Founded in 1842, the New York Philharmonic is the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States. Its latest renovation prioritizes psychoacoustics—the study of how mood affects the listening experience.
In the past, acousticians relied primarily on what was easiest to measure—things like frequencies and reverberation times. Blair, in an essay on concert-hall design, noted that this started to change in the nineteen-nineties, when acousticians “began to rely more upon their ears, informed by historical precedence, than their measurement devices.” Psychoacoustics is the study of how mood, color, sense of place, and other emotional factors affect the way people perceive and understand music.
Around the same time, Boston was building a symphony hall. American orchestras typically performed in theatres or in opera houses, venues that were often shaped like fans, with the stage as the base of the handle. This design made for good sight lines. But Sabine, when consulted, told the architects to use the European model of the “shoebox” concert hall—a rectangle, which can provide a full sound, evenly distributed among the seats.
The unseen elements of Geffen Hall had the opposite effect. Scarbrough explained that the walls were sucking energy out of the air: “In the 1976 renovation, the walls were three-quarter-inch-thick plywood panels, then furring strips, and then insulation.” Bass sounds vibrated the plywood panels, leaching the strength of the bass from the music; lacking bass, music can sound anemic, and diminished in complexity. The new beechwood panels will adhere directly to the masonry.
It’s the same hall—the same box—but it’s also a near-total transformation. The ceiling is relatively untouched, saving time and money, but it will be experienced differently. “It wasn’t adding anything to the old hall,” McCluskie said. It was simply a dark vault. His team designed a “sound-transparent” mesh to overlay the ceiling: a hand-bent steel grid, with a clover pattern, that catches the light.
Jaap van Zweden, the conductor of the New York Philharmonic, wears all black, which draws attention to his expressive gray eyes. He has a relatively thick Dutch accent, and tends to punctuate his speech with “well, yah” and with the placing together of his hands as a form of punctuation. “Young people listen with their eyes,” he told me. “This hall needs to be not just for us but for the next century.
My initial conversation with van Zweden was in June. At the tuning rehearsals, which would begin in August, the orchestra would play selections from various pieces to test aspects of the hall’s acoustics—its range, its clarity, its reverberance, and also how well the orchestra members could hear one another while playing. “That is when we will see,” van Zweden said. “It will be dynamic, we will be changing things.
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