Architecture and Music

Currently the Guggenheim's main offering is about, well, the Guggenheim. And more. Frank Lloyd Wright's fascinating designs are on display all the way up his spiraling path with models, explanations and pictures.Yesterday I took it in and loved it. A creative life filled with bravado, socializing, doubts and tragedy, although less tragic than, say, Rattenbury's, Wright spent a lifetime thinking and rethinking, expanding ideas, throwing some out, building on traditions, throwing some out, revisiting purpose and base values in the ways we live and move.

I've met so many people that wanted to be architects. Today I met an architect here in Brooklyn, and today I also met a person who works with architects, and who recently talked his son out of becoming one. My son is considering being an architect. We are in the Pratt Institute's neighbourhood, and it is filled with pizza-eating bike-riding future architects - inevitably, green architecture. We see and hear about it all around us: new materials, new emphasis on reducing the carbon footprint, being eco-concious, new space-saving designs, multi-use spaces - it must be an exciting time to become an architect.

I flirted with the architect thing. And so did many musicians and composers I know. Maybe everyone wants to be an architect. It is creation in distinct application, so immediately gratifyingly, observable and more useful, physically, than a symphony. And the eyes are so quick to overpower ears.

A symphony is created like a building or a public space with plans, supports, open areas, textures, functions, materials, contrasts, themes that echo and mirror. There is always room for fresh design, or inspiration can be carried over from other masters and eras. On and on one could go with the relations between the two disciplines.

The wonderful advantage of architecture? It can be seen and touched. The wonderful advantage about music? It can't.