From Quantitative to Qualitative Architecture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A New Musical Perspective

Zara, Vasco

doi:10.1007/s00004-011-0074-4

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…By participating in the constitution of architectural knowledge, musical science does not provide a basis for the discipline, but its treatment does outline its principles. In its peculiarity, it clarifies the entirely Renaissance shift in architectural mathematics from a quantitative concept based on symmetria, to a qualitative one based on euritmia (Zara 2011). What this is, and in what way it is demonstrated via that 'fairest' (and musical) bond that is proportion, was explained by Palladio in a letter to Count Giovan di Pepolli: 'Dee il corpo con membri e questi con quello aver insieme armonica proporzione, e che da quello nasce poi quel bello che da gli antichi greci Heuritmia vien detto' (Portoghesi 2008, 177); in English: 'The body with its members, as well the members with the body, must to be tied up together by means of harmonic proportion, and this relationship produces that beauty which since the times of the ancient Greeks has been called Eurhythmy' (author's own translation).…”

Section: The Renaissance Way Of Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 92%

Music, Architecture, Proportion and the Renaissance Way of Thinking

Zara¹

2020

European Review

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

During the Renaissance, the language of proportion became a unified theory capable of encompassing the understanding of the world within a coherent theological, philosophical and artistic framework. Music, with its harmonic paradigm, plays a key role in this construction. From the fifteenth century through to the end of the sixteenth century, architects and architectural theorists made reference, both in new treatises and commentaries to Vitruvius, to musical matters, transforming architecture into the summa of knowledge. The affinity to music was grounded on both a common mathematical and rhetoric gnosiology. Formerly conceived of as ideal, numbers became eloquent, reinforcing the quantitative paradigm of proportion with its qualitative one. The language of proportion as a compositional tool reveals the shift between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: while the Medieval tèchne based on modular thinking provides beauty and universal truth using the technique of repetition, the Humanist paradigm of variety produces pleasure and individual truth – a condition typical of the premodern.

show abstract

Section: The Renaissance Way Of Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 92%

Music, Architecture, Proportion and the Renaissance Way of Thinking

Zara¹

2020

European Review

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

The Defect in René Ouvrard’s Harmonic Proportions

Taraldsen

2022

Nexus Netw J

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In 1679, René Ouvrard published a pamphlet about the relationship between musical harmonies and architectural proportions called Architecture Harmonique, ou Application de la Doctrine des Proportions de la Musique à l’Architecture. The pamphlet presents a normative system of correlations between musical harmonies and architectural proportions, based on an analogous understanding of hearing and vision. Ouvrard claims that the system is infallible. In this paper, evidence regarding problems associated with Ouvrard’s normative system based on the correlations between musical harmonies and architectural proportions presented in Architecture Harmonique is showcased, implying that the system to a certain extent is fallible. Based on the argument, the problems are made possible by Ouvrard’s philosophical framework.

show abstract

Artistic and Structural Connections Between Architecture and Music – a Comparative Case Study of the Forbidden City and Palace Memories

Dong,

Yin,

2024

Nexus Netw J

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Architecture and music have a potential to trigger similar psychological effects in people due to commonalities in artistic and structural properties. Current studies exploring the relationship between architecture and music have often focused on analyzing how music can inspire architectural design, but there have been a lack of studies exploring artistic and structural commonalities between architecture and music in such a context. Therefore, this study adopts semiotics and analogy as an interdisciplinary approach aiming to comprehensively investigate connections and commonalities between architecture and music, particularly in terms of design forms and organization patterns. Using the architecture of the Forbidden City, and the musical piece Palace Memories, as selected cases for this study, this research demonstrates how both of the cases’ artistic forms can be translated into structural similarities in terms of both architecture and music. The results of this study reveal significant commonalities in forms and patterns across the fields of architecture and music for the selected cases. This study provides new perspectives for better understanding potential connections between the two fields, and how each may shed new light and provide surprising insights on the other.

show abstract

From Quantitative to Qualitative Architecture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A New Musical Perspective

Cited by 3 publications

References 17 publications

Music, Architecture, Proportion and the Renaissance Way of Thinking

Music, Architecture, Proportion and the Renaissance Way of Thinking

The Defect in René Ouvrard’s Harmonic Proportions

Artistic and Structural Connections Between Architecture and Music – a Comparative Case Study of the Forbidden City and Palace Memories

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About