Rolf Langebartels
Internetproject Soundbag

In the discourse ‘Eupalinos or on Architecture’ by Paul Valèry, Socrates says to Phaidros, ‘I would like to hear the song of columns and to see the monument of a melody in the clear sky’. To him, architecture and music are closely related and he sets them against the other arts.

The relationship of these two arts comes from the fact that we can be within their creations, ‘like fish in the wave, we can bathe in it, we live in it, we belong to it’. ‘Didn't you have the feeling that the original space had been replaced by a sensitive and variable space or rather as if time as such were surrounding you from all sides?’ With these words Socrates tells Phaidros about his experience of a sound space.