“Hugely impressive” The Guardian
Hello, and welcome to Hidden Acoustics. My name is Ruth Palmer, I'm a violinist. Critically acclaimed, Hidden Acoustics started as a CD and concert series using music to search out the acoustics hidden in architecture, from cloisters in Rimini, Temple Church in London, and a warehouse in the Faroe Islands, to a marble atrium hidden in Manhattan. For 2015 there's also blog, exploring other hidden parts of music.
As a child growing into being a violinist, I had many dreams, but one of them was of a fun journey playing in beautiful places.
Years later, after my first CD of Shostakovich, the isolation and purity of Bach appealed to me, and I imagined myself, like Casals (my Bach hero), recording and playing in beautiful atmospheric buildings. To me, when the piece of music and the building match in spirit, something magical happens. As Daniel Libeskind said, "That raw communication between the building and the person, the child so to speak, standing in front of it and being in it, that is really the discourse; it's an experience that you have with your body, with your mind, with your soul."
I paired Bach Partita No.2 with Bartok's Sonata for Solo Violin, and the recording venue, Temple Church, matched the repertoire exactly. After the recording, I played Hidden Acoustics concerts with that repertoire throughout the UK, and in Europe and the USA.
My friend Hisham Matar, an author and former architect, introduced the inaugural concert at Temple Church. His speech is below. I hope you enjoy exploring Hidden Acoustics as much as I do, and that we connect soon, either at a performance or online. Follow the Blog here.
Author HISHAM MATAR’s introduction to Hidden Acoustics at Temple Church
Centred on Bach, these concerts aim to investigate and reveal the rich acoustic relationship between architecture and music. They tease out the simple truth that beside the musician and the music – there is a third important element at play: and that is the building in which the performance takes place.
But do buildings really change the performance all that much? And if so, in what ways? Is it just a question of the quality of sound? Or is it something far more significant: to do with the very character of the performance?
I would argue that beside the subtle and important acoustic implications that architecture can have on a performance, it also has the ability of affecting us psychologically.
Sometimes architecture is passive; other times it intrudes, asking us to change our ways: literally. But it is always a witness, an observer of our actions. For how many times do we say: ‘If these walls could speak’? For, against all rational thought, we continue to believe that the walls bear witness; that rooms hold on to the memory of what has taken place in them.
*
As a novelist who, at university, studied not literature but architecture – and, in fact, worked as one before turning to writing full-time – I know that certain things cannot be uttered in certain rooms; that certain spaces make us more open, more friendly; others intimidate us, make us aloof; that the space or landscape in which one places a character will invariably contribute certain metaphysical or psychological echoes.
Similarly, by choosing to play in a building like this, Ruth Palmer, one of the finest young violinists in Britain today, is creating an opportunity for the music and the building to resonate against one another. She is inviting us to listen differently, to listen actively.
What a building she has chosen for this evening’s performance... The wonderful structure of Temple Church has an intriguing history: eight hundred years of it, in fact: from the Crusaders in the 12th century, through the upheaval of the Reformation, to the founding of the Anglican Church. Ruth Palmer is interested in this history. She and her producer, Alexander Van Ingen, have been exploring what Ruth calls the ‘huge family of acoustics’ inside the Temple Church. She believes this building is informed by its history; that the acoustics are in part determined by that history.
‘At one end, by the altar,’ she told me, the sound is as ‘dry as a bone.’
‘At first,’ she said. ‘The place I really wanted to record was at the other end, inside the rotunda where it is astonishingly resonant, but the acoustic there doesn’t translate well to a sound recording – it’s just too much. So in the end I recorded a couple of feet outside the rotunda. I enjoyed the experience of playing around with the building very much, and I wanted to bring the audience into this magical world.’
The program she chose tonight reflects her sincere engagement with the architecture and history of the Temple Church.
Bach’s Ciaccona (the Partita in D minor for solo violin) – which roots this evening’s program, a piece containing its own hidden acoustics in its counterpoint – and Bartok’s Solo Sonata, both symbolize, for the violinist, themes of life and death, loss and time. ‘And the history and atmosphere of Temple Church,’ she says, ‘echo that mood.’
I think what this intelligent and sensitive violinist is trying to make us notice this evening and throughout this series of performances is not only how buildings change the performer and the music, but also how they change the listener.
She is a musician who believes that ‘The room is as important as the violin and the violinist.’
‘I myself,’ she says, ‘am not creating any sound at all, I'm just moving.’
HISHAM MATAR
Hello, and welcome to Hidden Acoustics. My name is Ruth Palmer, I'm a violinist. Critically acclaimed, Hidden Acoustics started as a CD and concert series using music to search out the acoustics hidden in architecture, from cloisters in Rimini, Temple Church in London, and a warehouse in the Faroe Islands, to a marble atrium hidden in Manhattan. For 2015 there's also blog, exploring other hidden parts of music.
As a child growing into being a violinist, I had many dreams, but one of them was of a fun journey playing in beautiful places.
Years later, after my first CD of Shostakovich, the isolation and purity of Bach appealed to me, and I imagined myself, like Casals (my Bach hero), recording and playing in beautiful atmospheric buildings. To me, when the piece of music and the building match in spirit, something magical happens. As Daniel Libeskind said, "That raw communication between the building and the person, the child so to speak, standing in front of it and being in it, that is really the discourse; it's an experience that you have with your body, with your mind, with your soul."
I paired Bach Partita No.2 with Bartok's Sonata for Solo Violin, and the recording venue, Temple Church, matched the repertoire exactly. After the recording, I played Hidden Acoustics concerts with that repertoire throughout the UK, and in Europe and the USA.
My friend Hisham Matar, an author and former architect, introduced the inaugural concert at Temple Church. His speech is below. I hope you enjoy exploring Hidden Acoustics as much as I do, and that we connect soon, either at a performance or online. Follow the Blog here.
Author HISHAM MATAR’s introduction to Hidden Acoustics at Temple Church
Centred on Bach, these concerts aim to investigate and reveal the rich acoustic relationship between architecture and music. They tease out the simple truth that beside the musician and the music – there is a third important element at play: and that is the building in which the performance takes place.
But do buildings really change the performance all that much? And if so, in what ways? Is it just a question of the quality of sound? Or is it something far more significant: to do with the very character of the performance?
I would argue that beside the subtle and important acoustic implications that architecture can have on a performance, it also has the ability of affecting us psychologically.
Sometimes architecture is passive; other times it intrudes, asking us to change our ways: literally. But it is always a witness, an observer of our actions. For how many times do we say: ‘If these walls could speak’? For, against all rational thought, we continue to believe that the walls bear witness; that rooms hold on to the memory of what has taken place in them.
*
As a novelist who, at university, studied not literature but architecture – and, in fact, worked as one before turning to writing full-time – I know that certain things cannot be uttered in certain rooms; that certain spaces make us more open, more friendly; others intimidate us, make us aloof; that the space or landscape in which one places a character will invariably contribute certain metaphysical or psychological echoes.
Similarly, by choosing to play in a building like this, Ruth Palmer, one of the finest young violinists in Britain today, is creating an opportunity for the music and the building to resonate against one another. She is inviting us to listen differently, to listen actively.
What a building she has chosen for this evening’s performance... The wonderful structure of Temple Church has an intriguing history: eight hundred years of it, in fact: from the Crusaders in the 12th century, through the upheaval of the Reformation, to the founding of the Anglican Church. Ruth Palmer is interested in this history. She and her producer, Alexander Van Ingen, have been exploring what Ruth calls the ‘huge family of acoustics’ inside the Temple Church. She believes this building is informed by its history; that the acoustics are in part determined by that history.
‘At one end, by the altar,’ she told me, the sound is as ‘dry as a bone.’
‘At first,’ she said. ‘The place I really wanted to record was at the other end, inside the rotunda where it is astonishingly resonant, but the acoustic there doesn’t translate well to a sound recording – it’s just too much. So in the end I recorded a couple of feet outside the rotunda. I enjoyed the experience of playing around with the building very much, and I wanted to bring the audience into this magical world.’
The program she chose tonight reflects her sincere engagement with the architecture and history of the Temple Church.
Bach’s Ciaccona (the Partita in D minor for solo violin) – which roots this evening’s program, a piece containing its own hidden acoustics in its counterpoint – and Bartok’s Solo Sonata, both symbolize, for the violinist, themes of life and death, loss and time. ‘And the history and atmosphere of Temple Church,’ she says, ‘echo that mood.’
I think what this intelligent and sensitive violinist is trying to make us notice this evening and throughout this series of performances is not only how buildings change the performer and the music, but also how they change the listener.
She is a musician who believes that ‘The room is as important as the violin and the violinist.’
‘I myself,’ she says, ‘am not creating any sound at all, I'm just moving.’
HISHAM MATAR