The Silenced Listener: Architectural Acoustics, the Concert Hall and the Conditions of Audience

The author considers the relationship between architecture, acoustics and audience. The author proposes we think of audience in a more active sense and attend to conditions of audience. This dynamic approach demonstrates how changes in architecture designed for sound both are related to social changes in practices of listening and influence how people come to experience sound. Such an approach reveals contemporary acoustic architecture as biased toward music as spectacle, with conditions of audience that demand a silenced and attentive listener.