Georgian style embodies the mathematical
proportions found in spiral galaxies and music.

Photo: Courtesy: NASA Hubble Telescope

SEEING MUSIC

GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE

You are probably aware that some Ancient Greeks believed there is a "music of the spheres". Modern scientists scoffed at the idea, until astronomers discovered that stars like our Sun “sing”:

The heat of the Sun generates sound waves which resound through the interior, and are reflected on the surface in oscillations. Astronomers call these oscillations and the periods of silence between them the “ringing” of the Sun. They say that the vibrations of stars are faint, and difficult to hear, but they have translated their ringing into sound waves audible to the human ear. Curiously, these waves sound like music, in particular like a melody that is sung by one voice and answered by a second voice in a different key with a third voice entering and singing the melody an octave higher or lower, and the first voice returning with a different melody that begins another series of musical variations. Musicians call this a fugue.

The great Italian Renaissance poet, architect, mathematician, and cryptographer Domenico Alberti (1404-1472) was sure that divine truths governed mathematics, music, and the universe, and he thought he could see their underlying unity. He had studied the work of architect and engineering genius Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) who researched the "secrets" of Classical architecture. Brunelleschi invented a new Classical style based on the proportions he discovered, and though no one knows exactly what secrets Brunelleschi found or how he applied them, it is believed that Alberti's ten books on architecture describe at least one of his guiding principles: The mathematical ratios that create musical harmony can be used to design a beautiful building.

Andrea Palladio (1518-80) based his designs on their ideas. He also believed in the cosmic significance of numerical ratios, as did ancient Britons and Anglo Saxons. Palladio built villas in the Italian countryside based on "divine" proportions and his pragmatic understanding of how a farm works. Then he wrote up his ideas in detail.

Years later, Richard Boyle, the Third Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork (1694-1753), is travelling in northern Italy when he sees Palladio's Villa Rotonda, falls in love with it, and resolves to design one for himself when he returns to Britain.

With the help of William Kent, Palladio's manuals,
and his large fortune, Burlington builds Chiswick House in London in 1729, and creates a sensation.

Photo: English Heritage »

Chiswick House sounds the opening notes of a new, serene and festive architecture – Classical architecture with a distinctly English accent, that will come to known all over the world as Georgian. (Burlington also leads the way in creating a new and liberated landscape park. See The English Garden. )

Architects such as John Wood the Elder, John Wood the Younger, and John Eveleigh transform the city of Bath, while London experiences the development of new and elegant squares with straight streets. The name Georgian, which comes from the three Georges who ruled Britain between 1714 and 1820, is used everywhere but in America. Eschewing references to their bête noir, George III, Americans call buildings in this style "colonial". Some of America's loveliest homes and most loved public buildings are Georgian.

The White House
Note that the central entrance has the temple facade – columns, a great porch, and triangular pediment – so characteristic of Georgian architecture. The windows on the ground floor exhibit the same 'eyebrows' as those in Jones's Banqueting Hall. They contrast with the windows above them, which, like a song sung in another key, are treated more simply. Georgian architecture may be faced with stone, brick, wood, or, as is the case here at the U.S. White House, stucco.

Photo: qingwa@istockphoto.com

A rather more simple affair, this Georgian home in Britain shows barely a hint of Palladio's balanced three-part or five-part profile. The temple facade is echoed by the slender and unobtrusive pilasters and the modest pediment above the door.
In a welcome advance from the house as fortress, Georgian style emphasizes large, paned windows. The arched lower windows are based on Palladio's original design. The bricked-in window above the door was the victim of a government's steep window tax. The dimensions of the windowpanes evoke the Golden Section. (See below)

Photo: jrling@istockphoto.com

It is believed that the width and length of some Georgian room dimensions are based on the harmonic proportions of music. One harmonic proportion that can be identified is the Golden Section encapsulated in the infinite Fibonacci sequence. In this sequence every number (after the first two) is the sum of the two preceding numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610. . . Each number is approximately 1.618 larger than the one that precedes it, creating a ratio called the Golden Section.

As musicians know, this proportion makes a beautiful appearance in Western music, whose musical scale consists of 8 notes with the fundamental chord, the triad, consisting of three pitches that fuse their sound: Two pitches are a perfect fifth apart and a third pitch is a major or minor third lower.

The Golden Section also appears in the relationship between the width and length of some Georgian house exteriors, rooms, and windowpane sizes and in the proportions of the delicately shaped iron staircases that spiral inside houses. By drawing a series of golden rectangles and squares nesting inside each other, and connecting the centres of the squares with a line (it will curve), we can see how the infinitely expansive spiral galaxy is based on the proportions of the Golden Section.

Especially in the hands of the Adam brothers, the subtle and enthralling music of Georgian interiors can be seen in the counterpoint of floor patterns and ceiling designs, the rhythms of wall, door, window and hearth decorations, and the sinuous solos of tables, chairs and sofas. Georgian rooms naturally suggest music. They were designed to hold dancers.

The Georgian house welcomes guests to a hall that spans the length of the house, and gives easy access to every room, creating the circulation necessary for the dances and routs of which Georgians were so fond. In the 18th century Brits set their furniture against the walls, moving it into a room when it was needed and returning it to the walls at night, a real convenience when they held their exuberant balls.

Georgian buildings have a spectacular ability
to fulfill function. They can be graciously
hospitable, commandingly decisive, deliciously
intimate, or even quirky. They have the knack
of aging well.

Photo: JoeGough@istockphoto.com

Decisively commanding, Wellington Barracks, London, hosts the Queen's Foot Guards.

Photo: David Abbott

A new development of Georgian properties
in Bath. One hopes the owners rebel,
and fill the balconies with flowers.

Photo: Downhill@istockphoto.com

Robert Adam (1728-1792) occasionally used white and black to dramatic effect, as here at the great hall at Syon House, but his preferred palette was pastels and rich reds, blues, and golds. He and his brothers James and John designed wall and ceiling treatments, tables, chairs, commodes, mirrors, sconces, and even beds.

Photo: Syon Park »

Alas, we do not have a photograph of a modern room painted in the pale lime green or apricot or ruby red, brilliant blue or celadon preferred by Georgians. The trick is to stipple the colour on the walls with artist's oils, and wash it with a darker scumble glaze that intensifies the underlying colour and makes it translucent. Light pours in through tall, deep-set Georgian windows with views of trees and meadows. The height of the white ceiling and the cornice molding of Ionic dentils expand the sense of airiness and charm, while the fireplace with its delicate white decorations, slightly reminiscent of a wedding cake, lends a delicious feeling of wamth when blazing with logs on a winter's day.

Rather less formal than an 18th century Georgian drawing room, this modern Georgian room is furnished with an Oriental rug laid over rush matting, whose clear yellows harmonise with the walls, and comfortable sofas and chairs covered in blue and white striped cotton slipcovers and flowered chintz pillows. Paintings and watercolours of people, horses, dogs, and countryside fill the walls. A hand-crafted Chippendale writing-table with family photographs and writing paraphernalia stands near a window with a lyre-backed chair. A vase of Chinese export porcelain filled with garden flowers stands on a Pembroke table with books and newspapers, and the dog's basket, partly chewed, lies close to the fire.

This perhaps over-opulent description requires some cash to realise, but that is always the case with civilisation - even at its simplest it requires money. In the case of the Brits, it required men willing and able to go to sea. Unfortunately some of them served in the slave trade, until outraged Brits abolished it.

Even middle-class Georgians depended on servants to wash and cook and haul coal to the fire. As the Ingenious Timeline shows, Georgian and Victorian inventors freed us from using servants for these tasks. Like Georgian designers, British inventors will look for beauty, function, and structure, and find their most significant insights in nature and numbers.

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