short-lived but both open us the access to the unspeakable, has the unspeakable.

Of this kindship, the ordinary language is valid : architects use the term of graphics, structure, color, dimension, outline of cornice whereas musicians sparkles by the words of rhythm,, pace, measure, movement and climax. The first ones are proud od the music of architecture, the second of the architecture of their music. Each lends to the other one the power of the overtaking, he magic suggestive of transcendence.

Assonance and contrast are going to alternate in the partition of the space as in the piece of music following a rythmic modulation whose tempo will be a dynamic element, or to moderating, gives rhythm in the grouping of the rhythms, similar to the fugue or to the counterpoint.

The melody shows in architecture less obviously than the rhythm. We discern it in the outline of cornice or more generally in the writing which assures a continuity, a unity, a style.

Baroque music

Baroque architecture is an example of melody among which the qualities of rich, of innocence or chatterbox don't exclude the values of delicacy and sensibility of the decoration. We can also speak about melody of the carved crownings, ornemental facades, frame of window by pilasters and pediments.

It also wants to amaze, to affect the senses, to dazzle by the search for the movement and twisting forms, the tension of lines and the dramatic effects, the contrasts of light, the spectacular and finally ornemental overload and the exuberance.

Baroque music is characterized by a three mains elements : the bass continues, the harmony and the conterpoint. We can quote a famous composer such as Arcangelo Corelli with La Follia.

We can put in agreement with its partitions a famous building such as the Basilica Saint Peter

St Peter Basilica : The construction bases on the impression of the movement as well as the constrastes of light and the theatricality. The notion of perspective is importante because it participates in the effects of trompe-l'oeil. There is a perpetual need for movement which expresses through curves and counter curves.

This taste of movement, the contrasts, the feelings, the theatricality, the ornementation finds in the music.

Modern style

Another striking melodic line which is similar to it is the modern style which prospering in 1900 and broke out of the world and invades it of the vegetable volutes, laths sensual in an enthusiasm on returning to the sources of the nature, to the vegetable of the origins. This is the time when the music of Fauré, Debussy joins the same physical enjoyment as those of the architects such as Guimard, Jourdain, Plumet.

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