Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888
Various
Science -- Periodicals
repetition so common at the close of a piece of music of the same chord
several times in succession is exactly analogous to the repetition of
cross lines at the necking of a Doric column to stop the vertical lines
of the fluting, or to the strongly marked horizontal lines of a cornice
which form the termination of the height or upward progress of an
architectural design. The analogy is here very close. A less close
analogy may also be felt between an architectural and a musical
composition regarded as a whole. A fugue of Bach's is really a built-up
structure of tones (as Browning has so finely put it in his poem, "Abt
Vogler"), in accordance with certain ideas of relation and proportion,
just as a temple or a cathedral is a built-up structure of lines and
spaces in accordance with ideas of relation and proportion. Both appeal
to the same sense of proportion and construction in the brain; the one
through the ear, the other through the eye. Then, in regard to
architecture again, we have further limiting conditions arising not only
out of the principle of construction employed, but out of the physical
properties of the very material we employ. A treatment that is suitable
and expressive for a stone construction is quite unsuitable for a timber
construction. Details which are effective and permanent in marble are
ineffective and perishable in stone, and so; on and the outcome of all
this is that all architectural design has to be judged, not by any easy
and ready reference to exterior physical nature, with which it has
nothing to do, but by a process of logical reasoning as to the relation
of the design to the practical conditions, first, which are its basis,
and as to the relation of the parts to each other. Of course beyond all
this there is in architecture, as in music, something which defies
analysis, which appeals to our sense of delight we know not how or why,
and probably we do not want to know; the charm might be dissolved if we
did. But up to this point architectural design and expression are based
on reasoning from certain premises. The design is good or bad as it
recognizes or ignores the logic of the case, and the criticism of it
must rest on a similar basis. It is a matter of thought in both cases,
and without thought it can neither be designed nor appreciated to any
purpose, and this is the leading idea which I wish to urge and to
illustrate in these lectures.
You may say: May not a design satisfy all these logical conditions, and
yet be cold and uninteresting, and give one no pleasure? Certainly it
may. Indeed, we referred just now to that last element of beauty which
is beyond analysis. But, if we cannot analyze the result, I rather think
we can express what it is which the designer must evince, beyond clear
reasoning, to give the highest interest to his architecture. He must
have taken an interest in it himself. That seems a little thing to say,
but much lies in it. As Matthew Arnold has said of poetry:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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