Composers debut work built on spatial relationships

The German philosopher Friedrich von Schelling once said that
architecture is frozen music.

This week, the Getty Center and the Los Angeles Philharmonic
will complicate the analogy a bit and continue their groundbreaking
collaboration on the Building Music Project, a series of symposia,
panel discussions, lectures, and performances exploring the
relationship between architecture and music. Events began on May 22
and will continue through June 11, highlighted by consecutive
events this Friday at the Getty and Saturday at the Walt Disney
Concert Hall.

Arvind Manocha, director of strategic planning and special
projects for the concert hall, said that the birth of this unique
partnership was fairly organic.

“Collectively, we (the Getty Center and the Walt Disney
Concert Hall) sat down and talked about what we could do that would
be appropriate for both institutions,” Manocha
said. “Our inaugural season has been a year to celebrate
architecture and the arts. It was a natural fit.”

Manocha added that this natural fit provided different
perspectives to the event and was a reflection of the cooperative
nature of Los Angeles.

“What’s really interesting to me is that here in Los
Angeles, we have one of the world’s greatest research
institutes collaborating with one of the premier performing
companies,” Manocha said. “It’s not at all
common to bring the two together. The audience will have a
robust 360 degree experience. In some ways this could only
happen in Los Angeles. We’re a very collaborative city,
and for major institutions to look to each other to provide
programming for the city is very groundbreaking.”

Friday features two panel discussions with an international
group of scholars, artists, and architects, as well as the world
premiere of composer Henry Brant’s new commission written for
and inspired by the Getty Center.

On Saturday, composer Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “Wing on
Wing,” one of two musical pieces inspired by the Walt Disney
Concert Hall, will premier following a panel discussion. Composer
Liza Lim’s “Ecstatic Architecture” debuted on May
28, and will also be performed on Saturday. 

Lim was faced with the challenge of writing her piece while in
Australia. When she visited Los Angeles in 2000, she was shown
architect Frank Gehry’s sketches of the concert hall and
building models, but there was nothing on the site yet.

“That initial impression of the free, curving form of the
sketches stayed with me throughout the process,” Lim
said. 

Lim stayed updated through a Web site which overlooked the
construction. Last July, she was invited to visit again and observe
the acoustic testing, during which she saw the inside of the hall
for the first time. 

“The building is very dramatic on the outside, and
enveloping on the inside,” Lim said. “My work is a
response to the impressions from the sketches and the process of
moving from a dynamic scribbled form to a monumental sculptural
shape.”

The contrasting dynamic between the exterior and interior is a
major characteristic of the building, and finds its way into
Lim’s piece in many different ways. Cellos
representative of the warm wooden interior are prominent at the
beginning, before the piece moves to express the hard metallic
exterior through brass and metallic woodwinds. The Douglas fir
used in the interior, in fact, is the same material often used to
make cellos. 

Lim added that she usually fashions very personalized and
specific pieces made for the musicians and organizations she writes
for, making her a fitting choice to undertake the task.

Composer Henry Brant, one of the pioneers of spatial music, was
commissioned to write a piece inspired by the Getty. Brant
conceives a piece in terms of the venue in which it is to be
performed, taking into account musician’s placement on
stage.

“The space becomes a part of the music, activated for the
duration of the piece,” said Thomas Crow, UCLA doctoral
graduate and director of the Getty Research Institute.

These two buildings are among the most noteworthy architectural
achievements of recent times. 

“If you look at the last 10 to 20 years, they are
certainly two of the most significant and monumental buildings of
our time by two of our greatest living architects,” said
Manocha.

Many of the works to be played and discussed, however, were
inspired by the architecture of other buildings throughout
history. The importance of music in reconstructing locations
and times will be emphasized and explored as well.

“What we’re trying to do here is not something you
read about in a book or experience only through
reproduction,” Crow said. “Having the music come alive,
even if it’s in a new space with your mind projected
backwards to the moment through the efforts of the historian.
Through imagining the place, you can see where it was meant to be
heard and then at least you can hear the moment actually
happen.”

And the notion that architecture is frozen may be quickly
melting.

“There’s nothing frozen about architecture,”
Crow said. “Architecture is experienced in time. You
can’t take it in all at once ““ it unfolds for you and
you return to it, and it stays with you in your memory.”

Which is why it may be such an appropriate art form to inspire
music.

“These things are all true of a piece of music as well: It
takes place in time because you don’t really come to
understand a piece of music until you hear it many times, and once
it lives in your memory you revisit it, you rearrange it in your
mind,” Crow said. “All of these ways that we
understand and retain the experience of works of art are still open
for understanding and exploration.”