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Let's set the record straight: The Academy's maligned acoustics
The Academy's acoustics: A forgotten treasure
Steve Cohen
In a recent Philadelphia Orchestra review, my BSR colleague Robert Zaller echoed an oft-repeated misconception: that the Orchestra "has never had a hall worthy of its sound, and the city's priorities clearly remain elsewhere." Not so, as my own firsthand investigation attests.
Starting in the 1950s, when I was the manager at Temple University's student station, I interviewed more than 100 musicians for a radio history of the Philadelphia Orchestra, later expanded that into a 30-week series on WHYY in 1969-70. I spoke with musicians from the Orchestra's earliest days near the turn of the 20th Century, composers, recording producers, Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy and other conductors. Without exception, their comments about the sound quality of the Academy of Music were positive. Many of the musicians raved about the Academy's sound.
To be sure, Stokowski had twice advocated a move from the Academy. In 1913 he made such a threat because the Academy wasn't giving the Orchestra adequate rehearsal time. This had nothing to do with acoustics. Instead, it stemmed from Stokowski's desire to have an exclusive home where the musicians could practice whenever he wanted them to, instead of sharing time with other tenants. The outcome was that he won more time.
In 1930 Stokowski rhapsodized about building a Temple of Music on the Parkway, to be a neighbor of the new Art Museum, Rodin and Free Library. He envisioned special lighting so the Orchestra could play invisibly. But again, at no point did anyone speak about acoustics as a reason for moving. The Great Depression dried up financing for that project and the plans were abandoned.
Compared to Carnegie
Throughout the Stokowski era and into the 1950s, the Academy was considered one of the finest-sounding concert halls in the U.S. When the tough critic B. H. Haggin wanted to give his highest praise to Carnegie Hall, he wrote, "Carnegie Hall was acoustically even finer than the Academy of Music."
The architect Leo Beranek put things in perspective in his 1962 book, Music, Acoustics and Architecture, where he called the Academy of Music "unquestionably the finest opera house in the United States and among the best concert halls as well." Beranek was chairman of the Boston Symphony and consequently partial to Boston's hall, but he still gave the Philadelphia Academy of Music his high praise.
When the problems began
The Academy was designed in the 1850s with an inverted parabolic brick wall against the soil, then a hollow space, then, above that, a wooden floor of slightly convex form to radiate the sound. In 1960 the Philadelphia Orchestra purchased and installed the world's largest pipe organ. That Aeolian-Skinner instrument was portable, so that it could be wheeled on and off stage. To support its great weight and its cumbersome moves, concrete was poured under the stage, filling a space that previously had been left hollow to create natural reverberance under the floor boards. After that, the Orchestra's sound never again was reflected properly.
That problem was subsequently compounded by the introduction of cinder block (to a building that was previously all wood, brick and stone) in order to extend the stage, and the joining of he Academy (which previously was free-standing) to the Academy House condo complex behind it.
Muti weighs in
After Riccardo Muti succeeded Ormandy as conductor in 1980, he began complaining that the Academy's legendary acoustics were troppo secco— too dry— for orchestral performances and better suited to opera. His cry was taken up by a new generation of journalists who wrongly presumed that the Academy had suffered from "deathly dullness" for "several generations." Bernard Holland, in the New York Times of April 6, 2003, reported what he called the "plausible if perverse theory" that the Philadelphia Orchestra sound developed because musicians struggled "over several generations to hear beautiful sounds within themselves while playing in the Academy of Music's deathly dullness." The musicians who played there said that was nonsense.
And so the Philadelphia Orchestra was stampeded out of an old hall which, even after its post-1960 construction projects, wasn't quite as bad as some critics claimed. Thomas Frost, who produced the Orchestra's recordings during the 1960s, told me he liked the Academy's sound almost as much as Carnegie Hall's.
Different listeners can debate how much reverberation they like in their concert halls, but let's not perpetuate false history. As the Academy's president, Liddon Pennock, put it in the mid-1980s, "If the acoustics are that bad, how could the Orchestra reach such heights?"♦
To read responses, click here and here.
Starting in the 1950s, when I was the manager at Temple University's student station, I interviewed more than 100 musicians for a radio history of the Philadelphia Orchestra, later expanded that into a 30-week series on WHYY in 1969-70. I spoke with musicians from the Orchestra's earliest days near the turn of the 20th Century, composers, recording producers, Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy and other conductors. Without exception, their comments about the sound quality of the Academy of Music were positive. Many of the musicians raved about the Academy's sound.
To be sure, Stokowski had twice advocated a move from the Academy. In 1913 he made such a threat because the Academy wasn't giving the Orchestra adequate rehearsal time. This had nothing to do with acoustics. Instead, it stemmed from Stokowski's desire to have an exclusive home where the musicians could practice whenever he wanted them to, instead of sharing time with other tenants. The outcome was that he won more time.
In 1930 Stokowski rhapsodized about building a Temple of Music on the Parkway, to be a neighbor of the new Art Museum, Rodin and Free Library. He envisioned special lighting so the Orchestra could play invisibly. But again, at no point did anyone speak about acoustics as a reason for moving. The Great Depression dried up financing for that project and the plans were abandoned.
Compared to Carnegie
Throughout the Stokowski era and into the 1950s, the Academy was considered one of the finest-sounding concert halls in the U.S. When the tough critic B. H. Haggin wanted to give his highest praise to Carnegie Hall, he wrote, "Carnegie Hall was acoustically even finer than the Academy of Music."
The architect Leo Beranek put things in perspective in his 1962 book, Music, Acoustics and Architecture, where he called the Academy of Music "unquestionably the finest opera house in the United States and among the best concert halls as well." Beranek was chairman of the Boston Symphony and consequently partial to Boston's hall, but he still gave the Philadelphia Academy of Music his high praise.
When the problems began
The Academy was designed in the 1850s with an inverted parabolic brick wall against the soil, then a hollow space, then, above that, a wooden floor of slightly convex form to radiate the sound. In 1960 the Philadelphia Orchestra purchased and installed the world's largest pipe organ. That Aeolian-Skinner instrument was portable, so that it could be wheeled on and off stage. To support its great weight and its cumbersome moves, concrete was poured under the stage, filling a space that previously had been left hollow to create natural reverberance under the floor boards. After that, the Orchestra's sound never again was reflected properly.
That problem was subsequently compounded by the introduction of cinder block (to a building that was previously all wood, brick and stone) in order to extend the stage, and the joining of he Academy (which previously was free-standing) to the Academy House condo complex behind it.
Muti weighs in
After Riccardo Muti succeeded Ormandy as conductor in 1980, he began complaining that the Academy's legendary acoustics were troppo secco— too dry— for orchestral performances and better suited to opera. His cry was taken up by a new generation of journalists who wrongly presumed that the Academy had suffered from "deathly dullness" for "several generations." Bernard Holland, in the New York Times of April 6, 2003, reported what he called the "plausible if perverse theory" that the Philadelphia Orchestra sound developed because musicians struggled "over several generations to hear beautiful sounds within themselves while playing in the Academy of Music's deathly dullness." The musicians who played there said that was nonsense.
And so the Philadelphia Orchestra was stampeded out of an old hall which, even after its post-1960 construction projects, wasn't quite as bad as some critics claimed. Thomas Frost, who produced the Orchestra's recordings during the 1960s, told me he liked the Academy's sound almost as much as Carnegie Hall's.
Different listeners can debate how much reverberation they like in their concert halls, but let's not perpetuate false history. As the Academy's president, Liddon Pennock, put it in the mid-1980s, "If the acoustics are that bad, how could the Orchestra reach such heights?"♦
To read responses, click here and here.
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