Built for Music
PUBLIC atchitecture of the front rank is now so rare that when an example as notable as the Royal Festival Hall gets built it is worthy of the fullest record. - This 'is here provided in a lavish volume, brought out for the completion of the main hall and most of its ancillary features,. though before the final achievement of what has been designed as a complete Arts Centre—with facilities for activi- ties other than the scientifically perfect presentation of music. The book must be judged as a record, independently of what one feels about the merits or de-merits of the building itself. The numerous drawings and plans, together with some fine photographs at the end and a connected account by Mr. Clough Williams-Ellis, give a full survey both of the many features contrived around and below the auditorium and of the auditorium itself.
Of all the new structures now at South Bank, the Hall and the river wall are the only ones destined to survive to keep company with a National Theatre and other buildings. The Hall, its full conception likewise to be realised in the future, has been built with remarkable speed, and Mr. Williams-Ellis points out how the process reflected the stringent conditions of our times. Thereafter his test is a blend of description and of the somewhat subjective musings of one who hopes in the future to take a full sample of the build- ing's varied attractions. For a careful study of the building it is best, till one can pay, an actual visit, to attend to the lavish series of plans and diagrams provided in a book whose main appeal is to comparatively specialist students. There are detailed sections on the acoustics of the Hall ; one sees also how the auditorium has tlbeen carefully planned, and then shrouded round, with its glass nexterior and with its ancillaries, so as to insulate it from the noise of the adjoining railway. The details, „too—the cleverly contrived 'music stands, for example—are faithfully recorded, and one comes away from the book, as from the Hall, with the impression that there has seldom been a temple of sound where scientists have left so little to chance of produced so undeviatingly functional and relevant an ensemble. Indeed it is a criticism of the Hall, and one that Mr. Williams-Ellis notices, that so monumental and significant a building could profitably include at least a modicum of deliberately decorative interior and exterior effect. One does not need the neo- Baroque incrustations of a Queen's Hall, but the ceilings and river front at all events seem to call for a dash of conscious joie de vivre. It'is also good to see that Mr. Williams-Ellis puts in a plea for the retention of the Shot Tower. In all South Bank there is no building with so unchallengeable a dignity ; one should no more think of its removal than Bristol people would wish to destroy their still functioning shot-tower on Redcliffe Hill or Plymothians the Smeaton Eddystone that graces the Hoe. Mr. Pudney's little book is far more reasonably priced than the larger record and is in any case meant for the more general reader. It is a miniature companion to Royal Festival Hall, and it is astonishing how much matter from the more specialist book is in Mr. Pudney's better unified account. Many of the drawings are there, also some of the illuminating comparisons with other halls, and there could be no more concise description of the auditorium than "an egg on stilts." Mr. Pudney gives a fascinating poetic, literary, and historic setting for his account. One could spare such ;Vbrases--as " mid-century social baroque," but one can be truly tgrateful for the historical notes on the site (aptly dubbed a " belve- dere " by Charles Bascom who first used it as a pleasure garden), and on the story of London's organised musical endeavour, whether indoor or open air. The author should, however, have mentioned Wyatt's " winter Ranelagh," the famous Oxford St. Patheon- that
.so excited Horace Walpole in the 1770s. BRYAN LITTLE.
Previous page
