"Architecture is Frozen Music"

I’ve seen the above quote attributed to Goethe, but other sources say it belongs to a dude named Schelling or a dude named Schopenhauer.  Regardless, here is a quote that is easy to misinterpret.  It is like reading the quote “the medium is the message”: it initially hits you on an intuitive level and seems profound.  The more you think about it, though, the less sense it starts to make.  I sometimes wonder if anyone truly knows what it means, or for that matter, if it has a definitive meaning in the first place.  So in this vein, I want to take a pointless stab at extracting a useless meaning out of the quote “architecture is frozen music”.  Let’s do this.  

(Caveat: It is always helpful to find the context of where the quote comes from.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find the original text, so I have no context to work with.)

I’m going to start by comparing architecture to music.  Architecture exists primarily in space and music exists primarily in time.  I say primarily because there are some exceptions: a building with rotating floors operates over time, just as a piece music that uses the reverberant properties of a room utilizes space.  For the most part, however, let’s assume architecture uses space and music uses time.  In my opinion, it is much easier to get an impression of something if it exists in space.  The object is completely presented to you all at once; there is nothing to hide in space.  If you miss a detail you simply rescan your eye over the point you missed.  I don’t think it is so easy with music.  Since it exists in time, it reveals itself overtime.  Many aspects of the song don’t become completely visible until the final note of the piece.  If you miss something in the meantime, you can’t rewind and listen to it again (at least in live performances).  This is why I can’t stand listening to audiobooks and would prefer to read a book instead.  This is also why I think music can be more abstract or intangible than a piece of architecture.  Let’s dig deeper into the idea of music unfolding overtime. 

I believe that one of the hardest concepts to understand with music is the idea of formal structure.  Things like melody and rhythm are easy to grasp because they operate within small cells of time (a typical melody will have a duration of 5-10 seconds).  With formal structure, it assimilates a bunch of smaller cells of time into a larger temporal framework.  This framework could be 4 minutes for a pop song or 20 minutes for a movement in a Mahler symphony.  To perceive formal structure, I believe the listener has to use what I’m going to call a “slice” mode of listening.  This involves perceiving the past, present, and future all at once. 

Imagine that you are listening to a single moment of music.  Let’s say you’re exactly 10 minutes and 20 seconds into it.  At this very moment in time you are listening to only one “slice” of the music.  It is equivalent to zooming in on a detail in a piece of architecture.  This is the present.  This is what is happening right now in the music.  Once your ear perceives what is going on at exactly 10 minutes and 20 seconds, your brain kicks in.  Your brain searches its memory banks for what it remembers about the previous 10 minutes and 20 seconds of music.  It draws comparisons and makes contrasts to what is currently happening (present) and what is in your musical memory (past).  The brain is actively constructing and assimilating musical thoughts just like an architect constructs the pieces of a building.  Let’s say there is exactly 5 minutes and 5 seconds left of the piece.  Using your knowledge of the past and present, you anticipate what is going to happen in the future.  You predict what direction the music is about to take and how it will reach its inevitable end.   Honestly, you have no idea how things are going to play out.  Time keeps that hidden from you.  This is the aspect of music that unfolds itself gradually over time.

As we are listening, the past and the present become hardened in our minds.  These things are known.  They become a static part of our past memory.  The future, however, is an unknown.  It is a variable.  Just as people say that “time flows like a river”, one could say that the process of music gradually unfolding into the future is “fluid”.  Music, just like time, is a naturally fluid substance.  When we reach the end of the piece, the music crystallizes.  All of the “slices” of music that we have experienced add up to create a holistic impression.  There is no more present or future; only the past.  The music becomes a lingering memory that exists in our heads like a web of interconnected thoughts and emotions.  The element of time has been stripped, leaving the music to exist as a structure in the “space” of our heads.  The music has condensed from a liquid to a frozen state.  It resembles a piece of architecture. 

I have many specific instances where I envision a piece or section of music as having an “architecture”.  Listen to the chorus in the Punch Brothers song “Welcome Home”.  The instruments enter and I imagine the foundation for a house being built.  The voices enter and I see terraced steps being built.  When the instruments change the harmony, I imagine the foundation for the house shifting.  Later on when the instruments get even more rhythmic (1:10), I envision the steps now sitting over top of a boiler room or machine shop.  Listen to the chorus of the Prince song “I Would Die 4 U”.  I get the image of a long city highway stretching out beneath the mercury colored street lights at night.  The running drum beat depicts the length of the highway (and perhaps the cars churning along on the highway).  Each little snare hit or synthesized string slide is a fleeting glimpse of something sporadically placed alongside the highway: a light pole, a building, a billboard.  The vocals and the background synth pad remind me of wind running alongside the highway for some reason.  I mentioned last post that the bass line in Radiohead’s “How to Disappear Completely” reminds me of a Rubik’s cube.  I see much of Brian Eno’s music to be a snapshot of a place or an environment.  Taken as one holistic glimpse, a piece of music by Eno represents a world (a space) for the listener to reside in.  In talking about his approach to composition, John Corigliano often refers to music as being architectural:

“So, pre–planning and building the whole piece is key for me; like an architect builds a building, or a sculptor plans a sculpture before he starts hacking away and molding a figure, it's very important for us to realize that these architectures are what hold the big piece together.”

Perhaps this is all because I am a visual learner.  Or, perhaps I have always been taught to read music visually (sheet music) so that is how I see it.  Though, sheet music is not as intuitive for me as something like this.  Maybe music doesn’t conjure up a literal “architecture” for you like it does for me.  Regardless, I’ve presented one way to interpret how architecture could be regarded as frozen music.  I can only hope my interpretation of the quote is as meaningless and misguided as everyone else’s.