Raphael, Madonna in the meadow, 1506. detail
Visible, Invisible, and Sacred Space
Modern science documents the importance of sounds that surround our existence and their corresponding change in the way brains work. We are influenced (and shaped) by the sounds (and music) that we perceive.
Today more than half of the global population, i.e., 4.8 billion people (in the USA, approximately 280 million, which is about 80% of the total population), is urban-dwelling and exposed to constant electrical, electronic, and digital noises. According to numerous global health organizations and professional associations, 1.1 billion people are at risk of hearing loss due to unconscious, indiscriminate, passive sound absorption.
Our ancestors lived in a different soundscape. Have their minds worked differently? In our increasingly demystified world, mystery of this part of the human experience is still alive.
I was always intrigued by the question of sounds of civilizations. What was the world of sound, music, and speech of our ancestors? What was their soundscape?
The sound world before 1860, when de Martinville made the first acoustic recording, remains greatly silent to us. We don't know how ancient peoples would have sounded. What sounds did people hear in the caves in France? Or in ancient Rome in 350 CE, or in Jerusalem in 962 BCE? Or in Varanasi in 1100 CE?
We have, perhaps, some forms of musical expression and storytelling that were transmitted through preserved oral traditions; we also have records of the words, thoughts, and commentaries, i.e., books, and we have a record of images describing the lives of people over the centuries. Regrettably, we don't have a record of the sounds that people heard in past ages.
Francesco melzi,
portrait of leonardo da vinci, 1516.
Music is ~ “figurazione delle cose invisibili” - “the shaping of the invisible”.
Leonardo da Vinci
Beauty and Order Aren’t Decoration -
They Are Principles of Cognition, Perception, and Moral Reasoning
Recent scientific work - from archaeoacoustics studies of caves (France, Spain) and temples (Malta, Turkey) to acoustic reconstructions of Renaissance churches and to contemporary research on urban noise and acoustic design - now gives empirical grounding to that older insight: architecture actively composes listening conditions that shape social and ritual experience.
The cross-disciplinary connection suggests that harmony is not just a property of music but a universal human principle, capable of shaping both auditory and visual experiences through rational, structured relationships.
Music and architecture both embody beauty, order, and harmony by expressing universal principles of proportion and unity, linking the micro-environment of personal experience to the macrocosm of the universe.
By using harmonic systems, architects, like composers, create environments that evoke balance, beauty, and emotional resonance.
Andrea Palladio, Il Rendetore, Venice, 1577.
Musical Intervals in Architecture and Design
Luca Pacioli’s major work, De Divina Proportione (1509), examines the divine proportion (golden ratio) and its applications in geometry, art, and architecture, explicitly mentioning music as part of the arts where proportion matters. He situates musical proportion alongside architectural and visual proportion; his treatise claims that aesthetic harmony in music is analogous to harmony in number and proportion.
Musically, harmony arises from the mathematical relationships between notes—such as intervals and chords—that create consonance and psychological and physiological resonance. Architecturally, harmony appears in the proportional systems and spatial arrangements of buildings, where ratios and forms mirror those found in music and in nature, resulting in spaces that feel coherent, balanced, and aesthetically pleasing.
These disciplines share a foundation in mathematical and geometric relationships, illustrating how the same principles that organize a piece of music into a beautiful composition can organize physical space into meaningful, enjoyable environments.
Historically, concepts like “harmonia” and “musica universalis” proposed that both music and architecture are reflections of a cosmic order—suggesting that the beauty experienced in a single melody or a single building is an echo of greater, universal patterns. Thus, both serve as bridges connecting inner experience and the vast order of the universe through beauty, pattern, and harmony.
Notable examples include Renaissance architects like Leon Battista Alberti and Andrea Palladio, who explicitly used musical proportions to develop harmonious spatial relationships, believing the same ratios that create consonance in sound also produce visual harmony.
Studies and reconstructions of Renaissance Venetian churches demonstrate that architects and musical practitioners effectively negotiated reverberation, geometry, and materials; polyphonic writing and multi-choir practices were both shaped by and helped shape interior acoustic design. Projects that reconstruct historical acoustics (measurements + numerical models) show clear links between form, surface treatment, and musical practice.
Space as Acoustic Instrument (caves → temples → churches → cities)
Archaeoacoustics shows prehistoric caves and ritual chambers possess distinctive acoustic signatures (focused reflections, resonances) that would have shaped vocal and instrumental practices and the perception of ritual sound, supporting the idea that ancient architecture intentionally or contingently curated listening experiences.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “Architecture is Frozen Music”
The phrase “architecture is frozen music” (“Die Baukunst ist gefrorene Musik”) is attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, though its roots reach deeper - to Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy, where the harmony of the cosmos was expressed in numerical proportion, geometry, and tone.
Goethe saw this not merely as metaphor but as a metaphysical truth - the crystallization of universal harmony in different media of perception.
· Architecture, like music, expresses relationships of proportion, rhythm, and harmony.
· Both arts are spatial manifestations of order - one through sound and time, the other through form and space.
· The aesthetic experience of both arises from resonance between structure and perception - between the built world and the inner ear of the mind.
The Derveni Papyrus
The Derveni Papyrus, Europe’s oldest philosophical text, dated roughly between 340 and 320 B.C., is one of the most significant ancient philosophical documents ever discovered.
The text of the papyrus, discovered in Greece in 1962, reveals an ancient understanding that creation itself is musical: the world is formed through resonance, language, and light.
Interpreting the Orphic hymns, it describes creation as a process of vibration and order - the same principle later embodied in sacred architecture and music.
Its rediscovered philosophy unites the sacred soundscapes of the past - from the Orphic hymns to the echoing Paleolithic caves, from Palladio’s mathematical temples to Gaudi’s living cathedrals - architecture has served as the visible counterpart of sound, a geometry of resonance that shapes how humans think, feel, and belong. This ancient vision reminds us that the world itself is a composition - and that to live well is to live in tune with its resonance.
The EuMuse vision continues this lineage, uniting disciplines through the shared beauty of harmony - where knowledge itself becomes a living music of connection.
Piero di Cosimo, Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as Cleopatra,1490. detail
Music and Design are not merely Human Tools but the Vibrational Framework of Existence
Today, modern urban soundscapes - dominated by noise pollution affecting more than half of the global population - show the inverse: when resonance and harmony are lost, human cognition, emotion, and well-being are disrupted. This continuum from prehistoric caves to contemporary cities highlights the profound and enduring interplay of nature, architecture, music, and the human psyche, and points toward designing spaces that restore resonance and nurture human flourishing.
A musical truth is timeless; it does not come into being when we discover it. Yet its discovery is a very real event. The world we inhabit is an acoustic environment; tuning it wisely transforms our personal and collective well-being.
At EuMuse, we think that the next evolution of intelligence - biological or artificial - will depend on how well it understands harmony, beauty, and meaning.
Marina de Moses