SR/RECORDINGS NOVEMBER 25, 1961

A NEW SYSTEM FOR RATING CONCERT HALL ACOUSTICS by Leo L. Beranek 43

Teatro Colon THE VOICE WITH A MIND OF ITS OWN Buenos Aires by Irving Kolodin 46 THE SOUND OF "FINNEGANS WAKE" by Walter Starkie 48

HIGH FIDELITY TO WHAT? by Edgar Villchur 49

RECORDINGS IN REVIEW by the Editor 50

THE WELL-TEMPERED FEINBEBG by Jan Holcman 55

Each of the fifty-four halls surveyed will be depicted in diagrams similar to this one of the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. Top cuts depict seating arrangements on low­ er floor, boxes, and balcony; the cross-sec­ tion below shows layout of total interior. It is rated "the best ... in the world" by many soloists; for opera "the Colon is not as good as the Staatsoper in Vienna or La Scala in Milan," though "on the whole slightly better than the Metropolitan. . . ."

A New System for Rating Concert Hall Acoustics

A member of the firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc., of Cambridge, I accept the fact that there are de­ Massachusetts, Leo L. Beranek has served as acoustical consultant on several of bates about acoustical quality. But I the halls designed for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The text that do not agree with those people who follows is part of a book, "Acoustics of Halls for Music," a worldwide survey of con­ deny the existence of "good" and "bad" cert halls and opera houses, to be published next year by John Wiley and Sons." and think it a mere matter of taste. If that were the case, acoustics would By LEO L. BERANEK sic are not simply a matter of the pro­ stand alone as the one thing in the jection of faint sounds from the stage to world not possessing different kinds or ^W UT I don't want to hear a pin the rearmost seats. degrees of quality. drop," exclaimed Eugene Or- What are good acoustics for music? It was early in November, 1955, that B mandy, throwing his arms up­ Is there agreement on which halls are I settled back in my favorite lounge ward for emphasis. "I want to hear the good and which are not? Are there sev­ chair before a warm fire to enjoy a then orchestra!" This explosive remark was eral kinds of good acoustics just as there current issue of The New Yorker. My made by Mr. Ormandy to the manager are good white wines and good red peace of mind evaporated as I came to of a world-famous modern concert hall wines? The literature offers no satisfac­ this passage: who had just said that his hall had tory guidelines. Most written discussions "perfect acoustics because everywhere of acoustics for music either express one Most of the people who have set in it one can hear the sound of a pin person's opinion based on his own listen­ themselves up as consultants on mat­ ters of acoustics contend, not un­ dropped on the stage." Mr. Ormandy ing or conducting experience, or they naturally, that by applying certain shares the belief of most other informed conclude from randomly collected state­ laws of physics and using certain test­ listeners that excellent acoustics for mu- ments that there is no rhyme or reason ing devices they can determine in 1961, Leo L. Beranek whatsoever to the subject. advance how hospitable to sound a SR/November 25, 1961 43 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED ISCOVER The of Musk

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We had ex­ guidance of consultants who presum­ tics and extensive practical experience, plored the on-tour experiences of the ably applied the laws of physics and used the testing devices have turned but I had played in Cornell's and Har­ resident orchestra. For esthetic reasons out to have dreadful acoustics. When vard's symphony orchestras as a student and audience comfort, it was finally de­ the . . . new concert hall, which was and had attended musical performances cided not to build a modified version of hailed in advance as . . .'s finest audi­ in Boston, New York, and London regu­ Boston's Symphony Hall, but rather to torium, opened last year, it proved to larly. Further, the international meetings use a modern, low-ceilinged auditorium be an acoustical atrocity .. .; Although on acoustics, which began after World (which the orchestra and its musical years of acoustical study had gone into War II, had brought me into contact consultant had become acquainted with the design of the building, it was dis­ with acousticians who had access to on tour) as a general model. I could covered after the first few concerts find nothing in the literature to recom­ that [numerous changes had to be modern electronic equipment and who made]. This has been helpful, but the would be willing to help me obtain mend against this decision. But, by acoustics are still far from satisfactory. acoustical data on halls in other coun­ opening day, my interviews and data The sad truth is that while scientists in tries. Most important, I had reason to were beginning to show that the new many fields can foretell with unvarying go to Europe and South America often hall would not rank among the world's accuracy what will result from a com­ on business and could easily arrange to great. It was too late to make changes; bination of known factors, those who hear music in several additional halls the interior was nearly finished. Thus, specialize in acoustics seem to be on at the very moment that I was casting no surer footing in making their fore­ during each trip. I resolved to journey to as many of the world's well-known off the bonds of acoustical tradition casts than meteorologists are in making from the first half-century, I was being halls as possible and listen to music in theirs. From the evidence, it appears branded as their exponent. that no one can say for sure what the them; to collect architectural drawings acoustical qualities of an auditorium and photographs; to take acoustical As I write this page, I have before me will be until it is finished, furnished, data; to interview conductors, musicians, two sentences from a recent article in heated, and filled with musicians, music critics and experienced listeners; music, and listeners. And if the quaH- SR by Irving Kolodin in relation to the ties turn out to be disappointing, it and to use these findings to confirm or hall just discussed. He says, "But the will very likely be expensive to correct destroy old beliefs and to build a new music tends to spread out and dissipate them—if it can be done at all. understanding of acoustics, if possible. in the modified U-shaped room. . . . In the next six years, I traveled in There would seem to be some relatively This article was written about a con­ twenty nations on five continents. I simple solution to this problem, and it is cert hall dedicated a year earlier in heard music in over sixty halls, as far likely to be achieved once the acous­ another country, but the condemnation north as Helsinki and Turku, as far ticians and their graphs have been re­ of modern acoustics—my field—cut deep. south as Buenos Aires, as far east as tired to a proper place of honor in his­ Reaching for a pencil, I jotted down the Moscow and Jerusalem, as far west as tory." I hope that my colleagues and I cities in which halls that I knew had San Francisco. are not about to be retired, but if we been built since 1900: Paris, Copenha­ are, who should take our place? Re­ gen, Berlin, Munich, Liverpool, London, HAT has all of this activity ac­ member, it was the esthetic and comfort Caracas, Turku, Gothenburg, Chicago, wcomplished, ? First, I found that the tech­ factors that determined the Committee's San Francisco, Rochester, and Cleve­ nical and popular literature is dotted choice between Symphony Hall and the land. I was forced to admit that only with erroneous data, inaccurate esti­ modem model. Only study, knowledge, two halls were relatively free from cri­ mates, and possibly some deception. Re­ and experiment using the scientific ticism, and in one of them draperies liable acoustical data were obtained. method will permit substitution of other were being hung in an attempt to im­ Because additions and changes are con­ bases for decisions. The choice is not prove musical balance and blend. stantly being made in halls, I have with between acousticians and oracles, but I asked myself, "What is wrong with the help of Wilfred Malmlund checked between valid and invalid knowledge. our knowledge of acoustics?" We had drawings against recent photographs In 1959, the first two major results entered the twentieth century auspi­ and revised them where necessary. I of my studies were made public. One ciously, with the opening of Symphony have personally measured the dimen­ was disclosed on July 11, the day the Hall in Boston, one of the world's finest. sions of orchestra pits, stage enclosures, new orchestra enclosure and canopy for Its acoustical consultant, Wallace Clem­ and spacings of audience seats, climbed the Tanglewood Music Shed in Lenox, ent Sabine, had already become famous through attics and prowled in stage- Massachusetts, were dedicated. This through his basic paper on "Reverbera­ houses, and probed walls, ceilings, and modification of a previously criticized tion" that first appeared in the Proceed­ balcony fronts to identify materials pos­ concert hall has received enthusiastic re­ ings of the American Institute of Archi­ itively. I listened to music in several lo­ views from the start. The success of the tects in 1898. Everyone believed that cations in each hall and attempted to canopy makes it apparent that it is now the essential factors of musical acous­ identify those factors in the architec­ possible in other than narrow, rectangu­ tics were then formulated. Sabine's pa­ ture that influenced the sound. Later lar halls to have a fine acoustical en­ the acoustical data, drawings, and ar­ pers, published during the next fifteen vironment for symphonic music. On chitectural details that were accumu­ years, became the Bible for his follow­ September 5 the second result was dis­ lated were sent to scientists and hall ers. His formula for reverberation time closed in a paper presented orally at managers (or their architects) for and his measured sound absorption co­ the Third International Congress on checking. efficients for audiences, brick, glass, Acoustics at Stuttgart, titled "Audience plaster, and wood are still listed as au­ Looking back, the difficult part of and Seat Absorption in Large Halls." I thoritative in current texts. But some­ these years has not so much been col­ showed from measured data that, with thing was wrong. Subsequent halls were lecting the data but rather living with row-to-row and seat-to-seat spacings not so successful as Boston's and for previous decisions. As an example, a hall found in modern halls, audiences ab­ what reasons nobody was sure. for which my firm was acoustical con­ sorb 50 to 75 per cent more sound ener­ gy than is shown in tables given in The New Yorker had thrown down sultant was scheduled to open several {Continued on page 60) the gauntlet. It gradually dawned on years after the beginning of this stndv. SR/November 25, 1961 45 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED which introduced Callas to London in 1952). What Callas has been doing for a decade or so has certainly been a stimulation for Sutherland to do what she has in the last few years, if only as a The Voice with a Mind of Its Own reminder of what a voice can be disci­ plined to do. In Sutherland's case, it is a reminder also that a voice may have a mind of By IRVING KOLODIN came to England from Australia as a its own. That is to say, if the owner is scholarship winner destined to make a sufficiently fortunate to heed its implied OT BEING old enough to have Covent Garden debut as the First Lady advice at the right time, or is responsive heard Patti, Melba, or GalH- in Mozart's "Magic Flute." By ordinary to good objective judgment, it may N Curci in their prime or young standards, Sutherland should have overcome mistaken aspirations. If, on the enough to beheve that records of this evolved from a background in Donizetti other hand, ambition gets the upper excerpt or that aria are a reUable index and Bellini to the heavier Verdi and hand over aptitude, the outcome may to such abilities, I will have to disqualify Wagner. That she didn't is one more too often be conflict, cross-purposes, and myself from comparisons and say, mere­ departure from the ordinary in a career eventual vocal disarray. ly, that Joan Sutherland's "Lucia di Lam- that would strain believability as fic­ Reviewing the data on Sutherland, mermoor" with Renato Cioni, Robert tion. one discovers that during her learning Merrill, and Cesare Siepi (London OSA Some might cite Maria Callas as a years in Sydney, Australia (she sup­ 1327, $17.94) contains some of the recent Lucia who has performed at ported herself by doing secretarial most remarkable singing I have ever least one of the Sutherland roles enu­ work) she appeared in Purcell's "Dido heard. That it came to be the choice merated above—Amelia in "Ballo in and Aeneas." The year was 1947, and for her Metropolitan Opera debut on Maschera." However, this came five she was either twenty-one (if the birth- November 26 (she has already sung it years after her "Lucia," not until 1957. date given in the 1960 "Current Biogra­ in San Francisco, Chicago, and Dallas) Previously, Callas had sung such roles phy" is correct) or eighteen (if you pre­ is part of a tale as remarkable as the as Gioconda, Isolde, Briinnhilde in "Die fer the entry in the just published sup­ results themselves. Walklire," even Turandot, before taking plement to Grove's "Dictionary"). This inclination and her following activity in For what recent Lucia could, if her up the challenge of the Donizetti-Bellini oratorio accords with the successes in life really depended on it, also sing repertory. But Callas, for all her inimi­ Handel a decade later which first at­ Amelia in Verdi's "Un Ballo in Masch- table qualities, had no such vocal purity tracted general attention to her (en­ era," Eva in Wagner's "Die Meister- as Sutherland commands. during testimony mav be found in singer," Agathe in Weber's "Der Frei- Mention of Callas in a discussion of the excerpts "Tornami a vagheggiar" schiitz,"or Donna Anna in Mozart's "Don Sutherland is almost inescapable, with and "Ombre pallide" on L'Oiseau-Lvre Giovanni"? These are among the roles or without reference to the occasion SOL 60001, pure-toned delights. which have come—and, by now, doubt­ when they occupied the same stage less gone—in Sutherland's performance simultaneously (the then obscure Suth­ In the decade between, while pro­ repertory in the ten years since she erland was Clotilde in the "Norma" gressing from the title role in Eugene Goossens's "Judith" through competi­ tions which provided her with the means to study in England, Miss Suther­ land's aspirations inclined toward a ca­ reer in Wagner. She brought them with her to London when she entered the Royal College of Music in 1951 on the proceeds of winning the Mobil Quest competition in her native country. They were still with her when she made her early Covent Garden auditions. These, in a common usage of the term, were unsuccessful, for she was not immediate­ ly engaged. In another way they were singularly successful, for she was begin­ ning to understand that her ambitions and her aptitudes were not synony­ mous. In a retrospect she has been quoted as saying, "My voice really isn't heavy enough [for Wagner] and I soon understood that I'd been forcing it along a road that was wrong for it." It is the judgment of the ages that self-knowledge is the beginning of vir­ tue. At this point Sutherland knew at least which road was not for her. What happened in the following years of singing everything from the Priestess in "Aida" to the leading roles previously Joan Sutherland with Richard Bonynge—"an in­ mentioned plus the Countess in "Figa­ finity of hard work with her pianist-husband-coach." ro," Pamina in the "Magic Flute," 46 SR/November 25, 1961 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED