Around the same time, Boston was building a symphony hall. American orchestras usually performed in theaters or opera houses, venues that were often shaped like fans, with the stage as the base of the handle. This design was made for good visibility. But Sabine, after consultation, told the architects to use the European “shoebox” concert hall model – a rectangle that can provide full sound evenly distributed between the seats. Sabine also suggested narrowing the balconies and making the stage walls taper inward to redirect and focus the sound. Sound-absorbing materials such as hard brick, steel and plaster were used to make the walls – the opposite of absorbing seats and human bodies. A balance of warmth and clarity was achieved. Boston Symphony Hall remains famous for its acoustics. The sound absorption unit is called a “sabin”. One sabin is roughly equivalent to the sound absorption of one of those old Sanders Theater seat cushions.
When I first spoke to Blair and Scarbrough in November 2021, many decisions had already been made. Geffen is a shoebox and will stay that way. But the orchestra was moved twenty-five meters forward. Scarbrough said: “Before the renovation, almost thirty percent of the seats were more than a hundred meters from the orchestra. Now there are nine percent of the seats.” It wasn’t just about the sound – it was about the feeling of closeness and how that affects the individual’s experience of the music. The number of seats decreased from more than twenty-seven hundred to twenty-two hundred. Scarbrough and Blair said that one of the reasons for the Philharmonic Hall’s disappointing acoustics was the initial failure of the board and architects to not listen to the advice of acousticians. The original acoustics were led by Leo Beranek, who died in 2016 at the age of one hundred and two. Beranek has done a lot of important research in this area, including on acoustics in jet planes, where the pilots’ voices were drowned out by the engine’s loud noise. He also designed the acoustics of the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York. “It really wasn’t his fault!” Blair said of the sound of Philharmonic Hall. “They added more seats without even consulting him and it destroyed him.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it ruined him,” Scarbrough said.
Leaning against the wall of the conference room where we sat was a piece of buttery wrinkled beech wood that looked like an old radiator. Scarbrough explained that it was a sample piece of paneling for the interior of the hall: We gave “Gary”—Gary McCluskie, the principal architect at Diamond Schmitt—the percentage of wall area we needed just in comparison to the hinge. These figures were based on studies of historic halls in Europe. They came up with this modified sine curve.” (The architects also considered oak, but found its lines too visually noisy.) “Beech was a challenge because the wood is organic, it expands and contracts,” Scarbrough said. . “The woodworkers gave us exact measurements of how big the board could be so the wood wouldn’t have cracks. But it was worth it for the feel of the wood.”
Blair said this is an illusion, although most old European halls appear to be built entirely of wood. “They’re mostly made of plaster,” he said. “In Vienna” – in the Musikverein – “there is a wooden ceiling, but on top there is a layer of bricks.” Scarbrough added, “Acoustic historian Pamela Clements claims this was an effort to fireproof the hall,” which incidentally contributed to the Musikverein’s wonderful sound.
Geffen Hall’s invisible elements had the opposite effect. Scarbrough explained that the walls suck energy out of the air: “In the 1976 renovation, the walls were three-quarter inch plywood, then furring strips, then insulation.” Bass sounds vibrated the plywood panels and washed the bass power out of the music; without bass, music can sound anemic and less complex. The new beech panels will be attached directly to the wall. On one of his weekly visits, Scarbrough checked how firmly the wooden panels were attached to the wall; he recommended changing the one-eighth-inch to three-sixteenths of an inch of glue—to provide a tighter seal and reduce vibration.
Architect Gary McCluskie—tall, lean, and smartly dressed, like an architect—took me on a couple of hard-hat tours of the hall during the renovation. McCluskie’s team also designed concert halls in Montreal and St. “The hall itself is an instrument, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s made of wood.” McCluskie showed me how the floor had been re-pitched – increasing the pitch from four to seven degrees – to provide better sight lines and prevent the music from running into the flat wall of the audience. The side tiers now had seats that sloped toward the stage as if hugging it. He explained that the stage will have risers and platforms that can be rearranged depending on how the musicians use the space and whether the performance includes a chorus.
We were looking at plastic sheet walls; something huge was being hoisted above the stage to accommodate adjustable absorbent woolen serge banners. “One thing I’m really interested in is psychoacoustics,” McCluskie said. “Restaurateurs know this, of course – that the presentation of food affects its taste.” The architects had to make the space warm and welcoming so that the audience would feel connected to the musicians. For this reason, McCluskie worked to rebury the soil. “The difference is only three degrees, but it really affects the feeling of closeness with the musicians,” he said. The architects also changed the way the audience circulates through the building. “With the old hall, it was hard to even find the entrance unless you already knew where it was,” McCluskie said. They wanted the hall to be welcoming to everyone, not just those people who were – in any way – informed.
It’s the same hall — the same box — but it’s also an almost complete transformation. The ceiling is relatively intact, which saves time and money, but you will experience it differently. “It didn’t add anything to the old hall,” McCluskie said. It was simply a dark vault. His team designed an “acoustically transparent” mesh to cover the ceiling: hand-bent steel mesh with a cloverleaf pattern that catches light. The seats are upholstered in fabric with a pattern of fallen petals, a visual echo of the trees seen through the building’s now mostly glass front. “When the seat fabric first arrived it was the wrong thickness – we were in a complete panic,” McCluskie said. Seats are the main source of sound absorption. “But it turned out that the samples they sent just didn’t have the proper foundation.”
So much of concert hall design is a matter of chance. Scarbrough talked about working at a concert hall in Nashville. “At the beginning of the project, together with the board of directors, I visited seven concert halls in five cities in six days,” he said. One of these was the Musikverein, for an afternoon concert of Dvořák’s Requiem. “And just as they played the final chords, the sun set to the west of the building and the place was flooded with golden light,” he said. “It was everything – the music, the architecture, the acoustics, the natural environment.” And that’s why Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center has windows.
Deborah Borda was President and C.E.O. The Los Angeles Philharmonic when they were building the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Frank Gehry’s silver building shaped like the Everlasting Gobstopper. “We didn’t really know what the sound was going to be like,” she said. “You plan all this, but . . . Well, I’ll never forget sitting in the audience with Frank and Yasuhisa Toyota, who was the acoustician. And Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted. We were so scared. Frank and I held hands. Then Esa-Pekka turned and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a bass section.’ Frank and I cried.”
Jaap van Zweden, conductor of the New York Philharmonic, wears all black, drawing attention to his striking gray eyes. He has a relatively strong Dutch accent and tends to punctuate his speech with “well, yes” and laying hands as a form of punctuation. “Young people listen with their eyes,” he told me. “This hall must not only be for us, but for the next century.”
Van Zweden explained that because the orchestra travels, it is used to the challenge of acoustics that are constantly changing. “Sometimes when we get somewhere, we don’t even have a chance to practice in the space where we’re going to play,” he said. “Every hall is an instrument, and if the hall does not have good acoustics, I say that the orchestra must make its own acoustics.” According to him, acoustics are a living thing. If the sound is “dry”, slightly harsh, then you can play over the residuals for continuity. “If the acoustics are naturally excellent, you don’t need to go deeper into the strings to get a bigger sound. It’s like painting with oil paint compared to watercolor,” he said. “You can play with both in a good hall.”
Van Zweden cited Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony as an example of a work that can test the acoustics of a room. Some parts are very loud and some are very quiet – can you hear both extremes in the hall? “This piece has very powerful moments where you hold your breath – that’s so important,” he said. “How you can make thick sounds, thin sounds – that’s what we ask of the space.” Van Zweden also emphasized the power of psychoacoustics in his own way. “When I was a child, my parents had a piano next to the bed in their bedroom. That sounded pretty good, I really liked the acoustics,” he said happily. He added that Cleveland and Boston are among the best venues acoustically, and that “there’s a certain magical touch that only comes with time. Like a Stradivarius violin – it has a fantastic sound and history.”
My first conversation with van Zweden was in June. At the tuning rehearsals, which would begin in August, the orchestra would play selections from various pieces to test aspects of the hall’s acoustics – its range, clarity, reverberation, and also how well the orchestra members could hear each other while playing. “We’ll see then,” van Zweden said. “It will be dynamic, we will change things.” He began to think whether, for example, he should place the other violins on the outside, like the Viennese style, or whether he should place cellos or violas there. The characteristic sound of each part of the orchestra – brass, strings, wind, percussion – would be transmitted in the room or not.
Covid has been very difficult for musicians, van Zweden said. He spent most of the last two and a half years at home in Amsterdam. He regretted that he was not able to develop his relationship with the orchestra through joint music, since he only started working with the Philharmonia in 2018. When the music world opened up enough for the Philharmonia to play a few concerts – although not in their home space – it was was proud, he said, that “our audience came with us.” Musicians are supposed to share their music.
But van Zweden also appreciated being at home, with his family, in the early days of the pandemic. He focused on his health and lost 70 kilograms. He spent time with his father, who is ninety-four years old. He even revived his father after a heart attack, doing chest compressions until an ambulance arrived. “My father still plays the piano every day,” he said. “He still gives concerts in small halls in Amsterdam a few times a month.”
“By the time of tuning exercises, it’s already in the ears,” Scarbrough said. “We’ll take measurements to document it, and the measurements give you ninety percent, but the ears give us the last ten percent.” In the most general sense, Scarbrough and Blair would listen to the balance between the various sections of the orchestra. Scarbrough said: “The difference in size between brass and woodwinds is quite remarkable, but if the hall is effectively balanced, the conductor can work with it.”
We would also listen to the timbre. “Does an oboe sound like an oboe? Woodwinds produce similar tones and frequencies, but have subtly different tones,” said Scarbrough. The reality with which the hall would reflect the oboe, the piccolo of the piccolos – this would be another measure of success. Scarbrough continued, “We’re also listening to mixing and transparency. You can have a huge mix, but then you can’t pick individual instruments. You can have a lot of transparency, but with an orchestra that sounds like a hundred and five soloists.”
“Try playing with a child whose parent isn’t too chatty.” Cartoon by Ellis Rosen
“Try playing with a child whose parent isn’t too chatty.”
Blair said: “What we really want is an orchestra that can be heard and perform together without a conductor.” It’s not just a goal, but an occasional practice: The New York Philharmonic usually plays the overture to “Candide” without a conductor in memory of Leonard Bernstein, who composed it.
“We want it to sound good from several different seats in the hall,” Scarbrough said.
“And to be perfectly honest, we need to make sure the N line is perfect,” Blair said. “That’s where the music critics usually sit,” he added with a mischievous look.
Hall is a “chameleon,” Scarbrough said. Changes to the acoustics will be made after tuning rehearsals, and sometimes during performances. Some of the main mechanisms for these literal fine-tuning are elevators, orchestra seating, overhead spotlights, and wool felt banners. The doors around the stage have slots for panels that can reflect or dampen sound. Scarbrough said: “If they’re doing something special with a lot of amplified sound, for example, they can pull out the diffusion panels and put in absorption panels to dry out the stage so the amplified performer can hear himself.”
The transparencies are beige in color so as not to attract attention, and can be developed in a number of ways, but are most commonly used to amplify sound, such as at film screenings and pop performances. Scarbrough said: “I used to add some presets and label them ‘classical’, ‘romantic’, ‘modern’ etc., but then you’d get down to questions like ‘Does Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony go ‘romantic’?”
Blair added: “And Debussy is not the same as Mahler.”
