Sound, Space and Object (9-11 July, 2009, CRASSH, Cambridge)
Conference report
The principal aim of the conference was to explore the relationship between musical performance and domestic
space, focusing on Early Modern France and Italy, c. 1500-1650. The conference speakers comprised scholars in
architectural history, art history and musicology, as well as acousticians and lute and string makers. The conference
exceeded our highest expectations in its coherence, high academic level and collegiality.
The period is remarkable for the growing importance of music in domestic life. Occasions on which music-making
took place ranged from elaborate court festivities to private music-making in the home for relaxation. The dwellings
under discussion included those of princes, cardinals, nobles, civil servants, humanists and courtesans. Music could
evoke a wide spectrum of associations, from spiritual purity to dangerous seductiveness. While humanists tried to
recover the culture of antiquity in their erudite all’antica residences, music printing and the mass-production of
instruments, especially lutes, allowed music-making to diffuse down the social scale.
Numerous different types of material objects were considered during the course of the conference. Not only did
paintings, drawings and engravings of the period depict music-making, but many domestic objects such as maiolica
plates, fans and even table knives were also decorated with fragments of musical notation. Musical instruments were
often elaborately embellished to become works of art in their own right. The fact that many artists also had musical
skills, as continually stressed by Giorgio Vasari, underlines the close relationship between music and the visual arts
in the Early Modern period.
One of the most important themes of the conference was the relationship between the volume and purpose of the
room and the kinds of music likely to be performed there. Various papers considered factors such as the size,
portability and loudness of different instruments, the types of music suited to spaces of different dimensions, the role
of music in dancing and banqueting, and the positions of players and listeners. Spaces specifically designed for
music began to appear in private dwellings, while existing rooms became adapted for the purpose. In particular, it
proved important to try to reconstruct the aural dimension in the use of domestic space for music; indeed, several
speakers presented musical extracts, either live or recorded. A concert of madrigals in the Old Combination Room
of Christ’s College on the first evening provided a vivid illustration of the finely balanced relationship between the
performance and its physical context.
The spaces included small studioli or cabinets, private chapels, camere or chambres, saloni or grandes salles,
balconies, courtyards and temporary structures for special occasions. The type of ceiling was especially important in
determining a room’s acoustic properties, and the relative merits of vaults and flat wooden ceiling were hotly debated
at the time. Acoustics could be modified by the presence of textiles such as tapestries, carpets, upholstery or wallhangings, or even the clothes of the participants.
Already by the late 16th century, purpose-built theatres were becoming more important. One paper discussed the
acoustic properties of Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, while others analysed the increasingly theatrical
spectacles mounted in the courts of Ferrara and Mantua, as well as in France. An interesting - if unexpected phenomenon was the popularity of extremely long narrow rooms for musical performances, sometimes with
temporary wooden seating and platforms. In France, musicians were often housed in high galleries on the walls of
ballrooms and salles.
At the start of the period considered in the conference, the number of rooms specifically identifiable as ‘music rooms’
was very small, but gradually over the following 150 years, specialised music rooms began to appear in larger
residences in both France and Italy. In these rooms we were able to assess how far their design showed an
awareness of the acoustic properties of the space. In parallel with the emergence of the theatre as a separate
building type, music-making in elite circles became more specialised with the employment of paid musicians, as
opposed to amateur participation by the inhabitants and their guests.
We hope that the conference will initiate a major international research programme, for which grant applications are
pending, but even in its own right it provided a definitive synthesis of our present state of knowledge of the theme.