Urban Renewal Through Music

Since communities began, gathering together for an act of performance has been an essential binding element in the collective psyche. Performance bonds spectator and performer as co-dependent participants into an activity that transcends normal experience.

In music resonation reaches to the deepest issues of humanity caught up in the immense vibration of the city and of nature. It is an activity at once intimate, corporate and global. Heaven and earth meet, and the effect is healthy and life-enhancing. This refreshment of the soul is the goal of a performance space for live music in an electronic age. Performance at this deepest level is discontinuous from normal civic life – it relates more to the city of the collective imagination than to the actual city. Opportunities for urban renewal through music are in tying back the creative power unleashed by performance into the townscape and civic structures that already exist.

Marcus Beale’s background is as a composer and musician composing ballets and performing with the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. His forthcoming book – ‘Sensuality and Proportion – a primer on sound in architecture’ will shortly be published for comment on the web.

Visit the Sensuality and Proportion website for more:

philophony.com – Sensuality and Proportion

Related Essays & Articles:

• Humane Habitation
• The University of Westminster Sound Media Research Group (SMRG) “Architecture as Interactive Music” 27th September 2000
• The City as Music – Some Conceptual Tools

Study for Civic Hall.