Eastman Theatre Acoustics
Circa
1920’s, 1950’s/60’s, 1972, 2004, & 2008/9
Stirring the Soup
Dedicated to the respected acoustics of the original Eastman Theatre in its prime
…and to the possibility of their restoration.
September 07b,
2008
“You have definitely
laid the problem out and have suggested a direction to consider. I am
interested in seeing how this develops.”
- Leo Beranek
Eastman-Rochester Orchestra onstage to accompany a silent film during the
1920's.
In this era the
sound of the Eastman Theatre was universally admired.
This is possibly as close as the Eastman Theatre ever came to a 'thrust stage.' The orchestra is thrust forward with no ceiling immediately above it. The wall angles of the set appear to match the house wall angles (not visible) and their topography provides highly variegated near-reflections to the musicians. This is a vastly different set-up than at present with the 2004 shell. Was this set-up retained, essentially, for the once-weekly classical concerts?
Table of Contents
A Note about
the Anonymous Quotations
A Statement
of Appreciation and Purpose
Letter: EASTMAN THEATRE: Renovations won't fix the acoustics
3) Mercury,
Hendl, and a Dearth of Logic
6) A
Broad-Based Discovery Process for 2008
8) The
Eastman Theatre vs. Severance Hall
9) Severance
Hall 2000: Conserving a Pre-Existing Silk Purse
10) The
Eastman Theatre 2004: The Crux of the Matter, and a Proposed Solution
---Saving
Classical Music on the Mezzanine---
12) Loudness
vs. Musical Accuracy
13)
Numerical Reduction in Seating vs. Reduced Total Volume of the Theatre
14) The
Balcony at the Eastman Theatre
15) A Thrust
Stage at Eastman?
16) Function
Funneled into Form
17) Slapback
Redux and a Final Note about Those Box Seats
19) A Note
about Humidity, Instruments, and Sound at Eastman
An
acoustically Relevant Letter from a Friend
A Second
Acoustically Relevant Letter from a Friend
Original
Essay, January 2006, edited May 18, 2008
Correspondence
with Third-Party Acoustician, December 2007:
Letter to
City Newspaper, December 2005
Revisions:
May 23, 2008 – Date
Originally Published
May
30, 2008 – Lightly edited. More detail and clarity throughout. Worth
re-reading by anyone deeply concerned for the music.
May
31, 2008 – Afterword added. For those seeking a
quick overview, provides the flavor of the article and adds two more photos.
June
01, 2008 – Afterword: Inspired by this afternoon’s multiple-screen Tristan und Isolde on PBS, a minor flurry of
alterations.
June
04, 2008 – Entire Article lightly edited to enfold reader input and to improve
clarity.
June
05, 2008 – Chapter 16a inserted, providing 1950’s Eastman Theatre audio links
from HaydnHouse at http://www.haydnhouse.com/ Photo of Symphony Hall in Boston inserted in
Chapter 15, along with brief comment.
June
06, 2008 – Table of Contents added. Photo of a view from a phantom box seat
added. Minor editing throughout, for more clarity.
June
08, 2008 – The paper I wish I had published on May 23, had I not been in so
great a hurry to sound the alarm. More photos, more hall comparisons. Removed
erroneous information about the new handicapped-accessible rest rooms.
Extended
quotations from Akustiks personnel about eliciting input from the Nashville
symphony musicians at Schermerhorn.
A stunning audio clip of Howard Hanson speaking from onstage in
the then shell-less Eastman Theatre acoustic, introducing a trumpet fanfare, inserted
at beginning of Chapter 16a.
Proposal
to build a 2,044-seat shoebox hall within
the Eastman Theatre!
June
10, 2008 – Photo of 1920’s Eastman-Rochester Orchestra onstage added to
Chapter 16, page 49. Photo analyzed to conceivably explain why the Theatre was
universally acclaimed as acoustically perfect in that era.
June
17, 2008 – The common use of a short
wall immediately behind a shell-less orchestra, to obtain near-reflections for the benefit of the players, is noted on p. 41,
third paragraph of Chapter 15.
June
20 - 26, 2008 – Added an Eastman School faculty member’s strong corroboration of severe
acoustical problems, to Chapter 5, page 17. Chapter 8, page 26 rewritten. Chapter
16, page 50 edited for further clarity. Afterword, pp. 73-74 similarly made
clearer. Other changes made throughout in a desperate attempt to alert busy and
musically passive people to the tragedy that is being allowed to play out
before our very ears. Even greater directness incorporated throughout.
July
1, 2008 – pp. 25-26, 33-34, 39, 46-47, 50-53, 60, minor to
very minor changes for clarity. Page 27 caption altered slightly. A stronger challenge issued on page 74.
July 5, 2008 – Added full text of letter to City Newspaper of June 24, 2008 – page 9.
July 7, 2008 – Added forcefulness to Closing
Summary and Challenge on page 74.
July
11, 2008 – Even more directness and clarity incorporated in Closing Summary and Challenge on page
74.
July 17, 2008
– Improved mental picturing of what happens to sound
produced onstage in the Eastman Theatre, pp.
25 and 26.
September 07, 2008 – Removed p. 71
reference to the apparently defunct Performing Arts Center at Renaissance
Square. A bus terminal and a community college now comprise in toto this
‘renaissance’ in downtown Rochesterburg.
A Note about
the Photographs: I am
grateful for the many freely available on-line sources of the photos I have
borrowed. Having previously collected them rather haphazardly without their
associated URL’s, I have not undertaken to attribute them. This paper is an
entirely altruistic venture of no pecuniary value to anyone. I hope that
parties who have made the photos available for public viewing will look kindly
upon my usage, and will accept my heartfelt gratitude for the availability of
the photos.
A Note about the Anonymous Quotations: In some cases the parties quoted or paraphrased may
be willing to come forward upon request. In fact only one person requested
anonymity, but for the purposes of this paper I did not presume to attribute
names to people not already publicly quoted elsewhere.
__________________
A Statement of Appreciation and Purpose
Many
thanks to William D. Bailer of
This paper should be taken primarily
as a wake-up call. It is intended as a vehicle for eclectic brainstorming, goaded
by severe disappointment with the direction of the current and ongoing Eastman
Theatre acoustic. The paper has come about because of the apparent absence of
anyone in official capacity who so far dares admit what sonic horrors have been
wrought upon the Eastman Theatre.
I hold no vested interest,
save in music. It is not my livelihood; I am free to speak out. Such freedom,
such academic freedom, seems
distinctly lacking locally, in at least one main hall of higher learning.
The perspective I offer,
whether or not unique, is that of a lover of the sound and content of classical
music, and one who has known the Eastman Theatre well since 1965.
I pray this paper might serve
its purpose, while fully aware that the odds are against it. One does what one
can.
Either URL provides this MS Word version, formatted
for single or double-sided printing:
http://sirhute.com/eastman-theatre-acoustics-may-2008-stirring-the-soup.doc
Either URL provides the identical material as above,
but as a single HTML webpage:
http://sirhute.com/eastman-theatre-acoustics-may-2008-stirring-the-soup.htm
Inquiries:
Bob Laird
315-483-0523
boblaird@rochester.rr.com
This material may be freely quoted or disseminated,
for non-profit use.
Eastman
Theatre Acoustics: Stirring the Soup
Précis:
Something is wrong with the
acoustics of the Eastman Theatre, and the 2008/2009 alterations will not fix
things. First, a recap:
·
The acoustical
changes imposed upon the Eastman Theatre in 1972, while highly touted and
strongly embraced at the time, failed to examine, honor, and build upon five
decades of general satisfaction with orchestral sound as heard in the house.
Historically, conductors were more likely to be dissatisfied than were
audiences. This was in part because, as a result of the Theatre’s fan shape, so
little hall sound returned to the stage.
The 1972
changes destroyed the original octave-to-octave balance by inserting a bright,
dry ‘presence peak’ into the response curve. It took about three decades for
that result to become officially recognized as unsatisfactory.
·
After such
belated official recognition, further acoustical changes were imposed upon the
Eastman Theatre in 2004. Those changes similarly failed to reach back to the
roots of the Theatre. Instead, an overlaid contemporary concept of enhanced
musical sound was applied, intended to excite audiences jaded by exposure to
this present noisy world. The audible result, unchanged as of this writing,
varies from a superficially impressive vast sonic muddle (in Orchestra Center
seating) to a thin, piercingly bright, exploded sound with little sense of homogeneous
ensemble (in the Balcony).
·
More or less by
accident in 2004, a strong ‘slapback’ echo was brought to the fore. It is
deleterious to listening from Orchestra seating and it seems likely that it is
one of several factors which now interfere with ensemble onstage, at least at
some stand positions. Slapback is a strong echo that sounds like a second
beginning of the same sound one has just heard, occurring very shortly after
the initial sound.
·
The 2008/2009
architectural changes in the house will inevitably alter the sound by adding
new reflective surfaces, but they will not vastly improve it, because the
alterations will impact only a small percentage of the total surface area of
the house and an even smaller percentage of its total volume in cubic feet of
air. These expensive architectural changes alone will not fully address the
Eastman Theatre’s acoustical problems.
For
example, box seats are being added to try to break up massive reflections from
the widely separated walls. This could be accomplished far more inexpensively
by mounting adjustable reflectors on
the same walls, which would allow ‘tuning’ the hall. The box seats are a
one-shot gamble on efficacy, literally cast in stone, or at least in steel and
wood.
Sound
heard in the box seats will be at least as bad as that heard currently in
existing seats along the walls. With the box seats (which George Eastman
purposely eschewed), win or lose, the game is over for at least another thirty
years, if history repeats.
·
What is direly
needed is a brief period of broad-based discovery, to include RPO and
Eastman musicians (apparently for the first time) in the roles of interviewees
and of listeners, and to possibly include a second opinion from a
well-published Ph.D. physicist and acoustician who knows and lauds Christopher
Blair of Akustiks, Eastman’s acoustical consultant. That physicist, who in
December privately indicated to me his interest, would be named and
invited when appropriate. [See my correspondence with this third-party
acoustician, linked at the end of Stirring
the Soup.]
·
Selected
photographic thumbnail comparisons with other halls are provided, including
shoebox, modified shoebox, and fan-shaped halls, pointing out what works
elsewhere, compared with what currently does not work at the Eastman Theatre.
·
A plea is made
toward thinking-outside-the-box, or at least off-the-stage, by experimenting
with a shell-less ‘thrust stage,’ extending forward of the present stage
(depending upon sightlines). At the problematic Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln
Center, a shell-less thrust stage has been very well received, bringing to
the audience more immediacy of sound, as well as a warmer sound. Avery Fisher
has some of the same inherent acoustical problems as the Eastman Theatre, most
particularly poor early reflections within a massive volume of air.
·
A highly placed U
of R official wrote recently, “What the actual
ultimate effects will be of the impending renovations on the acoustical sound
will not be known until [after they are completed and] we do some thorough
sound checks.” […] “…in spite of the reams of
acoustical analysis, and although it’s 2008, acoustical precision on
renovations is still a very fuzzy process. If it weren’t, Avery Fisher Hall
would never have had to be re-done as many times as it has.” Such a
statement fails to inspire confidence.
·
The current
philosophy of “louder, bigger, brighter at all costs” is horribly wrong,
particularly when forced upon a space that cannot support it. Distorted higher decibel
levels are being forcibly extracted from the Theatre for the sake of ‘impact,’ and
impressiveness, with blind disrespect for what once the Eastman Theatre offered
musically, and could again.
·
Fortunately, the
unpredictable effects of the 2008 “Phase Two” physical alterations inside the
house would pale in comparison with the positive effects of a thrust,
shell-less stage as at Avery Fisher Hall (first choice), or of drastically altered
shell angles in place on the stage (third choice), or of some combination of
the two (second choice). The reasons this is so are presented in pellucid
detail in the text and photographs that follow.
·
Shortly after the
initial release of this paper on May 23, Leo Beranek, one of the most
experienced and respected architectural acousticians in the trade, wrote, “You have definitely laid the problem out
and have suggested a direction to consider. I am interested in seeing how
this develops.” [Quoted with permission] http://www.leoberanek.com
Letter to City Newspaper June 24, 2008
(reproduced below link):
EASTMAN THEATRE:
Renovations won't fix the acoustics
On Jun. 24th, 2008 - City Newspaper
The
acoustics of the Eastman Theatre have been poor since completion of Phase One
in 2004. The sound is muddled in the orchestra seats, owing to acoustical
"shadows" caused by inappropriate shell angles. The upper balcony
seats, once offering the best sound, are now excruciatingly bright. Musicians
have a harder time hearing themselves inside the new shell.
Adding
box seats and reducing seating will only partially address the problems. Worse,
the box seats cannot be flexibly "tuned," as could far cheaper
acoustical panels.
Sound
has always been poor near the walls. There is no reason to believe it will be
any better in box seats.
In
1924, Times-Union music critic AJ Warner wrote of the Eastman Theatre:
"Its acoustics are regarded as among its most notable features, for one
can hear perfectly in any corner of the great structure, so carefully has it
been designed."
There
is no record of acoustical complaints during the early years of the theater. We
went off track somewhere, and particularly so in the louder-brighter 1972
renovations, highly touted at the time.
Thirty
years later, the University now admits that those changes didn't sound good.
Will it take another 30 years to admit the much worse travesty of 2004-2008?
"Louder, brighter, more impact" has pushed the Eastman Theatre beyond
its genteel capabilities. Classical music is suffering.
The
anomalies are largely "corrected" when the equalized, well-aimed
sound system is employed, but then it is just like listening to a huge stereo.
Theater sound systems do not sound as good as real music - only louder;
offering quantity over quality.
Eastman's
acoustical consultants, Akustiks, recently designed a new orchestra enclosure
at the fan-shaped Hilbert Circle Theater in Indianapolis. The enclosure angles
cause the same acoustical shadowing as does Akustiks' shell at the similarly
fan-shaped Eastman Theatre. In Indianapolis, Akustiks specified continued use
of an existing sound system for classical concerts. Caveat auditor.
Reducing
seating from 3,094 to 2,250 this summer sounds impressive, toward more intimate
acoustics. But there will be little decrease in the hall's total volume. All
the air space up to the chandelier and back to the rear of the balcony will
remain.
Please
visit http://sirhute.com/eastman-acoustics.htm
for a further link to an in-depth non-technical analysis with lots of photos
and sound files, including suggested solutions.
BOB
LAIRD, SODUS
(Laird
is a longtime RPO patron.)
Eastman Theatre Acoustics: Stirring the
Soup
1) Louder and Brighter
The ear is at first intrigued
with a change in sound. If a stereo’s treble control is advanced so as to add
more presence (brightness) during a quiet passage, the ear at
first prefers it so. The ear also prefers the subjective fullness of
slightly louder sound over slightly softer sound.
Still, there are limits.
Enhancements that seem acceptable at softer volumes can sound pretty miserable
during a full orchestral crescendo, converting massive power into a piercing shriek.
'Louder and
brighter' has happened twice to the Eastman Theatre, once in 1972 and once
in 2004. As well in 2004, a very loud and very quick echo, or
'slapback,' was brought to the fore. The slapback is part and parcel of
the blurred sound heard in some seats by audience members, and it likely contributes
as well to the auditory confusion onstage which since 2004 has made orchestral
ensemble more challenging for the musicians.
'Louder and brighter' very
often seems exciting and desirable in the near term, but too often it goes over
the top. It is understated power, unenhanced simplicity and transparent warmth which
engage the heart longer term and forevermore.
Before 1972, The Eastman
Theatre had these qualities. Not in spades, as in
Great art of any discipline invariably
presents a sense of capacious headroom. In a passionate musical performance
there is compelling tautness as musicians proceed in effortless balance toward
each successive level of intensity. Strength is offered with ease, never
straining or shrieking. This is ruined, or is at least weakened, by a hall that
itself shrieks or otherwise muddies the music on its way to listeners’ ears.
The Eastman Theatre since its
2004 renovation merits no acoustical cigar, nor did it after its renovation in
1972. Both changed the sound of the
hall; neither improved it. Both
failed to maintain the natural diminution of the harmonic series (smooth
roll-off of upper partials), and failed to sustain the native
sweetness of accurate phase relationships, each of which is paramount in service
to the sound of live classical music.
Before blithely hacking and
tacking through Phase Two in the house of the Eastman Theatre, there
absolutely must be a period of
discovery involving RPO musicians and Eastman musicians as listeners and as interviewees.
It has been immensely
irresponsible to exclude such people thus far. It is even quite atypical of the
modus operandi of Akustiks, the hired acoustical consulting firm, as reported about
their members’ projects in
There remains great hope in
terms of ditching the 2004 shell and adopting a thrust or partially-thrust
stage (depending on sightlines), as at Avery Fisher Hall. The shell simply is not working! Ask the musicians! This could be
done at any time, and with little regard to the probably unstoppable juggernaut
of Phase Two changes to the house at the Eastman Theatre.
It will take a remarkable
leader to ditch the shell. Such person will quickly attract many relieved followers,
freed to emerge from the shadows of impolitic whispering into a healthier mode
of proactive argument and even of assistance. Short term, such leader will be
taking a risk. Longer term, such person
will be roundly thanked for restoring both musicality and the academic freedom
to speak out in house and elsewhere in support of all aspects of music.
Akustiks is the hired help,
not some august final arbiter. Dr. Undercofler is gone. Must the mantle be
rigidly inherited, warp and woof? Of course not!
2) The Sound and
the Patron
RPO patronage is
directly related to how good the RPO sounds to its patrons.
A patron's commitment to
support the Orchestra and to attend concerts is inevitably impacted by whatever she
may feel at a gut level about the sounds she is hearing. Her
psychological response to the sound
(not the musicianship) of the RPO in the Eastman Theatre may be
largely subliminal, and thus difficult to track or to quantify.
It is impossible to gauge how
many more patrons would be attracted, and with what greater frequency of
attendance, by an enticingly natural acoustic in the Eastman Theatre.
Presently a simple and ingenuous acoustic is "not known, because
not looked for," to borrow from T.S. Eliot.
To make matters more
confusing, the current acoustic is presented to patrons as some sort of great
improvement. In fact, the acoustic has merely greatly changed, and greatly for
the worse.
It is presumptuous to foist
‘enhanced’ musical sound upon listeners, believing them jaded by continual
exposure to our present noisy world.
A good concert hall is one that offers refuge from clamor, not
competition with it. A good hall encourages audience members to quiet
themselves and listen.
It is misguided to try to
emulate at Eastman the sound of a vastly different hall (Severance Hall in
3) Mercury, Hendl,
and a Dearth of Logic
The purist Mercury recordings
of the late ‘50’s and ‘early ‘60’s were accomplished in an empty Eastman
Theatre, with the thick velvet stage curtains of that era removed, and with
three omnidirectional microphones hung high above 10th row center,
and left, and right.
The best sound I ever heard
in the Theatre was during the sunset of that same prolonged era
of shell-less, curtained stage, when around 1970 Walter Hendl
guest-conducted Pictures at an Exhibition
with nearly a full house. He had largely de-curtained the stage for the
performance. The sonorities and their impact were magnificent.
Obviously Hendl knew
something of acoustics and of the Eastman Theatre’s potential. But at that time
there was considerable frosty distance between the fractious Orchestra
management (the Civic Music Association, or CMA) and the Eastman School of
Music, of which Hendl was Dean. His single demonstration of greatly improved
sound fell victim to the CMA’s dull conservatism and a residual Victorian need
to drape everything in thick velvet.
After the Eastman School
finally admitted thirty years after the fact that the three million dollar 1972
acoustical renovation had turned out less than satisfactorily,* it was
illogical to base a twenty-first century renovation (2004/2008) upon that
starting point. The new 1972 sound, which itself was highly touted and well
received at the time, was wrong toward brightness and harshness, but it was not
nearly as bad as what happened in 2004.
The proper resource from
which to work would have been the original admittedly unwieldy Eastman Theatre
itself, bare naked, ca. 1922. But now once again we are about to blithely
‘further improve’ the Theatre’s acoustics by building only upon its most recent
acoustical disaster, that of 2004.
_____________________________________________________
*In 1968, George C. Izenour
participated as a theater consultant in a design study for remodeling and
restoring the Eastman Theatre. A five million dollar initial renovation
proposal resulted, after which the very different three million dollar 1972
project emerged. The five million dollar proposal had included eliminating the
“acoustically shadowed” Mezzanine and re-sloping the Orchestra Level floor to
improve vertical sightlines. This would have reduced seating capacity from
3,200 to 2,500. The recovered Mezzanine space was to be remodeled into control
rooms and recording studios. [Source: Theatre
Design, Izenour 1977.]
4) An Orange Canopy
Live acoustic music of
any genre offers potentially the same refreshingly natural
experience to music lovers as does a walk through a virgin
forest to nature lovers. For all of our time spent awash in the
approximated sound reproduction of iPods, elevator music, and the average
car stereo, there remains something subliminal within us that
lusts for and resonates with naturalness.
An
honest acoustic supports music without overtly calling attention
to itself, much as a forest canopy protects and supports all that
richly transpires beneath it. In the venerable Eastman Theatre, it is as
if the underside of the canopy has been spray-painted bright orange,
casting everything below in an unsettling light.
In fact, there is no
need for metaphor: Consider the actuality of the clear coating that
since 2004 has greatly increased the reflection of sound from the walls of
the Theatre. The acoustical effect has been to call untoward
attention to the newly 'updated' sound, including a newly evident
discrete echo, or slapback, that the Theatre now imposes upon listeners
and musicians alike.
The sound heard in the house is also harmed by the new
orchestra shell, because the shell walls’ obtuse* angles do not match
the more greatly obtuse (fanned) angles of the house walls. These
discontinuities yield an acoustical shadow in Orchestra Level seating, where
there is no reflected sound except from longer paths.
Additionally, there are only close-in near reflections
to the house from the shell’s ceiling, because of its minimally obtuse angle
and its great discontinuity with the Theatre’s ceiling. Later in this paper, this
unfortunate situation is compared photographically with its antithesis at
Severance Hall.
In fact, the dearth of
near-reflections is probably making the slapback seem relatively louder and more objectionable by comparison. No shell at
all would be better, and less piercingly loud, precisely as in the pre-1972
Theatre.
Prior to 1972, taking up the
carpeting and de-curtaining some of the stage would have been a far better way
(and a far cheaper way!) to allow the sound to bloom, and to allow a bit more
reverberation in the then shell-less and thickly stage-curtained hall. Instead,
the new reflective surfaces of 1972 added a bright ‘presence’ peak to the hall,
unbalancing its previously glorious octave-to-octave integrity all the way down
into the deepest bass.
Any reflective acoustical
environment inevitably colors sound produced within it, but less is more.
The original Eastman Theatre conveyed a preponderance of accurate phase
relationships and naturally diminishing upper partials in the harmonic series.
Such happy circumstance constitutes a concert-goer's virgin forest—a
respite from clamor.
At the Eastman Theatre
presently, such natural acoustic simplicity is not known because it was
not looked for during the alterations of 1972 or in 2004. Instead,
overblown sound and fury, as so often considered desirable in amplified
popular music, was foisted in 1972 and then greatly further foisted in
2004 upon acoustic classical
music in the Eastman Theatre.
_______________________________________________________
*The two divergent shell wall
angles are obtuse with reference to the shell’s back wall, looking toward the
house.
5)
Some Informal Interviews
My informal polling of RPO
concert-goers indicates that many in the audience have bought in
to the 2004 acoustic as an 'improvement.' Well, so did many in 1972. Both
changes were louder and brighter. Both were strongly sold
and quickly embraced. The 1972 changes ultimately did not wear
well. By 2035, will people be itching for yet another change?
To quote a former
Eastman School Professor and musician, now engaged elsewhere, ". . . my
[listening] experiences in the new [2004] hall . . . have not provided me with
an impetus to go and hear more.”
To quote another experienced
listener: “I sat in the upper balcony (left side) …” […]
“The sound was at times excruciatingly loud and bright. The violins were
so piercing I had to cover my ears.”
[…] “While some of the orchestra
was easy to hear (brass, basses), I found it hard to sort out many of the blended
woodwind parts and cello/viola lines. Mostly it was just punishing when loud,
and muddled when not loud. Another patron agreed.” […] “I
didn’t much care for the old [post-1972] Theatre sound. But I like this
[post-2004 sound] less, especially upstairs, where the better sound used to be
found.”
To paraphrase a current
RPO violinist, 'Since 2004, sound from the brass players on the opposite side
of the stage seems sometimes delayed as heard at my stand, and it can be
difficult to gauge ensemble by listening. It has become all the more imperative
to watch the conductor, while disregarding my own ears. A certain
conductor will at times ask the stands around me to play more on top of the
beat, indicating that we are dragging slightly. At times I notice a very quick
apparent double attack on discrete sounds I hear at my stand. We sound louder
to ourselves in the new shell, but in terms of ensemble it is a jumbled
loudness lacking in clarity.’
To paraphrase another RPO
violinist, 'Since 2004, orchestral ensemble as heard at my stand has
become rhythmically imprecise. At times I feel almost that I should just
'air bow' so as not to contribute further to the mess. Personally I believe the
biggest problem is that the brass cannot hear the strings.'
Paraphrasing a third RPO
violinist, ‘It is difficult to hear ensemble onstage. At times I have to watch
peripherally the body language of other players to try to meld better with
them. Although I had not thought of the problem as related to a slapback echo,
it is possible that something like that might be a part of the difficulty.’
Paraphrasing an RPO brass
player, ‘We do sound louder to ourselves within the new shell. It is possible
that because we now so easily fill the stage with sound, we are therefore more
or less subconsciously lightening our tone production instead of ‘filling the
hall’ with sound as before. That may explain your listening experience in the
Mahler, in which we sounded less than fully committed to the sonorities of the
music.’
What is going on, onstage?
Have the laws of physics been locally altered by the 2004 renovations? Does
louder sound from the brass travel more slowly than before laterally across the
Eastman Theatre stage to the strings?
At least one violinist
reports a very fast, distinct ‘slapback’ echo, which more logically could be
what is making the brasses sound delayed to the strings. There may be just
enough length to the reflective paths onstage, including the very high ceiling,
to exceed the 20-millisecond minimum delay required to perceive an echo as a
discrete event not integrated by the brain with the initial burst of
sound. Or it may be that the slapback currently
heard in Orchestra seating is also returning to the stage, courtesy of the
newly enlivened hall. Or both.
A respected
Whatever the source of the
delayed sound onstage, a slapback theory would comport well with complaints
from the podium that the violins, but not the louder brass, are dragging. In
other words, at times the violins might be playing predominantly with the loud slapback
of the brasses’ sound, 20 or more milliseconds delayed at their stand
positions. Removing the shell ceiling would be a viable experiment (see below),
to determine to what extent it is involved in reflecting confusing slapback onstage.
To be fair, one should point
out that if everybody is very closely following a precise and assertive
conductor, and/or is sensitive to the nearby body language of colleagues, good
ensemble results despite whatever acoustical misinformation is arriving at
various stands. No doubt such good ensemble does generally result from the
stalwart RPO musicians. But energy usurped in resolving cognitive dissonance
can hardly benefit the music.
During many past decades
of Eastman Theatre history the Orchestra received very little of its
sound reflected back to it onstage, in particular during the era of the
heavily-curtained and shell-less stage, prior to 1972. At that time, in an
empty hall you could speak normally onstage and be heard quite well in the upper
Balcony. Conversely, a person standing even down in the front of the Balcony
(the “Loge”) had to yell clearly to be understood onstage. This situation was
noted by the musicians, but it never seemed to interfere with the music they
were able to produce over all those years.
Now we have a brave new
era in which orchestral sound heard on the stage is significantly louder but jumbled.
The musicians are indeed awash in more sound than ever before, but that
sound is confusing in such a way that playing together is made more difficult
than ever before, at least at some stand positions.
A good experiment would be to simply remove the shell
ceiling by parking it in the fly space for a concert. Reflections onstage from
the ceiling are a tiny bit delayed at the players’ ears, muddying the sound
they hear. Without a ceiling the musicians would hear each other less loudly
but more clearly. Although the house’s
slapback, if audible onstage, would be then be relatively louder as heard by the musicians, a net gain might be
achieved in clarity, toward sorting out ensemble.
At some point after the 1972
shell was put into use, I went backstage after a concert and observed that the
major element of the two-element floating ceiling over the musicians was
missing. Had this been accomplished on purpose, or was there some problem with
the rigging or the winches? Is there a record of a conductor’s requesting that
that ceiling panel not be deployed?
6) A Broad-Based Discovery
Process for 2008/2009
I have been told by
several
One RPO
violinist remarked to me that acoustical matters are not
considered by Management to be the concern of the musicians who
produce the sound. Some of the RPO musicians would have a good deal to
contribute, if invited. Why were they not included in a ‘discovery’ period
before construction began in 2004, in evaluation afterwards, and more recently
in looking toward Phase Two beginning in the summer of 2008?
There is little room for
hubris while planning, executing, and evaluating improved service to
music, any more than there is room for it while playing music.
Classical music centers upon a heartfelt desire to
share qualities deeper and greater than those of any individual, no matter
what important or even pivotal role an individual may temporarily inhabit.
There is no dishonor in being
acoustically waylaid by a tricky hall, or by a customer’s specifications and/or
last-minute strong wishes. There certainly is
dishonor in stonewalling, should that ever be allowed to occur.
The dean of American
architectural acousticians, Leo Beranek, presided over unsatisfactory
initial results at the 2700-seat Avery Fisher Hall, given a last-minute
demand by the customer (increased seating, requiring a departure from the
initial ‘shoebox’ design). Even to date, after many changes, the hall might
best be described as rather adequate; a Carnegie Hall it is not. The good news
is that recently there has been very positive experimentation with a thrust
stage.
Are Paul
Scarbrough and Christopher Blair of the consulting firm Akustiks
immune to similar circumstance at Eastman? The last minute
customer-demanded coating of the Eastman Theatre walls, while physically minor
compared to the last minute structural changes at Avery Fisher, certainly
altered the acoustics in a previously unplanned manner. Even the angles of
Eastman’s orchestra shell must have been dictated by customer requirements,
because from a purely acoustical standpoint they just don’t make sense. (More
on this below.)
If anyone at the U of R or
Kodak truly cares about the sound of
this renovation as much as about its glitz, it is imperative that a short
period of discovery be mounted right now.
Third party opinion should be sought and weighed. As well, numerous musicians should be involved as interviewees and as listeners.
Below is a quotation from Akustiks’ own Paul Scarbrough, spoken after
the completion of the year 2000 Severance Hall renovation, the home of the Cleveland
Orchestra. [Boldface mine]:
"What
we called the 'discovery' phase was critical. This included extensive interviews with the
conductor, Musical Arts Association, and musicians.
We would hear things such as 'Severance Hall has a warm sound,' but no two musicians use the term in the same way,
and we had to reconcile their vocabulary, largely artistic, with the science of
acoustics." - Paul Scarbrough http://livedesignonline.com/mag/show_business_preserving_severance/
7) Goose Bumps
At the Eastman Theatre in
2008, foreshortening the Orchestra seating and tacking on a few box seats
will not alter the hall’s acoustical characteristics sufficiently to
remove the blurriness in
This is so because the hall’s
problems are largely not coming from, or much influenced by, the areas to
be altered.
For example, the Orchestra
seating underneath the Mezzanine is soon to be abandoned as the Orchestra level
is foreshortened. This presently sheltered area is well damped during concerts
by its seats and by the warm bodies therein. Thus it is acoustically absorbent.
As such it is one of the least likely sources of the hall’s slapback echo.
On the other hand, to the
extent that any component of the present slapback may be bouncing off the
hanging front of the Mezzanine, then building
a new wall underneath the Mezzanine front that greatly increases its reflective
surface area will actually increase
the loudness of the slapback!
None of the house alterations
will address and improve the condition of poor early reflections into the
acoustically shadowed Orchestra seating. However, either a thrust stage or
altered shell angles would do so.
The primary purpose of the
box seating is to help break up reflections of sound off of the
divergent house walls farther out in the hall. The boxes will do so only over a
small percentage of the immense total surface area of the newly-coated reflective
walls, and the lowest boxes will break up reflections hardly at all.
There are immensely cheaper
ways to tame reflections. Hang a few tapestries. Mount dispersing reflectors
whose angles can be readily changed. Adjustable reflecting panels would be infinitely
easier to alter after completion than are box seats. Nobody really knows 100%
in advance just how the new box seats will alter the sound, and they certainly
cannot be fine-tuned.
The box seats hugging the fanned
walls will sound at least as bad as do present Orchestra seats near the walls, and sightlines to the stage
from the spreading walls, upon which the box seats will be mounted, will be
rather poor.
Box seating will provide an
excellent view of the opposite wall.
The artist is vague about the
new wall to be built under the lip
of the Mezzanine, and about which
seats are to be removed.
A potential view from a lower
box seat. The sound will be even worse than it is from
current
seats near the fanned house walls. Will box seats be cheaper than the good
seats?
Finally, the alterations in
toto will reduce by only a small fraction the total volume of the hall in cubic feet, up to the chandelier and back to
the rear of the balcony. The house will be essentially just as cavernous as it
is at present.
All propagation paths and
distances related to the timing of all echoes and slapback in the house will
remain essentially unchanged. Specifically, such sonic paths are between
the stage and all other reflective surfaces in the hall, such as
the back of the Balcony, the front hanging surfaces of the Mezzanine and
the Loge, and the broad, flat, divergent side walls.
As with implementation of any
physical change, the sound will automatically be altered to a certain extent as
new reflective surfaces of various shapes and angles are added. It is quite
easy to alter sound; it is more difficult to gain a net improvement. To further
confuse things, the ear may be intrigued initially with the novelty of an
altered sound that ultimately will not wear well. This happened in 1972 and
again in 2004, to many ears. Caveat auditor.
We humans are gullible. We
wimp out in the face of misinformation or partial information repeated long
enough and often enough. Politicians know this. Artful dodging becomes accepted
as truth by busy folk whose competencies lie elsewhere, and who prefer simply to
accept without examination the statements of others when it comes to a less
than rigorous discipline with which they are not familiar—in this case,
architectural acoustics.
"Stop being such a
God-damned sissy! Why can't you stand up before fine strong music like this and
use your ears like a man?" - Charles Ives, at a 1931 concert of Ives's
and Carl Ruggles's music, after a man booed during one of Ruggles's works.
Ive’s principle applies as
well to standing up and using our ears to become more consciously aware of our
experience of an acoustical space and its effects on music. Many strong and
successful women and men in the
audience at the Eastman Theatre are quite capable of using their ears to listen
for themselves consciously and independently. We need not be concerned if we
lack a lexicon of descriptive terms or a handbook of formulae to apply, simply
because our respective areas of competency happen to lie elsewhere.
Please recall this quotation
shared in the Précis, above, from a highly placed University source: “…in spite of the reams of acoustical analysis, and although it’s 2008,
acoustical precision on renovations is still a very fuzzy process.”
In fact the least fuzzy and
most pragmatic evaluation is immensely simple and wordless: How often in the
current Eastman Theatre do we find ourselves leaning forward with goose bumps
to lustily embrace the sound of the music? Conversely, how often do we just dig
in and put up with the sound, or even cringe from it (consciously or
subconsciously), for the broader sake of respecting the music? And (this one is
a bit harder) how often do we simply not know what we are missing?
The medium is the message, or at least it is the
only way the message arrives at listeners’ ears. A good deal of the message is
being lost within this present medium at
Only after the soup and
harshness have been removed may we become aware of all that we had been
missing. Far beyond the limited results of the planned hacking and tacking in 2009,
the most promising way to remove the cringe factor and the blur would be to
place the Orchestra on a shell-less thrust stage as far out in the house as
sightlines will allow. Then would the forgotten joy of musical sound be restored
to the Eastman Theatre, as in its golden years.
David Zinman sensed this
possibility, but he didn’t take it far enough. He experimented with a forward
orchestra position, but short of actually extending a thrust stage. Even now,
on nights when the orchestra is moved forward to accommodate a chorus, some
patrons note a better orchestral sound in the house. Once again, the reason for
this is that the discontinuity of shell angles as compared with house angles
becomes then a lesser factor in the equation. That factor would be zero from a
shell-less thrust stage within the
house.
8) The Eastman Theatre vs.
Severance Hall
The acoustical problems that
yield a ‘blur factor’ and a ‘cringe factor’ in the Eastman Theatre are not mere
generalized reflections. The problems are related to the existence of huge homogeneous wavefronts reflected from just a few widely separated huge homogeneous surfaces.
To oversimplify for the sake
of clarity, in the Eastman Theatre such massive reflected wavefronts bang
harshly into the initial wavefront generated by the musicians on the stage.
Violent ‘comb’ effects of extremely complex mathematical phase cancellation and
addition (varying with wavelength) result in thinning and brightening the
frequency response heard in the hall. A related extremely rapid coherent echo
‘slaps’ upon some seat positions in the hall, and upon some stand positions
onstage.
Paul Scarborough of Akustiks
has said of the Severance Hall (
http://livedesignonline.com/mag/show_business_preserving_severance/
Severance Hall has a lot
of randomized reflecting surfaces, and it has had many of them since it was
built in 1931. The Eastman Theatre offers nothing but a few huge, essentially
flat or linearly curved reflecting surfaces, which it has had since its
completion in 1922, and to which box seats will soon be added more for glitz
than for sound.
Most of the reflecting
surfaces at Eastman should be altered in topography in order to
purposely disperse (but not absorb) sound in as many directions as
possible and over as broad a range of frequencies as possible. The
new wall to be built at the rear of the soon-to-be-shortened Orchestra
Level should be similarly designed.
RPO musicians would hear
each other better onstage if their shell incorporated the Severance
shell’s many convex ceiling panels (dubbed "pillows"), which
better disperse the players’ sound within the shell than does Eastman’s more
geometric shell ceiling.
The side and rear panels of
the Severance shell are also slightly bowed, further reflecting and dispersing
sound amongst the musicians onstage.
“The entire shell, in fact, was created primarily for
the musicians. Reflecting the sound so the musicians can hear one another is a
great step toward ensemble performance.
"The old shell reflected the sound toward the audience, but the new one enables the musicians to hear each other
more clearly." - architect David Schwarz, speaking about the year 2000
Severance Hall shell, boldface mine.
[Same referenced link as above.]
For these and
other design reasons, Eastman has ended up with something of a lesser
shell than Severance's, at least insofar
as musician-friendly topography. There are useful reflections and there
are confusing reflections. Since 2004 we have the latter, both onstage and in
the house.
The whole of Severance Hall's
topography is and always was far more lushly variegated, in bas-relief Art
Deco with a dash of Egyptian Revival, than is Eastman's
simpler Italian Renaissance Revival theme. That variegation is one
reason why Severance sounds better; in a word: dispersion.
However, a far more significant reason that Severance
sounds better is that the angles of the side walls and ceiling of Severance’s
shell better match the angles of the house.
[The scenario limned immediately below is meant as a thought experiment
to ‘stir the soup.’ It is intuitive and possibly accurate, but it is proposed
without benefit of the techniques of interferometry that acoustical consultants
have at their disposal.]
At Eastman the players'
sound:
·
Bounces around
loudly in the shell as heard by the musicians, and reflects toward the house along
the insufficiently splayed* angled surfaces of the sides and ceiling of
the new shell.
·
Then, owing to
that insufficiency, the sound fails
to strike and bounce off of the suddenly more greatly splayed house side walls and the greatly
discontinuous house ceiling. This creates a ‘shadow’ of weak early-reflected
sound throughout Orchestra seating.
·
Then the sound hits something, likely the heavily
painted, curved, focusing fronts of the Mezzanine and Loge, and bounces
off them back toward the stage. This echo is heard as a ‘slapback,’ first in the Orchestra seating
and then onstage, at similar loudness to the initial outbound
(‘incident’) wave, but very slightly delayed.
·
After bouncing
off the focusing curved surfaces, portions of the reflected sound wave
encounter the splayed house side walls this time at an acute angle, and diffract off of them, smearing a hazy
delayed reflection back into Orchestra seating.
This
artifact is the acoustical parallel of fogged glasses or a fogged windshield,
insofar as it interferes with the ability to resolve detail. A similar artifact
may be operative onstage from refraction within the shell of the same delayed
returning sound wave.
______________________________________________________________
*The two divergent shell wall
angles and the shell ceiling angle are obtuse with reference to the shell’s
back wall, looking toward the house. Of itself, that is fine. It is as a result
of discontinuity with the suddenly more divergent planes of the house walls and
ceiling that an acoustical shadow is created in the Orchestra Level seating. For
further details on this phenomenon, please see An Acoustically relevant Letter from a Friend, reproduced at the
end of this paper.
The potential for slapback
and blur was always inherent in the geometry of the hall, but those artifacts
have come to the fore because:
·
The (obtuse)
angles of the 2004 shell walls are less splayed than were those of the 1972
shell walls. There is now a greater discontinuity with the angles of the house walls. The present shell ceiling
angle differs in similar fashion, having now a greater discontinuity with the
house ceiling.
·
This creates a
broad acoustically shadowed area in Orchestra seating in which direct sound and
early-reflected sound is less loud than are later reflections.
The
sound from within the shell is actually quite loud (and quite jumbled as heard
by the musicians), but because of the inappropriate shell angles it is not
directly incident upon the Orchestra seats. This makes the slapback and blur
more audible, as a greater percentage of the waveform heard in Orchestra seats.
That waveform, after all, is nothing more than the loudly jumbled shell sound
itself, reflected to Orchestra seats not directly, but via various indirect paths. A sense of
‘spaciousness’ is felt, but it is a false and confusing spaciousness which impairs resolution of
musical detail, just as fogged glasses impair resolution of visual detail.
·
The problem may
be resolved via one of the following approaches:
o
Make the side and
ceiling angles of the shell more obtuse, ideally matching the house angles, as
at Severance Hall. (Rather difficult to accomplish.)
o
Discontinue the
use of the shell, except perhaps for formal convocations. It is not working. Ask the musicians!
o
At least
experimentally, and with attention to sightlines, relocate the Orchestra to a
shell-less raised platform forward of, or partly forward of, the existing
stage. Seat some concert-goers behind the orchestra and along the sides. Please
recall Avery Fisher Hall’s recent
very well-received thrust stage, ameliorating acoustical problems that had
lasted for decades.
Below is a dramatic
photo of the massive curved sound-focusing and reflecting surfaces in the
Eastman Theatre. The hanging fronts of the Balcony (“Loge”) and of the Mezzanine
are involved, as is the wall at the rear of the Balcony. The effects of
these transverse surfaces are heard now more strongly in our livelier 2004
Theatre.
Eastman Theatre. The focusing
curvatures of the Balcony and Mezzanine fronts are greater than rendered by
this head-on view. The echo slaps back sharply upon listeners and musicians,
both directly and also after striking and bouncing from additional surfaces,
including the ceiling. The ceiling does not receive any directly incident sound
from the stage, due to the shell
ceiling design.
How will building a wall
under the front of the Mezzanine, and hanging a few box seats forward of the
Mezzanine, somehow magically tame strongly focused delayed reflections
traveling directly from these curvatures toward the stage?
Reflections from the front of
the Mezzanine and the front and rear of the Balcony will be little affected by
these changes. In fact there will be a new and greatly enlarged reflective
surface introduced by a new wall right underneath the already reflective front
of the Mezzanine.
How will those same almost
perfunctory changes (as a fraction of the total area of the newly coated walls)
stop huge havoc-wreaking reflections from zigzagging off of these splayed,
very widely separated side walls (which are more greatly divergent than this
photo reveals)?
9) Severance Hall 2000:
Conserving a Pre-Existing Silk Purse
An
U of R were convinced to hire
Akustiks to consult on the Eastman Theatre. Was there an implication that the
Eastman Theatre might be made by Akustiks to sound like Severance Hall?
It bears mention that when
first visiting the Akustiks website, much credit seems taken by the firm's
Principal for the post-2000 acoustics of Severance hall in
In fact, nothing acoustical
was fundamentally changed at Severance Hall in 2000. All changes were
additive. Yes, there was a new orchestra shell, but the old one had already
sounded great, and the redesign was done principally to match the décor of the house, a trait not embodied
by the old shell. The house seats were replaced and some surface treatments
altered. A series of new room-sized resonating chambers on either side of the
stage may be employed, or not. Care was taken also to calculate the acoustical
effects of contiguous areas partially open to the hall.
The point is that the sound
of Severance Hall had been universally acclaimed ever since a new
shell was designed and constructed in 1958, ten years into
the Szell era. At that time, also, the stage was divested of a proscenium
and drapes, and in the house some carpet was removed. For 2000,
refurbishing and modernization was the primary goal, while carefully maintaining the Szell-era sound.
So the purpose of the new
shell was to better match the decor of
the rest of the house, while very carefully not impairing Severance’s renowned sound. As with the 1958 shell, the
2000 shell was sand-filled to add mass. The obtuse angles were essentially the
same as before.
In 2000 an additional
two-tenths of a second of reverberation was gained in the house, a nice touch,
but related primarily to reduced absorption of sound by the new seats, along
with applied selected surface finishes.
Essentially, Akustiks’
Principal may share credit (with his previous firm), for not messing anything
up acoustically, and for increasing the reverberation time. That is no small
accomplishment, but it is not the same thing as creating a silk purse.
Below is a magnificently
composed photo of the 2,000-seat Severance Hall, taken with a fisheye lens
from the rear of the balcony. Note the alignment of the shell’s walls and
ceiling with the walls and ceiling of the house, and also the dearth of huge
flat surfaces.
Note also how well damped are
the side walls by warm human bodies. Surely those well-dressed bodies absorb
more sound than did the untreated Zenitherm lining the Eastman Theatre’s walls.
Maybe the concertgoers lining the Severance walls should be wearing plastic
raincoats to better reflect the sound?
Severance Hall: The shell is
very much a part of the house.
On the next page are two more
views of Severance Hall. The first photo emphasizes the angled side walls of
the shell as directly in-line with the angles of the house walls — the
antithesis of the Eastman Theatre’s current shell angles and house angles.
The second photo reveals
variegated bas-relief decorations and other varied reflective surfaces
throughout stage and house. The flowing curves of the sound-reflecting ceiling
‘pillows’ drooping from the shell ceiling aid in mellifluous dispersion of the
sound to the players.
Severance Hall: The shell
walls (and ceiling – only implied in this shot) are essentially
in line with the house walls
and ceiling—the antithesis of Eastman’s shell.
Severance hall: Nary a flat
surface to be found. Sound-dispersing ceiling ‘pillows’ curve sinuously along the
shell ceiling, with convexly bowed panels on the lower sides and rear.
Note two things in particular
about Severance Hall:
1) There
are highly variegated means of desirable dispersion within the shell
and house of Severance Hall, as opposed to the huge, essentially
flat or uniformly curved surfaces in the Eastman Theatre.
2) Even more importantly, the Severance shell
is much more an integral part of the hall, including the ceiling, than
is Eastman's shell. Severance, while not a 'shoebox,' couples the stage
more directly with the house than does Eastman, somewhat in the manner of the
many classic shoebox halls in which the orchestra felicitously shares the same
acoustic space with the audience.
Below is the floor plan of
the year 2000 Severance Hall, viewed from above. The shape of the shell is
shown in broken lines beneath the tan-colored organ loft. (The oval represents
the front lobby):
The Severance Hall stage and
house is not a shoebox, but it is pretty close to a shoe,
and one with a
well-integrated shell.
Similarly to all great
shoebox halls, the orchestra at Severance shares much the same homogeneous
acoustical environment with the audience, playing from one end of that shared
environment.
10) The Eastman Theatre
2004: The Crux of the Matter, and a Proposed Solution
Below is a photo of
the 2004 shell at the Eastman Theatre, showing the shell as
quite clearly a separate entity from the huge hall. Sound from
the shell is fed into a separate vast house space, as compared with
Severance Hall’s more homogeneous sharing
of the orchestra’s sound within the hall.
Eastman Theatre, 2004 shell.
The Eastman Theatre, 2004
version, has greatly discontinuous planes of shell walls and house walls, as
well as a great discontinuity between the hidden (curtained) shell ceiling and
the house ceiling. This configuration creates in the Orchestra seating two
broad triangular acoustical shadows with their apexes at the reflex angles
forward of stage left and stage right, in which near-reflections are lacking.
The 1972 shell angles more
nearly matched the house angles than do the angles of the 2004 shell.
Below, the 1972 shell and
massive angled ‘eyebrow.’ Note the somewhat more confluent angle of shell side
and fanned house wall. This setup sounded worse than did the shell-less theatre
in its glory days, but a little louder. The 2004 shell (along with the treated
house walls) sounds even louder, and much
worse:
Eastman Theatre, 1972 shell.
Note, above, the huge angled
‘eyebrow.’ Both the ‘eyebrow’ and the multiple slim rectangular panels serving
as a shell were made of plastic-coated steel.
Not visible are the two
horizontal ceiling panels behind the ‘eyebrow,’ which could be deployed (or
not) over the musicians. At one point I noticed from the stage that the larger
of the two horizontal ceiling panels, directly over the orchestra, had not been
deployed for the RPO concert just ended.
Below, the Eastman Theatre is
shown in a ca. 1972 architectural drawing. A shoebox or shoe the Eastman
Theatre is not, but were the Orchestra to play from a thrust stage within the
house, immediacy, warmth, and balance of sound would improve, principally
because of the removal of all discontinuous obtuse angles from the acoustical
equation.
Eastman Theatre 1972: The
shell angles more nearly matched the house angles. The three different-sized
trapezoids above the stage represent the panels of the 1972 shell’s ‘eyebrow,’
center ceiling panel, and rear ceiling panel respectively. It was the center
ceiling panel directly over the orchestra that had been removed when once I
looked up from onstage during that era.
On the following page is a
crude estimate of sightlines from the Balcony to a partially thrust stage (the
short red horizontal line at the bottom). The Mezzanine sightlines appear more
problematic. The pitch of the Mezzanine seating might be increased, made
possible by extending the mezzanine lobby elevation toward the stage and abandoning
the last three or four rows of seats.
Note the oblique red line
above the stage representing a proposed much more house-integrated angle of the
shell ceiling, if indeed a shell is still to be used. Without a shell the sound
would be warmer and clearer (and not as pushy-loud), but if a shell is used,
the angles of the shell’s side walls should match the angles of the house walls
and should directly involve the house ceiling. Avery Fisher Hall has found more
immediacy and warmth in using a thrust stage without a shell.
The shell pictured is the
1972 shell, which provided better early reflections from its huge angled
‘eyebrow’ to the Orchestra Level seats than does the 2004 shell’s more recessed
and less-angled ceiling. Here we see the right side edge of the ‘eyebrow’ and
of the two other floating ceiling panels of that era. Again, it was the middle
panel that I observed was missing immediately after a concert. Did that
‘breathing space’ above the musicians help the players to hear themselves
better than do the present louder and more jumbled onstage reflections?
Eastman Theatre 1972:
Sightlines crudely estimated to partially thrust stage. The short horizontal
line at the bottom is the stage extension. The sharply oblique line is the
shell ceiling, well-integrated with the house ceiling for better sound, and
also capable of much greater projection of near-reflections from onstage, if
that is still found desirable.
_______________
Saving
Classical Music on the Mezzanine
If changing the pitch
of the Mezzanine seating in order to improve sightlines to a thrust stage is
impossible, let’s think way outside
the box and provide several huge flat-screen video monitors on the present
405-seat Mezzanine Level. Invite the wireless Millennium Generation to enjoy
live concerts up there! Convert the mezzanine into a Classical Internet Café
with free Wi-Fi.
Contract with a
Starbucks franchise (the concept is bound to intrigue Chairman and CEO Howard
Schultz, despite some recent Corporate belt-tightening), or else invite Java’s,
to operate it daily as a Classical Internet Cafe whether or not there are
Eastman or RPO concerts or rehearsals going on at any given hour.
During concerts, and at
all other times as well, encourage blogging, pod-casting, Internet chatting,
online research, and working on school assignments. Gamers would be required to
use ear buds.
Forget printed concert
programs for these Millennium Generation Mezzanine patrons. Instead provide an
interactive webpage about the concert in progress, replete with a link to
Hilary Hahn’s website, and with links to information about other vital young
classical musicians.
Hire a musically
knowledgeable person to text answers to questions about the concert, the
instruments, and the music (in real time, during concerts). These potential new
patrons are used to multitasking, and Web-based or cell-phone texting is often
their preferred means of exchanging information, even with a friend across the
room.
Like it or not, this is
the way of the youngest generation, and a revamped Mezzanine with “random”
seating might be found a very cool venue by them, as we sneakily expose them to
classical music. Let people in for free, and create steady cash flow day in and
day out by leasing the space to Starbucks, or maybe to Java’s as Javalternate.
Allow optional Windows
Media Player-like abstract visualizations on the customers’ laptops and also on
the huge monitors, rendering visually the live sound occurring onstage.
When there is nothing
going on onstage, play videos of accomplished young musicians engaged in
committed playing of Bach unaccompanied violin sonatas and partitas, or the
cello suites.
Play the Mozart Horn
Concerti. Play the scintillating C major fugue from Beethoven’s Op. 59 No. 3.
Make it clear that the quartet was published 200 years ago. How many of our
currently ubiquitous pop composers
will so resonate in the year 2208?
If these patrons (yes, patrons—definition expanded to embrace
change) are too noisy, the front of the mezzanine might be sealed with
acoustically inert bank teller-thick clear plastic. The house side of the clear
plastic should probably be angled upward to largely remove its sonic
reflections from the equation. One-way viewing out into the Theatre might be
implemented so as not to distract musicians onstage or interfere with formal
events such as convocations.
In such a sonically
isolated Mezzanine, high quality monitor speakers would be required, set only
at moderate volume, and with compressed dynamic range. One should not presume
that the primary reason for showing
up on the Mezzanine is to listen to the Orchestra.
You won’t find me (well
maybe not) on that brave new Mezzanine, or any other purists. But you will just
possibly be reaching out and saving live classical music. That is, until the
Venezuelans, starting with Conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s planned outreach in
Laugh if you like, but
this is precisely the sort of novel inclusion of the millennium generation, and
embracement of change, that will be featured prominently in the press when
first it is implemented.
Psychologically, the feeling
of autonomous interconnection from within a sort of nexus overlooking a world
‘out there’ seems likely to appeal to this set of patrons.
It is appropriate in
this fast-paced world to interface with youth as they are and on their own
terms, in order to offer them an opportunity to discover classical music. Getting
used to hearing it in the background in an Internet café, with the ability to
peer out once in a while and watch it actually happening in the real world, is
not a bad start.
_______________
11)
Kleinhans Hall
Kleinhans Hall (below) in
Kleinhans Hall
Of Kleinhans (above) it has
been said:
·
By Dimitri
Mitropoulos: "The most perfect music hall in the world."
·
By Serge
Koussevitsky: "
·
Unattributed
review: “The hall has a crisp non-reverberant acoustic which assisted in the
soloists’ words being heard”
12) Loudness vs. Musical
Accuracy
Bottom line, the new (2004) Eastman shell looks
sort of OK, but that is about all that can be said for it. It has not helped the RPO musicians to hear
each other better in any collective sense. Nor does it convey any sort of
relaxed and homogeneous sound to the house, because it is poorly integrated
with the house.
An audience member
may retreat from the nearly palpable thick blurriness in the middle of
Eastman’s acoustically shadowed Orchestra Level seating, and seek refuge
in the rear of the upper Balcony. There historically and even now the best
sounding seats are found, as at Carnegie Hall. However since 2004 in the
Eastman Theatre the new shell projects the violins way up there with a piercingly
louder, thinner in-your-face sound, and it over-projects the brass. A
mid-bass resonance from the newly sprung stage ‘enhances’ the upper bass while relatively
weakening the lowest bass. The newly-coated side walls of the
house merely make everything worse, like bright mirrors in strong
sunlight.
If such problems as slapback,
harshness, and blurriness are to be truly addressed and ameliorated, the
present overblown loudness will have to be diminished in the name of warmth
and clarity. This may be accomplished by hanging tapestries on the walls
and/or by mounting adjustable dispersing reflectors thereupon,
variegated in shape and size. (Italian Renaissance reflectors, but of course.)
A thrust stage might obviate such need, by generating from the get-go a warmer
and more immediate sound, to be also
reflected as warmer and more immediate sound.
'Loud and impressive'
works naturally throughout smaller halls. In a larger hall the sonic price of enhanced loudness may
be too high, and indeed that appears the case at the 2004 Eastman
Theatre. In a larger hall, well-balanced quality
of sound trumps mere loudness of
sound foisted upon the audience for the sake of loudness alone. Loudness
is not more desirable than is accuracy.
Again, loudness is not more desirable than accuracy. This is why sound systems
are a bad idea, except as a last resort. Their output never precisely matches
their input. A sound system is incapable of savoring and sustaining the clarity
and ingenuous sensitivity of live acoustic music.
13)
Numerical Reduction in
Seating vs. Reduced Total Volume of the Theatre
For 2009 at the Eastman
Theatre, the planned reduction in seating from 3,094 to 2,250 sounds at first
like a massive change. But this surgery is to be localized underneath the
Mezzanine and along the side walls underneath the new box seats. The full
height and depth of the hall in cubic feet all the way up to the chandelier and
back to Balcony Rear will remain unchanged. All of that space will
still need to be sonically excited, so the actual potential
to ameliorate the blur, the screech and the slapback echo, will be
minimal.
The area to be altered under
the Mezzanine is presently a cavity well-damped by the seated patrons’
clothing. As such it is the least
likely source of the slapback, screech and blur; therefore altering that area
will not ameliorate any of those artifacts. But as noted the new wall may make
them worse. The new box seats are two few and too isolated, and some are too
low, to have much effect on harsh transverse reflections off the walls.
There is every indication that the results
of Phase Two, while exciting in many important aspects external to the house and stage, will
not include the advertised acoustical panacea within the hall itself,
any more than did Phase One. Both Phases are built upon previous error, and not
upon the truth of the Theatre itself.
14) The Balcony at the
Eastman Theatre
Eastman's original 3000+
seating suggests a hall too big for sonic intimacy and impact.
But there are many flowers on many hillsides. Conductors are strongly
imprinted upon the particular intimacy and impact that is part and
parcel of their livelihood at the locus of the podium. If they or their
assistants wander about a hall to listen, that is usually done, and
sectional balance adjustments made, in an empty hall during rehearsal.
What a conductor hears as an
occasional audience member in other halls may simply be better in some respects
than the cavernous Eastman Theatre can support. Apples to pears, as it were. An
RPO conductor would gather the most pertinent site-specific sonic information
if he could wander freely about a full house in the Eastman Theatre, while
someone else conducts the RPO. The wandering conductor should try to divest
himself of predilections not supportable by the Eastman Theatre.
It is possible to push a
‘pear’ hall too far in an attempt to emulate ‘apple’ halls, and this is what
happened at the Eastman Theatre in 2004. But pears have their own sweet taste
when properly cultivated.
In a packed house, there are
other valid concert perspectives beside that of the podium. The upper
balcony in the Eastman Theatre was always a superb place to hear well-balanced
intimate details in a full house, with warmth, clarity, and with an accurate
if not absolute representation of dynamic range (ask any
Since 2004, the sound up
there remains yet clearest, but it no longer blends together with clarity.
It now incorporates a disquieting thinness and shrillness, and some mid-bass
‘boominess’ (likely from the newly-resonating stage floor), all of which the
ear interprets as 'louder.' The sounds of the various orchestral sections no
longer meld up there. The effect is not unlike an exploded mechanical drawing
of some monumental appliance, each component starkly revealed, but lacking in
representation of the whole as greater than the sum of its parts.
Notably as well (intriguing,
but not detrimental) there is a bit of a 'railroad spike' or
'blacksmith anvil' effect up there, as the arm motions of the conductor
are seen a split second before the sound arrives, so great is the
distance.
15)
A Thrust Stage at
Eastman?
Anything that takes the RPO
out of its resounding separate box and allows a more direct
hemispherical acoustical coupling with the entire hall will improve
the sound.
Beginning on the following
page, please view a group of photos of halls worldwide that to good
acoustical effect observe the principal of orchestral inclusion within the hall at one end of
it, rather than orchestral
segregation in a separate acoustic space on a stage, and from
there projection of sound into the hall.
Also note the general use of variegated reflecting
surfaces as opposed to monolithic flat or linearly curved surfaces. Most
provide near-reflections to the players via a wall of modest height at the back
of the orchestra. But there is no enclosed shell and ceiling to render a loud
but muddled sound to the players.
Renee and Henry Segerstrom
Concert Hall,
A hall in
Sibelius Hall in
Credicard Hall,
least
Symphony Hall,
The sides and ceiling of the
shell integrate well with the house, rather
like Severance Hall, except that
at
the rear of the stage to the front.
Of course these halls (in the
above photos) are mostly all shoeboxes. It is unfair to compare them, and the
orchestra’s position within them, with a fan-shaped hall. Or is it?
Avery Fisher Hall, pictured
below, was built as an oversized distorted shoebox with a conventional stage. It
has benefited dramatically since employing a temporary new shell-less stage thrust 30 feet into the audience. Renovations
call for a permanent thrust stage. The
thrust stage has “lent an intimate
ambience to the cavernous Avery Fisher Hall and proved hugely popular with audiences.”
– NY Times, 2005. ''It sounded much
warmer and meatier,'' said Zarin Mehta, executive director of the
Philharmonic. ''And it looks more intimate, because it makes the hall
shorter.'' – NY Times, 2004.
There are certain rough
parallels between Avery Fisher and Eastman, in terms of huge volumes of air and
poor near-reflections. With very little expense a thrust stage (a performance
platform forward, or partly forward of the present stage and shell) could be
tried at the Eastman Theatre.
A rendering of the thrust
stage at Avery Fisher Hall. Where is the shell?
Is a renowned University
capable of thinking outside-the-box, or at least off-the-stage? Might we
dare try such a thrust stage (a temporary stage extension as far forward as
sightlines allow) for a concert series of six weeks, running the gamut
from Mozart to Messiaen? Why not? What is the downside? The cost would be
miniscule, at least if you discount embarrassment over the money wasted on the 2004 shell, which sounds bad, confuses the
musicians, and no longer even fits together very well.
A little empirical learning
about our hall would not be out of place beneath the staid thicket
of theory and unwieldy variables that has led us to this current mess. It
would be so simple and easy to try a thrust stage setup and just listen. Just feel the goose bumps. The
shell really should be retired from musical use, and relegated to formal
convocations.
Some of the audience should
be seated behind the orchestra onstage, and also at the sides of the orchestra,
as in some shoebox halls. All of those warm and well-dressed bodies privy
to the Conductor’s countenance would partly damp the backwave, while the rest
of the sound breathes in freedom, generated within
the hall, a more intimate and integral part of the hall, and of the
listeners’ experience, than ever before.
If the musicians at first feel
lost in so large an unaccustomed space, they would have to glue their
eyes to the podium or to each other no more intently than at present, as their
ears currently deceive them about ensemble. As well, by moving the Orchestra
forward into the hall, the interval of the slapback echo would shorten and
better integrate with the incident sound.
Variegated reflectors mounted
on the divergent side walls on the Theatre could be angled back at the
orchestra platform to return more relatively immediate reflected sound to them,
if that is found desirable. In such a
shell-less acoustic the strings would glow, the woodwinds would be lyrically
incisive, and the brass would sound richly burnished, as a relatively
greater proportion of powerful lower frequencies would occupy the total sound
envelope (with no harsh near-reflections of the highest frequencies bouncing
around inside a boxy shell). The true octave-to-octave balance of the Theatre
would be restored in all of its glory, and possibly better than ever
before.
From such a house-integrated
platform, the Theatre’s natural
reverberation curve would be excited. The pre-1972 Eastman Theatre's 1.63
seconds of reverberation, occupied (as measured by Leo Beranek in 1959), was
pretty decent, favoring clarity just slightly over ambience. There is ambience
(reverberation) of honest timbre and there is ambience that alters timbre
unmusically, as is now the case at Eastman. In the case of the old Eastman
Theatre, on the Mercury Living Presence recordings one hears reverberation with
an honest and solid octave-to-octave characteristic, albeit in an empty hall.
Even
the recently coated house walls might
begin to actually make sense, although there is no guarantee of that. Hardening
the walls was not necessarily a bad idea in principle; it was just unknown
territory within this specific iteration, and poorly—or not at all—empirically
researched.
In
divesting the shell, the bright and jumbled near-reflections from inside it
would no longer zing so piercing a treble sound at musicians and audience alike.
The coated walls would then just dutifully reflect that warmer sound throughout
the hall. The phase problems and comb effects alluded to early on in this paper
will not go away entirely, but they are most harmful to sound that contains a
lot of ‘brighter’ treble frequencies.
It is highly likely that
Phase Two’s changes to the house will proceed on time as planned. But it is a
pity if the poor-sounding box seats cannot be stopped and that money applied to
less expensive and more flexible means of fine-tuning the hall after completion.
Qualified third-party opinion about the box seats
should be solicited and weighed. Without
the box seats, some would be able to point out that we never got to hear the
hall as planned. Thus would a certain amount of face be saved about the theoretical efficacy of Plan A, even
after far more cheaply and happily implementing Plan B. No one who can listen will
ever sit in those box seats, at least not more than once.
The good news is that none of the extremely expensive
advertised 2008 changes to the house have the potential to hurt the sound nearly as much as a shell-less thrust stage or re-angled shell has the potential to help the sound, principally by getting
rid of obtuse shell angles that are discontinuous with the house walls, and by
making music within, or more nearly within, the same acoustic space that the
audience shares.
16) Function Funneled into
Form
For entirely too long in the
Eastman Theatre, function has followed staid, unexamined form. Since 1972 the U
of R has tried in one way or another to overlay ‘improved’
acoustical functioning upon the standardized and
long-unquestioned form of stage and house. That physical form was George Eastman’s
design solution for what was principally a silent movie theatre in which also concerts
were played.
The overlays (shells,
surrounds, massive eyebrow, sealed walls, etc.) have worked poorly,
and have actually impaired native 1922 acoustic functionality. They have constituted
merely new and different Band-Aids applied in the aftermath of misguided prior
Band-Aids, while never simply allowing the patient’s skin to breathe. Before
the Band-Aids, less was once more.
After the first two seasons
of the Eastman Theatre’s operation, A. J. Warner, “Music-Editor” of
“The Eastman Theatre is an auditorium seating 3,568 people. Its
acoustics are regarded as among its most notable features, for one can
hear perfectly in any corner of the great structure, so carefully has
it been designed.”
Mercury Records recorded Gershwin’s
“Concerto in F” and “Rhapsody in Blue” with pianist Eugene List and Howard
Hanson conducting the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra in the Eastman
Theatre, ca. 1960. At that time
no shell was being used for Orchestra concerts, nor was one used for the recording
sessions. Here is what Mercury had to say about the bare-naked hall on the back
album cover of vinyl recording SR90002 [boldface mine]:
“The recording was made in the Eastman Theatre
in
There is no record of early complaint about the
Eastman Theatre’s acoustics. Eastman School Historian Vincent Lenti’s
thoroughly researched For the Enrichment of Community Life:
George Eastman and the Founding of the Eastman School of Music lists a goodly handful of internationally famous
guest artists of that era. There are no complaints logged.
Surely among those famous folk were egos of sufficient
heft to complain, and to complain loudly, had they discerned something wrong
with the sound. Seriously, we are talking the likes of Willem Mengelberg,
Eugene Goosens, Fritz Reiner, Jascha Heifetz, Mischa Elman, Josef Hoffman,
Alfred Cortot, Vladimir Horowitz, Ignace Jan Paderewski, Beniamino Gigli and
Rosa Ponselle, all during the first decade of operation of the brand new
Eastman Theatre.
Even a current Rochester Philharmonic webpage relates
that of the Eastman Theatre in the 1920’s, “It is said to be acoustically perfect and was designed to
provide the same comfort and enjoyment for all patrons regardless of the ticket
price.” http://www.rochesterphilharmonic.com/volunteers/eastman.htm
Eastman Theatre 1920’s. Note the huge dark curtains
looming over and defining the front of the stage. It appears that the orchestra
is in position to accompany a silent film. Most of the musicians are quite far
forward on the lip of the slightly lowered front part of the stage (behind the
pit guard rail). The orchestra is not really in the pit. A stage set extends the house motif with widely-angled walls and no ceiling, back to
a second curtain which opens to a movie screen on the fixed portion of the
stage.
The obtuse wall
angles of the set would seem to match rather well the fanned house walls
(not visible), while providing highly variegated near-reflections to the
orchestra. This may be the closest thing to a ‘thrust stage’ the Eastman Theatre has ever seen, and it may be the principal reason for the
unequivocal strong approval of the sound of the Eastman Theatre during that era.
At some point after the silent film era ended the
Orchestra moved deeper into the stage, no longer thrust so far forward, and no
longer supported acoustically by such an appropriately-angled set, capable of
providing such variegated near-reflections. Decades later we have become restive
under long-unquestioned traditional assumptions about strictures of stage and
house.
Times have changed to noisier times. That does not
automatically mean our concert halls need be changed to noisier concert halls. The
venerable Eastman Theatre was never even capable
of several decibels more loudness, without in the process divesting its
originally so well-received sound. But that is precisely what has happened, in mindless
sequence over the decades.
Here we are now, without a clue as to what A. J.
Warner and Mercury Records were crowing about, or about what a very long-term
Eastman faculty member recalls of the gorgeous sound of the Vienna Philharmonic
on the shell-less, curtained stage of the Eastman Theatre way back when.
It's
not that one could never have wished for a livelier hall. Mid-century, Leinsdorf
wanted to tear up the carpet. Hendl took the less drastic step of simply
raising the valance curtains and partially opening the side and rear curtains
that constituted the 'shell' back then, emulating to some extent the setup for
the famous Mercury Records Eastman Theatre recordings.
In
fact, a return to a largely de-curtained shell-less stage, while not visually
glamorous, would be a tremendous ear-opener in its own rite, short of a thrust
stage. Again, this would be principally because of greater continuity of the
stage and house angles.
The question is, how much of the birthright of
the Theatre are we willing to trade away semi-permanently for some
passing contemporary belief that all music must be ever louder-brighter-in your
face, with the impact of a rock band* and the rich depth of field of a pancake?
It is of the nature of human fickleness
that this, too, shall pass. But a
refreshing hike through virgin forest never goes out of style.
__________________________________________
* “…the
ubiquity of rock music, with its grotesquely exaggerated high frequencies,
habituates people not only to some extremely bad music, but also to excessively
bright sound, so that natural symphonic music can sound dull…” – Robert Greene in The Absolute
Sound, issue 111 September/October 1997
16a)
Hearing is Believing
There is recorded evidence
that hints of past glory, of what we have long lost and might yet regain.
A trumpet fanfare to start: Here is Howard Hanson speaking in the Eastman Theatre during its shell-less glory days, ca.1960. He introduces a trumpet fanfare from his composition Merry Mount Suite.
The ambience around his voice,
and around the juicy trumpet trio harmonies, is the true sound of the old shell-less Eastman Theatre. You can even hear
a muted slapback, in this case predominately from the rear of the balcony.
The three trumpets bask in
that friendly acoustic, brilliant but never harsh. You will not find this
gorgeous sound in today’s Eastman Theatre. More has become less, to the
detriment of music and to the detriment of the listener:
http://sirhute.com/howard-hanson-introduces-trumpet-fanfare.mp3
Haydn House at http://www.haydnhouse.com/ offers a historical audio collection transferred
from mint vinyl to Compact Disc, which includes three even earlier recordings
made in the Eastman Theatre. The following three sound clips predate by at
least several years the famous Mercury sessions produced by Wilma Cozart, of
which the fanfare excerpt, above, was one.
These recordings are of
Howard Hanson conducting the Eastman Rochester Orchestra in the then shell-less
Eastman Theatre. The recordings were made approximately a decade earlier than
was the Hanson speaking/trumpet fanfare, above. They are monaural, not stereo,
and they have traces of the intermodulation distortion typical at that stage of
recording technology and vinyl playback.
Even so they capture very
honestly and directly the sound of the Eastman Theatre in the shell-less
pre-1972 era. In my opinion they do so in some ways better than do some of the
later Mercury recordings.
There is a particular majesty
to this sound, a sense of revealed musical inevitability, as if things could
not be unfolding in any other way. It is not much of a stretch to say that the
affect is reminiscent of that of the repeated surging motive in Verdi’s opera, La forza
This is absolutely the honest
acoustic of the shell-less pre-1972 hall. I remember it well. Note the richly
authoritative octave-to-octave balance down into the deepest bass, the clear
acoustic space available for each instrument, and the opposite of muddle or
screech.
Close your eyes as you listen
to these three samples from Haydn House. You will sense clarity and a direct
connection with the music. Even in the monaural sound you will be able to
visualize a depth of field that simply is not available in the acoustically
overblown, in-your-face, present-day Eastman Theatre:
http://www.haydnhouse.com/mp3's/HANSON%205h%20%20BARBER%201st%20%20Excerpts.mp3
·
In the Hanson,
enjoy the tremendous power and clarity of orchestra and chorus.
·
At the end of the
Barber excerpt, the spectral balance of the hall’s (unoccupied) reverberation
is heard clearly after the staccato final note of the phrase. Occupied reverb in
those days sounded very similar in duration and quality, maybe because of the
huge volume of air and many hard reflective surfaces extending well above the
audience.
·
[The prominent
bass trombone heard immediately before that staccato chord would be Donald
Knaub, a much-loved
http://www.haydnhouse.com/mp3's/PISTON%20HANSON%204.mp3
·
The best of these three early samples. The bass lines and tympani solidly underpin the
incisive brass, triangle and percussion – ever brilliant but never over the
top, never screechy as in today’s Eastman Theatre.
·
Note the clarity
of the balance between strings and brass. This was a small string section
sometimes fleshed out with just a few student extras. It was no Philadelphia
Orchestra of its day, but even while playing a piece heavily scored in this
manner the shell-less pre-1972 acoustic prevented the full-tilt brass from overpowering
the strings.
http://www.haydnhouse.com/mp3's/MacDowell%20and%20Hanson%202%20Excerpts.mp3
·
Although the least
well-recorded of these three excerpts, evidencing overly zealous gain-riding or
compression, there is still an ingenuous directness and a degree of reserved majesty
that comes through.
This, dear Patrons, is what
we have lost. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
17) Slapback Redux and a
Final Note about Those Box Seats
At the rear of the
balcony there is a 'railroad spike' or 'blacksmith hammer' delay
between the visible downbeat and the audible sound. If doubled,
that delay significantly exceeds the
delay of the slapback currently heard in
In other words the slapback
heard currently in Orchestra seating and at some stands onstage is
significantly quicker than is the elapsed duration of time for a
round-trip sonic transit to the far upper rear of the balcony and back.
Therefore the slapback is likely bouncing off the much nearer fronts of the
Mezzanine and Loge before returning to ‘slap’ at listeners and musicians. The
treated walls and the acoustic shadowing caused by the shell are certainly
exacerbating matters.
The reflected wavefront would
also glance and smear off the divergent side walls from a far
smaller (acute) angle of incidence than did the outgoing wavefront, which was essentially unaffected by
any contact with the suddenly more obtusely angled house walls immediately
forward of the stage. Thus, upon echoed return there would be
‘sprayed’ into
Akustiks can certainly
computer-model the hall to see how possible or how ridiculous this thinking is.
Actually the firm should already know very well what has been going
on for the past four years, although it is not the sort
of credit to post on a website.
Making the side walls
behave less like divergent planar acoustic mirrors is one possible
way to improve things. The box seats, however (according to the drawing in
Eastman Notes, above), are to be hung too far back on the side walls to
have any great effect toward breaking up and dispersing reflections
from the broad expanse of the flat, hard, coated ‘wall-mirror’
forward of them and above them.
Although stylish, and
surely a great place to be seen, I am not sanguine about any sonic
benefit from sitting in the boxes. The sound will be at least as bad as it
is currently in seats nearest the walls far right and far left.
The egalitarian George
Eastman, who purposely eschewed box seats, may groan and turn in his grave.
Still, Eastman did offer a workaround for the elite: He originally intended the
Mezzanine as a well-appointed semi-private area in lieu of box seating. How
deliciously ironic to entertain the thought of utilizing it as a Classical
Internet Café!
18) Less Would Be More
Acoustically at present in
the Eastman Theatre we are experiencing the inverse of Browning’s words on
painting in Andrea
Hmmm… man's reach should
exceed his grasp, but less is more. Ah paradox! Or does reaching
conservatively for less exceed grasping for more, which in surfeit has proven to
be actually less?
Well, if the shoe(box) fits .
. .
High time to end this chapter,
eh?
19) A Note about Humidity,
Instruments, and Sound at Eastman*
Low humidity is not the
friend of pianos, strings and woodwind instruments (or of drum
heads). Worst case, all such instruments can contract
and crack. Their tone under conditions of low humidity
sounds generally thinner and harsher because of
altered mechanical resonance as the wood contracts and becomes more
brittle. Singers are more at risk of sore throats in dry
conditions.
Beyond humidification's benefit
to instruments and to singers, a bit of extra water vapor in the air of a
concert hall tends to smooth the aggregate sound of the entire
orchestra, as additional water molecules absorb the highest frequencies
wherein lies the most potential for harshness. The lack of such
absorption in the air is another reason that instruments sound brighter
and thinner in low humidity.
The new air handling system
is to be quieter, and as of the fall of 2009 the air will be
humidified far more consistently than now, with a standalone
dedicated humidifier in place for the first time ever at Eastman, but only at
30% relative humidity, the legal limit without a variance. Steinway says
their pianos prefer 45% to 65% stable relative humidity. So do the other
instruments cited above, and singers like even more.
Obtaining a variance would
have been better, but unofficial workarounds exist that will make
possible raising the relative humidity at least somewhat above 30% on all
but the very coldest days. On extremely cold days, however, careful
consideration must be given to potential damage from condensation/effervescence
throughout this venerable masonry building. This consideration is
programmable, i.e. on a near-zero degree day the humidity can
automatically dial back below the probable dew point.
Ideally it would be good to
seek some way (with a price tag on it, of course) to provide zoned
humidity, that is, greater humidity in the Eastman Theatre, in the two
recital halls, and in the instrument locker areas, as well as in other
sensitive areas. Although water vapor spreads out evenly in the air
along a pressure gradient, there might be (expensive) ways to
circulate more highly humidified air where it is most needed.
So far as infiltration of
moisture into the inside walls, leading to harmful condensation and
effervescence on cold days, there are ways to provide vapor barriers on the
surfaces of inside walls. In fact, the acoustically unfortunate polyurethane-like
coating recently applied to the Zenitherm in the Theatre may do just that,
at least for the Zenitherm. As things stand, by
2009 the relative humidity will be made more
consistent, but it will hardly be made ideal.
So, after 86 years of
concerts at the Eastman Theatre, the RPO’s violinists will still
be leaving their their many Strads and Guarnerius fiddles safely at
home, alas. Even guaranteed 30% humidity bodes poorly
for instrumental safety—if less poorly than that
of the sacrificial violin in Eight Songs for a Mad King. Just
think how all those luscious
*The unequivocal willingness
and openness of a mechanical engineer at M/E Engineering P.C. in discussing
freely with me their role at the Eastman Theatre stood in stark contrast to the
rather pompous suspicion I encountered from two acousticians at Akustiks.
Neither firm knew me.
20) Respect and Gratitude
All of this soup-stirring,
and comic relief, is offered with ongoing appreciation and
gratitude for everything that makes the RPO musically
possible, including the respected musicianship on the
podium and amongst the Orchestra members.
One also greatly appreciates
all those who, along with their daily administrative tasks, perforce undertake risks
in planning and execution on behalf of the future of orchestral music in
Still, the ability to
selflessly review and reconsider past choices and to make course
corrections, or even to backtrack toward grasping a greater good previously
overreached, is a lovely human quality indeed. As with most
lovely human qualities, its loveliness resides in selflessness.
I refuse to
believe that such selflessness does not exist among certain
responsible and well-meaning movers and shakers who find themselves
either willy-nilly or for hire in the midst of these matters. A large wad of
spent money does not automatically grant access to acoustical
No one is exclusively right
all the time—not administrators, not acousticians, not conductors, and
no, not even concerned writers. But after all, it is not about being
right; it is about the music, and about responding creatively to exigency.
’Tis better to speak and
remove all doubt that one is a fool . . . for the sound and content of
classical music.
__________
Afterword
Near the end of May 2008 I
revisited the Eastman Theatre, showing up at a free band concert. My intention
was to move around in the house (in-between selections) to review my
impressions of the sound, and also to check sightlines.
I encountered two serious
disappointments.
First, it was obvious that
thrusting a stage more than five feet farther forward
just wouldn’t work, with
reference to sightlines. Sightlines from Balcony, Loge and Mezzanine are
hairbreadth-tuned to the lip of the existing stage.
Still, if natural acoustic
sound quality is ever again to be considered truly paramount in “Kodak Hall at
Eastman Theatre,” here is a brave new solution:
· Go for it! Sightlines be damned! Thrust the stage into
full acoustical glory, as at Avery Fisher Hall.
· String several huge video screens laterally across the
top of the stage. Farther back in the hall, and stacked, mount screens jutting
out from the upper side walls of the house.
· Install several robotic cameras capable of pan, tilt,
and zoom, and hire a musically trained video producer (with one assistant) to
run the show. For the first time ever, patrons will be able to see more than
just a single immutable view of the musicians and the back of the conductor’s
head.
·
On various
screens, provide simultaneous close-ups of the conductor’s face, orchestra
sections, soloists within sections, a guest soloist’s face and hands at the
piano or violin, a view from above the orchestra, a view from the rear of the
orchestra, and scrolling stock market closings (well, maybe). Dissolve
occasionally to a panoramic display of the orchestra across all of the lateral
screens over the stage. Optionally at intermission show a related interview,
with the associated audio available over cell phones or over headphones
provided by the Theatre.
Within
about ten years, as the screens begin to wear out, holographic techniques
already extant will become cheap enough to allow floating the entire virtual
orchestra high in the air for all to view from
the Mezzanine, Loge and Balcony (while discreetly invisible from beneath!)
·
All of this is, except
for the holography, is essentially what has been available in the living room
for quite awhile from PBS, so far on only one screen at a time.
·
But . . . as if
to resonate in resounding agreement with this very Zeitgeist, a recent PBS HD
Met broadcast of Tristan und Isolde featured,
as I tuned in during the during the love duet, a lovely split screen technique.
Four different camera angles focused on the lovers, each angle tastefully
complementing the others, to great synergetic emotional effect. Then . . .
after the duet, six screens! Three screens . . . five screens . . . dissolve to
one screen . . .
Where
have I been? Is this technique brand new to the Met Broadcasts? It matters not;
the point is that here is the
competition, now.
My
humble stereo at home happens to sound warmer, more intimate and clearer than
does the present Eastman Theatre. The Met broadcasts are free. They offer a
visual feast that is presently impossible at
·
Modern audiences
of a different ilk are used to viewing varied images at basketball games or in
bars. Can anyone recall the dull days past when from high in the bleachers one
obtained just a single distant viewpoint upon all that was going on way down
there?
Why
must that remain the case at “Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre?” For some minor
portion of ten million dollars (Kodak’s contribution) or of thirty-five million
dollars (total), might we not try offering the public an experience at least as
rich as they can find in their own living rooms?
· Consider that the single unique quality of live acoustic classical music is its natural sound, as compared with the sound
of home theatre and with the sound of all other forms of electronically
reproduced musical entertainment. By disrespecting that signature element, as
has already happened at “Kodak Hall at Eastman Theater,” the future of
classical music therein is grim, if not lost. My couch beckons.
What is the point of attending
a live classical concert if it sounds merely like a powerful stereo, and if
one’s single view of the concert is set in stone from one relatively distant
perspective—visually far less involving than are most multi-media productions?
By respecting and facilitating natural sound, the single unique element of live classical
music—its sound—is conserved. At the
same time via huge video monitors, John Q. Modern-Public will feel better
informed, better connected, and more at home than ever, before a live
multi-screen classical music performance at Kodak Hall that also just happens
to sound [adjective deleted] amazing.
·
A new patron who
is able to relax and feel at home, visually engaged in a more nearly familiar
and non-threatening environment, may well return. The relatively unfamiliar
sounds of classical music may begin to gradually imprint. Cook the frog slowly,
so he won’t hop immediately out of the pot in search of more familiar waters.
I am
not intending judgment here; only being direct and colorful. The life
experience of one who never attends a classical concert is just as valid as my
own. But there is nothing wrong with making
it easier for anyone at all to explore classical music, should they
be even minimally so inclined.
When
history books are written, and if nothing changes, it will be recorded that
The video screen concept, and eventually the holography,
remain valid with or without a thrust stage. If (merely to save face!) the
present shell must be maintained on the present stage, this leaves the option
of greatly improving the sound by moving the orchestra forward on the existing
stage à la Zinman, while drastically converging the shell’s side walls at the
rear of the shell in order to bring the side walls of the shell in line with
the house walls immediately forward of the stage.
It appears that the rear wall of the shell is
segmented into three tightly bolted-together segments, as roughly ¼ - ½ - ¼ of
the combined total width. It appears further that abandoning the two outer ¼
width segments and converging the side walls to either side of the center rear
segment would rather closely align the shell wall angles with the house wall
angles. As well, the edges of the segments would abut fairly well cosmetically,
for locking together. The rear ½-width
segment would have to be brought slightly forward to match up with the
newly-convergent side walls.
If you look very
closely at the following photograph, you will see the vertical seams of the
three tightly bolted-together segments of the rear wall, as approximately ¼ - ½
- ¼ of the combined total width. It is to the center section, brought slightly
forward, that the shell’s side walls would connect, effectively removing the
two presently discontinuous (reflex) angles, left and right, between the plane
of the shell walls and the plane of the house walls.
How serious a reworking of the cables and winches
would this require, if only just to try it? Maybe pretty darn serious. Ergo
this paper’s request for further input, to include strongly qualified
third-party input, before taking the next step(s) in the Eastman Theatre.
However, this pivotal step to greatly improve the acoustics
could be taken at any time,
regardless of whatever else has been done or has not been done to the Theatre.
The Eastman shell’s ceiling (photo on following page)
was higher than I had recalled, sufficiently separated from the orchestra below
it so that quick echoes from it, even at its slight upward angle, are likely
contributing to the jumbled sound onstage.
It should be simple and inexpensive to park the
shell’s ceiling out of the way in the fly space for a concert or two. Or better
yet (but not so easily accomplished) the upward angle of the ceiling might be
greatly increased, beginning low behind the orchestra and leaning forward along
a steep incline. This latter arrangement would better project the sound out
into the house, while still reducing confusing reflections from it within the
shell.
Note (photo on following page) the menacing
loudspeakers. Friends have complained that they are too loud at Pops Concerts.
Well, of course. As everyone knows, auditorium sound systems are amortized per
decibel per second. These speakers are well-designed and inescapable Orwellian
transmogrifiers of natural sweet sound into a stuporous false two-dimensional
holiday from reality; acoustical soma-projectors at the ready.
Eastman Theatre 2004 shell and Orwellian stereo
system
If you wander across Main Hall into the
That easily-overlooked small fact happens to be a huge
part of the famously homogeneous warm and detailed Kilbourn Hall sound:
Kilbourn Hall,
There is yet a place for practical experimentation in
the Eastman Theatre, amidst all the number-crunching. There are so many
variables involved that the human ear may simply be the best and most
sophisticated instrument available for real-time evaluation. And should it not
be? The measurements, numbers, graphs and fast Fourier transforms are about the experience. The ear is part
and parcel of the experience.
Please recall once again the recent words of a
highly-placed U or R official (boldface
mine).:
“What the actual
ultimate effects will be of the impending renovations on the acoustical sound
will not be known until [after they are completed and] we do some thorough
sound checks.” […] “…in spite of the reams of acoustical analysis,
and although it’s 2008, acoustical
precision on renovations is still a very fuzzy process. If it weren’t,
Avery Fisher Hall would never have had to be re-done as many times as it has.”
All measurements aside, all formulae aside, there
remains the need for practical empirical trial as monitored by that most sensitive
of acoustical tools, the human ear. This must include musicians’ ears.
For example, it would be simple and inexpensive to
play a concert on the present stage from a ‘forward’ orchestra position but
with no shell deployed. As in the ancient past, hang velour curtains at the
back and sides, but this time use no valance curtains above the front of the
Orchestra.
To truly hear the hall,
try also a concert with neither curtains nor shell. Such a setup came about of
necessity in accommodating the forces for Prokofiev’s monumental Alexander Nevsky about fifteen years
ago. This should be the true starting point, the point apparently not ever
referenced when slapping on the Band-Aids in 1972 or the new ones in 2004.
Such shell-less configurations would be quite
politically incorrect at this point, but they definitely should be tried.
Although a shell-less setup has not been heard regularly since 1971, it also
has not been heard since coating the house walls for more liveliness in 2004,
or since replacing the old horsehair seats in 1972, also bringing more
liveliness to the hall. (Now there will
be yet another replacement of seats in 2008, to what acoustical purpose, if
any, not divulged. But you can bet they will not make the hall any quieter.)
One problem with bundling several simultaneous
alterations as in 1972 and in 2004/2008 is that changing more than one thing at
a time means that scientific methodology cannot be applied empirically
step-by-step in the real world. On paper the aggregate effect is calculated,
but the modeling is far from perfect.
Too many parameters are altered all at once to gain
any audible sense of which change did
what to the sound. So for gosh sakes, wherever possible let’s take a couple of
simple, easily reversible steps backward and run some audible trials!
Is being right, or being politically correct, more
important than serving the music? Is remaining ‘shell-shocked’ a political necessity for the next thirty years before finally once again someone dares admit
that this renovation of the Theatre,
this Band-Aid upon a Band-Aid, did not turn out well acoustically?
Present some shell-less concert events to the public
as “Retro Nights at Eastman,” and be honest that the experiment is one of
several different approaches to discovering what has gone wrong with the sound
of the Eastman Theatre, by returning to its roots.
Of course first it will be necessary to muster the
honesty to admit publicly that this present sound is disappointing, and that
predicting the results of Phase Two “…is still
a very fuzzy process.”
Everyone involved in Phase One and Phase Two is human.
Transparent honesty goes a long way, and brings empathy from other humans. This
is not a matter of blame (whether original or inherited), but one of pragmatism
and shared responsibility. There are few acoustically trickier spaces than the
Eastman Theatre, with its huge volume of air and its widely-separated fanned
walls. A Severance Hall Eastman never was. But a far better hall than now it once was, although admittedly less
rambunctiously loud.
Great architectural acousticians have been done in
before by tricky halls, as was Leo Beranek at Avery Fisher. That happens. But
if you look at the gentleman’s rich legacy overall, the Avery Fisher
incident—which related to last-minute architectural changes that weakened
previous calculations—is seen as just a part of the ball game. There is no
dishonor in being waylaid by a tricky hall or by a client’s strong demands.
There is distinct dishonor in stonewalling on the part of acoustician and
client alike, should ever that be allowed to come to pass.
It simply is not a very good idea to wait passively
for Phase Two to be completed, and then
get out the acoustical measuring instruments, and then listen. It is now time
to seek broader opinion about how best to serve the future of music at Kodak
Hall at Eastman Theatre.
Kodak is known for getting things right—turning out great products, standing behind them and
contributing to the Community. The Eastman School and the University of Rochester
get things right—turning out some
fabulous graduates who contribute strongly to the future of music and other
disciplines worldwide.
The acoustical (and potential multi-media) aspects of
this forward-looking venture at
__________
The second major
disappointment of that night at the band concert was that a humongous sound
system was being used to amplify a live acoustical semi-classical event! It was
a very good sound system, but I had not planned to listen to it. I already have
a stereo at home for use on nights when live musicians do not stroll through
the house.
No sound system has ever sounded as good as the real
thing. Sound systems in theatres and concert halls are merely louder and more
approximate than the real thing, no matter how many tens of thousands of
dollars they have cost.
At the band concert, the microphoned, equalized and
amplified sound was regurgitated through the eight principal strategically
placed and well-aimed speakers at the front of the Theatre, producing sound
levels throughout the hall equal to or greater than the levels of sound
actually being produced onstage.
The sonic image forced upon the audience was like the
result of superimposing eight lower quality photographic transparencies overtop
of a finely etched original, each one staggered a tiny bit. Pinpoint definition
of the locus of any instrument onstage was made impossible, as was audibility
of the accurate original frequency curve.
Sometimes a flute or a triangle would suddenly appear
out of the sky at the wrong side of the orchestra. The entire image floated in
the air like a massive two-dimensional scrim between the musicians and the
listener, mocking attempts to discern any fine details of what was really happening on stage.
Ironically the sound system also made it impossible to
evaluate the house’s acoustic deficiencies, because it corrected them. By aiming the speakers carefully, the sound system
achieved a very even painting of a homogeneous sound only tenuously related to
real music, but with no acoustical shadows throughout the entire house. This
sound was invariable and inescapable.
I had ventured downtown for an acoustic concert, only to be forced to listen to a huge stereo
system. Water, water everywhere on the stage, and nary a drop to drink in the
house. A massive two-dimensional picture of ‘water’ had been substituted by the
sound system for the palpable refreshing wetness onstage.
What Authority presides over the relatively tin-eared
utilization of this sound system? Who in the world approves such travesty upon acoustic
music, on a concert-by-concert basis? Who has the autonomous right to
presuppose how deafened and obtuse audiences have become in the year 2008?
Even worse, is this the future of classical orchestral
music in recalcitrant halls, to which ranks the Eastman Theatre has been
unfairly relegated, inappropriate Band-Aid upon inappropriate Band-Aid?
I am reminded of the current observation that doctors,
in treating symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder while as yet lacking
sufficient research to precisely identify the causes, have taken to prescribing
drugs to ameliorate the side effects of other drugs, almost ad infinitum.
Similarly at Eastman was prescribed a hopeful new shell, and then prescribed a
glorious new sound system to ameliorate unexpected problems with the shell.
From the IOA Acoustics Bulletin Jan/Feb 2005, yellow highlighting mine:
Paul Scarborough (Akustiks) followed with his second
paper of the session, Acoustic
enhancement at the Hilbert
Circle Theatre, co-authored with C N Blair (Akoustiks).
In 1986, the Indianapolis
Symphony Orchestra renovated
the Hilbert Circle Theatre
as their new home. During the
design process,
acousticians realised that the shaping and
limited volume of the
theatre’s audience chamber would
not produce the required acoustic,
and they decided to
use electro-acoustic enhancement. The ISO thus became
one of the first major
technology in their regular concert venue.
By 1996, the original
installation was showing its age
[after only ten years?] and a new LARES
acoustic
enhancement system was installed.
Although this was a great
success, it confirmed that
long-standing problems with
the architectural acoustic
design of the stage could
not be corrected solely through
electronic means. This resulted
in the development of
a new orchestra enclosure
in 2002. After completion
of
the new stage, the LARES system was retuned, resulting
in what most*
listeners report as a more natural, open,
and reverberant sound than was present before.
Paul presented an overview
of the enhancement system
Design and a case history
of the system tuning process that
occurred in 2002 and 2003
during orchestra rehearsals
and concerts. ‘Before and
after’ system settings were
discussed, along with the
reasoning behind the changes
implemented. [* Boldface
mine.]
Source:
http://www.people.ex.ac.uk/jrwright/rs/rs20report.pdf
“Everything sounds biggerbetter [sic]." -Nuvo Newsweekly. Right.
The parallel plights of ISO at the Circle Theater in
I wonder if the Eastman Theatre’s sound system is also
a Lares? At the band concert it was certainly ‘correcting’ the results of our
new shell’s poorly designed angles, and equalizing away some of the shrillness.
But a better name than “Lares” would be ‘Low-res,’ for its lower resolution of
sound than the real thing.
Please revisit Chapter 16a to hear once again the true
acoustics of the shell-less Eastman Theatre in its glory days.
Below, the Circle Theatre in Indianapolis, with what looks
like a bit of a Severance shell influence, but with wall angles possibly even more
poorly matched than are Eastman’s:
Hilbert Circle Theatre, home of the Indianapolis
Symphony Orchestra. Built
1916, reseated to 1781 seats in the mid-eighties. Note
distinct reflex angle at
intersection of shell and house.
Large reflex angles between shell and
house, as at Eastman, create acoustical
shadows.
What would have been the audience reaction at the band
concert had suddenly the main circuit breaker for the sound system been turned
off (a fantasy that crossed the mind of one audience member)? At least some
people would have had an epiphany. “Speakers? What speakers?” asked an
acquaintance I ran into at one point, implying, ‘Isn’t this just how music
sounds?’
All of this adds up to a further measure of how
seriously sonically lost we have become at the Eastman Theatre as of this
present renovation upon renovation, with more renovation to come. Once again
the promising words of A.J. Warner in 1924 [boldface mine]:
“The Eastman
Theatre is an auditorium seating 3,568 people. Its acoustics are regarded as
among its most notable features, for one can hear perfectly in any corner of the great structure, so carefully has
it been designed.”
Beyond even just returning to these roots, a world
class shell-less shoebox hall could be built within the current fan-shaped Eastman Theatre, with existing artwork
moved from the present walls to the new walls. The exterior of the Eastman
Theatre would remain intact. A shoebox hall would blow out of the water
sonically all of the previous fixes proposed in this paper.
(Please refer to A
Second Acoustically Relevant Letter from a Friend, below.)
I think it likely that the pragmatic dreamer George
Eastman would approve something that would so accrue to the benefit of
People would visit
It is an
embarrassment to the historically culturally rich City of
Sketched in blue, the outline of a classic
shoebox hall constructed entirely within
the Eastman Theatre. The shoebox hall would be used principally for live
acoustic rehearsals and concerts. There is no reason that it could not sound as
powerfully luscious as do the shoebox halls in Boston, Vienna, Amsterdam and
Nashville.
Outer
seat rows in the existing Theatre would be abandoned. Slightly non-parallel
walls would be advantageous in terms of reducing standing waves. The present awful-sounding
shell would be abandoned. The stage would remain in some form, but as a newly-integrated
part of the hall.
The
Vienna Musikvereinsaal would fit tip to toe with about four feet to spare from
balcony rear to stage rear! Existing Eastman seating utilized would be 2,044.
No, this
will never happen at the staid, unimaginative U of R. But throughout this paper
are found simpler suggestions to greatly improve the sound, even after the dust
has settled on the tone-deaf, hubristic 2004-2009 renovations.
A shoebox hall is something that Akustiks is good at.
Witness the firm’s highly successful consulting on the
For a very thorough, broad-based and largely approving
third-party review of the acoustics of Schermerhorn:
http://championsofsound.blogspot.com/2007/06/hall-review-schermerhorn-symphony.html
Please see pictures of both halls on the following
page.
Concerning Schermerhorn, there is an extensive
interview with Christopher Blair and his Akustiks colleagues at http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2009
It is particularly
notable to what highly appropriate extent the
“Russell Todd: Regarding the
stage size issue, we wanted to replace conjecture with concrete facts. As a
result, the orchestra's management built a full size mock-up of the new stage and used that
during numerous rehearsals and even performances in the year before the
building was completed.
This
allowed the musicians to have a precise idea of what sitting on the new stage
would feel like and help them adjust to the actual space even faster once it
was completed
Drew
McManus: Do you take the time to learn about any
issues from individual players when going through this process?
Paul
Scarbrough:
There's no way avoid it, and that is a good thing. Musicians aren't shy about
sharing their opinions in a direct way and this kind of feedback from the players helps us to fine
tune the hall. The reality is that playing in an orchestra is like any
other high performance position and they are always expected to be on and at
their best. They know what works and what doesn't and what we learn from our discussions with musicians
helps us to design better buildings.
Russell
Todd: We even encourage this sort of feedback. During the
tuning period, we asked conductors and players to go out into the hall to
listen for the issues we were all talking about and pick up anything new.
Ultimately that push-pull process allows us to fine tune the project and make
it a success.
Christopher
Blair: One
aspect which had to wait until the new space was completed was how things would
sound. Since getting into the new hall, the players have had to get used to a
new way of hearing themselves in an environment where the balance of early and
late energy cues is so radically different than what they had to work with at
TPAC. In that room the early/late energy ratio was
higher, aiding rhythmic precision, but at the expense of the musicians'
ability to judge timbre, intonation, and balance. You
simply can't judge acoustical balance on the basis of near-field sound
propagation.
A calibrated return of late energy from the room back to the
platform (avoiding a defined echo) is critical to support the players.”
Apparently for $120 million (total
project cost) some time is set aside to actually converse with musicians, instead
of ignoring of them as in Rochester.
But is judging acoustical balance the job of musicians or
conductor?
Musicians
need to first hear themselves and others onstage with the rhythmic precision obtained by clear early reflections. Only then does
calibrated
return of late energy (smoothly reflected echo) support the players.
In
___________________
Let’s make just one final, pivotal
point. The Hilbert Circle Theatre in
But the
place sounds bad.
Why did
the Circle Theatre still sound so bad after the lovely new shell was installed,
that a sound system was required for
classical concerts, just as Akustiks had warned would be the case? The sound
system, like the Eastman Theatre’s, spreads a huge homogenous image, albeit a derived
approximate image, equally throughout the house. This ‘solves’ the bad
acoustics.
Both
the Circle Theater and the Eastman Theatre were built for the showing of
movies, specifically for the showing of silent films, before “talkies.” Sightlines
to a projection screen at the front of the stage were paramount. Sound was secondary,
even though Eastman lucked out by having the orchestra play at the front of the
stage, more or less in the house, before
a set with greatly angled walls and no ceiling. This may be the closest The
Eastman Theatre ever came to a thrust stage. (See photo on p. 46.)
I do
not know for certain that the once-weekly and later twice-weekly orchestra
concerts retained this setup, but it seems likely that the well integrated,
visually complementary set would have been be kept in place.
The
answer to ‘why,’ in a word, is angles.
In a fan shaped hall in which sightlines preclude the use of a thrust stage, the
angles of the enclosure, or shell, must be designed to closely match the fan of
the house wall angles. If they do not, to put it in the immortal words of a pragmatic
musician friend, “You might as well go home and have a cheese sandwich.”
If Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre is to be retained
intact (i.e. no shoebox inserted), as is pretty much a no-brainer in this
conservative town, it is most pertinent to recognize that these angles must be made to
match.
It is we of heightened levels of sonic satiation who
have changed, not the Theatre itself, except for the sequential overlayment of
new Band-Aids. It is the same Theatre in
which once upon a time “…one [could]
hear perfectly in any corner of the great structure, so carefully has it been
designed.”
There is little accounting for the phenomenon of taste,
including acoustical taste. All is cyclical, but on this swing of the good ship
Pendulum the escapement has slipped a cog or two. At Kodak Hall at Eastman
Theatre we need a sober captain to effect repairs and guide us back to port. The
hall has been pushed beyond its once long-admired genteel capabilities.
Band-Aids are being applied over top of Band-Aids, when all we really need do
is stop pushing! **
A committee will not do. A
committee of yes-men is what got us into this mess. A leader is required. Where
is the single strong leader at the
Closing
Summary and Challenge
The U of R and Kodak are being near-sighted and obtuse
about the present day highest and best use of the old Eastman movie Theatre.
They are focusing upon presenting a
falsely projected loud and incoherent sound subordinate to physical glitz and
glamour, a sound in part even caused
by the rigid emphasis upon those attributes alone. Principal among such
emphases is the acoustically poorly
designed orchestra shell, which harms the sound both onstage and in the house,
owing to its acoustically incorrect angles.
The current highest and best use of the Theatre would be that of sharing with
the Community the natural sound of acoustic orchestral and choral music.
No conductor and orchestra can possibly extract from the mis-designed shell any
semblance of natural sound. Alas, such natural orchestral sound from a
professional orchestra is also largely unavailable elsewhere locally. As a
result much of the Rochester public doesn’t even suspect it exists. The 2004
Theatre falls far short of apprising us of such lambent possibility, and the
2008 phase will not fundamentally alter the havoc wrought in 2004.
The public is beset on all
sides by loud glitz. American Idol is
a prime example. American Idol has
its place, and can be great fun. But it is particularly abusive to the local
Community that the Eastman Theatre’s sound since 2004 has been made to emulate
such lowest common denominator electronically amplified music, betraying the single unique quality which
all live acoustic music holds in
common--its natural purity of sound.
Sadly, Management at the U of
R and Kodak have chosen to compete head to head with just such a ubiquitous
shallow substitute for pure acoustic music. The Eastman Theatre could and
should instead offer to audiences a touchstone of purity and coherence—an
experience they will find in few other settings locally; and thus an experience
of beauty which few even suspect exists.
If Kodak and the U of R will open their minds and ears beyond hubristic
self-aggrandizement expressed as glitz, glamour, and distorted loud sound, the
Community will be grateful. Somehow
Management has forgotten (or else they never understood) that one goes to a
concert in order to listen to the music.
If Kodak and the U of R will
not open their minds and ears, then we’ll be right back here once again in
twenty or thirty years, just as we are now three decades after the last
unfortunate louder/brighter travesty of 1972. At the time that change was highly touted and strongly embraced.
Such is the standard public
posture commonly taken about the results, good or bad, of massive amounts of
spent institutional money. It took three
decades, and the passage of the principals involved, to finally allow
expression of dissatisfaction over the 1972 changes. How sad that things are
now even much worse, but the game is still being played according to the same
tired rules of isolated hubris.
Please solicit broad input from the musicians
and from all conductors involved with
ensembles on the Eastman Theatre stage. There is much to be learned
from these longsuffering, highly qualified people, who are afraid for political and academic reasons to speak out.
So often Power lacks
sensitivity. Authority is more often
built upon sensitivity. In the present case that sensitivity is musical, and
that Authority resides in the pragmatism of local conductors and musicians—more
so even than within acoustical theory. If Power places all its acoustical eggs
into one outsourced basket, and refuses to broadly consult the local
pragmatic Authority which perforce must deal with the results, then the
potential for havoc is rife. That's exactly what we've got here.
Why have such interviews not
been undertaken in Rochester by the consulting firm Akustiks, as they did so
thoroughly at Cleveland and Nashville? Somebody at the U of R must have told
them not to. Whoever that is should be ashamed, but probably isn’t. Ah, hubris.
Who will step up, and through dispassionate,
clear-headed investigation, negotiation and leadership salvage the single unique feature of live acoustic
classical music—a feature many do not even suspect because they lack
opportunity to hear it—its immaculately engaging warm, clear, unhampered sound?
We need that person now.
_______________________________________
* “Tuning sessions” were held
after completion, with Christopher Blair conducting.
** Good lord, sheer metaphor
madness. At least it’s near the end.
FINIS
An Acoustically Relevant Letter from a Friend:
Bob,
When you have a shell with side walls extending toward the house that are angled
obtusely relative to the rear of the shell, and that connect to more greatly
obtuse house walls, sound will reflect close into the house from the
first leg of the angles (the shell walls), and farther out into the house from
the second leg (the house walls). This leaves in-between areas, or swaths, in
the house that get no reflected sound at all. For that reason, inwardly
pointing angles (reflex angles) are very, very bad in a concert hall
design.
That was what I was getting at when I said the walls of the shell and hall
should be one and the same. The Eastman Theatre not only has such angles
right and left of the shell, but also at the upper side of the opening.
Reflections from both walls and ceiling of the shell will reflect only to the
nearest part of the audience. Reflections from the walls and ceiling of
the hall will reach only the farthest part of the audience. In
between is a wasteland. And of course, the two large fractions of the
total sound have different lumped delays. I could describe it thoroughly
for you in person, while drawing with a pencil, so that you understand how far
reaching the effect is.
Nothing else in the hall could be as damaging as those angles. Surfaces, Zenitherm,
resonances, etc are all minor trivialities by comparison. Some of the
finest halls have no sound-absorbent materials besides seats, carpet runners,
and audience, and everything is made of solid rock, concrete, or brick, and
hardwood. Intentional resonators are like including coat hanger wire in
the design of a car's exhaust system. When there is nothing to fix, you
don't need to fix it.
That the shell is small is not so much the problem, it is that the angles of
the walls and ceiling are less than the angles of the walls of the hall that is
the problem. I believe this is the most serious problem, and is exactly
what distinguishes the sound from the old days before 1972 that you remember,
when there were only theater angles and no shell angles at all.
One reflected mass of sound (from house walls and ceiling), only, although less
sound overall.
There should be no need ever to absorb or lose any sound (in a good
design), which is why Walter Hendl removed some curtains for Pictures,
and why
Mercury removed even more for
recording. Sound absorption just wastes the cost of musicians and good violins.
I would say in order to keep
the stage, retain current overall loudness, but "put the sound back
together in one piece," the front of the shell should be widened if
possible (there may be structural steel down both sides behind that gold rim), and
the rear should be narrowed to bring the shell wall to exactly the same angle
as the hall wall. The shell wall can even be moved to be exactly in line
with the hall wall (leaving the rim should not be a serious block). Then
open the top of the shell the same way, all the way to the ceiling of the hall
if possible, and if not possible, at least make it as long and steep as
possible (or even a concave curve from floor to hall ceiling) so that
reflections from it reach all parts of the hall instead of just the front of
the hall as it is now.
This design, with the shell walls in line with hall walls, results in the rear
of the shell being about the same width as the previous 1972 shell. No
loss of stage floor space. The geometry of the old shell walls made more
sense than the new ones.
When the shell effectively disappears because of the adjustment of
its angles, or when it actually disappears when changing to a thrust
stage, or a combination of both, then you will have a more natural sound
again.
A simple experiment to perform is this: It appears that the ceiling
of the shell can presently be tilted, so just tilt it to the max, and remove
all of the visible curtains at the top of the opening. I am especially
interested to know the effect on how players hear themselves. And of
course I would like to be in the audience. I suspect that it would be an
improvement.
Bill Bailer
[ William Bailer, bbailer@frontiernet.net ]
A Second
Acoustically Relevant Letter from a Friend:
Bob,
I had an insight.
All of the thinking about Eastman Theatre renovations is backwards.
Backwards in the sense that it is looking historically backward. The Eastman
Theatre is no longer the movie house it was principally meant to be, its fan
shape providing good sightlines from every seat to a screen at the center of
the stage.
The Eastman Theatre is not a temple, not a church, and not George Eastman's mausoleum.
There is nothing sacred about it. So what we should be thinking
about is: what is the best concert hall that can be built within the
space now occupied by the Eastman Theatre?
Number 1: The whole idea of a recessed stage or
orchestra pit is obsolete. Not only is it obsolete for concert halls, but
the new Renaissance Square Theater is going to be built to especially
accommodate theater, which means opera also. Thus it appears that the
Eastman Theatre will by default be only
a concert hall.
Number 2: Build new walls within the existing Theatre, to turn it
into an actual concert hall, which it
is not now, never was, and will not become during Phase Two as planned. The new side walls would be nearly parallel, eliminating
the side seating outside the blue lines as drawn, but leaving existing seats
exactly as they are, without the need to install new seating. The Vienna
Musikvereinsaal would fit longitudinally inside the Eastman Theatre with ten
feet to spare. The acoustics would finally be corrected, dramatically.
[See full-sized
drawing, p.65].
The fan shape must go. Absolutely must
go, if we are to have the sound of a real concert hall. After investigating
over a hundred concert halls, it is evident that all the fan-shaped halls were
originally movie theaters. In every case each is currently considered
acoustically poor for music, just as in the case of the Circle Theater in
If there is structural steel around the present stage that must be retained,
just paint it and leave it. It will not block any lines of sight with a
narrowed hall, and will have no significant acoustical effect.
How structurally sound is the roof of this old movie house theater? Safety
is paramount. All other theaters of similar construction in the area have been
demolished. Is the Eastman Theatre structurally sound enough to last for
another 100 years? We need an engineer's report on that. Maybe it was
built by George Eastman to last for centuries, but if it is not going to last
more than another 100 years, we need to reconsider everything.
Looking at the floor plan of the Theatre, cutting the hall off at the outer aisles
works perfectly. It appears that the balcony aisles are a little farther
out than the orchestra aisles, so the orchestra side aisles can just be made a
little wider, which makes sense anyway since they are right in front of the
entry doors. It all works very well, leaving the remaining current
seating completely intact, to whatever extent desired. Most of the
current ceiling, and of course the chandelier, could be retained as well.
Bill Bailer [ William Bailer, bbailer@frontiernet.net ]
Original Essay, January 2006, edited May 18, 2008:
[The clarinetist’s remarks about musicians
hearing each other better in the new shell have been since rendered passé by
further investigation, which has shown that the sound within the shell is
louder but more jumbled. However in the case of a relatively small woodwind
ensemble set well forward on the stage, his observation might still apply.]
http://sirhute.com/eastman-theatre-acoustics-original-essay-january-2006.htm
Correspondence with Third-Party Acoustician, December 2007:
[Input from a
well-regarded Ph.D. physicist-acoustician who knows both Christopher
Blair of Akustiks and Leo Beranek.]
http://sirhute.com/eastman-theatre-correspondence-with-3rd-party-acoustician.htm
Letter to City Newspaper, December 2005:
[The same caveat as above applies
about the clarinetist’s remarks.]
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/archives/2005/12/Reader+feedback+-+12+28+05
Bob Laird
boblaird@rochester.rr.com
315-483-0523
"Hindsight
is an exact science.”