House & Garden 
“FROZEN MUSIC.” 1 
P HILOSOPHERS tell us that there are 
two forms, or modes of consciousness ; 
one of time, and the other of space. They 
are the two gates through which ideas enter 
phenomenal life,—the two boxes, as it were, 
that contain all the toys with which we play. 
Everything bears the stamp of one or the 
other of them (though we are not always 
keen enough to perceive it), and can be 
classified accordingly. If such a classification 
be attempted with re¬ 
gard to the arts, music 
is seen to be allied to 
time and architecture 
to space because 
music is successive in 
its mode of manifesta¬ 
tion, and in time alone 
everything would 
occur successively, 
one thing following 
another; a work of 
architecture, on the 
other hand, impresses 
itself upon the be¬ 
holder all at once, 
and in space alone, 
all things would 
exist simultaneously. 
Music, which is in 
time alone without 
any relation to space, 
and architecture, 
which is in space 
alone without any 
relation to time, are 
thus, in a manner, 
convertible each into the other, by reason 
of the correspondence subsisting between 
intervals of time and intervals of space. A 
perception of this may have inspired the 
famous saying that architecture is “frozen 
music,”—a poetical statement of a philo¬ 
sophical truth. 
Music depends primarily upon the equal 
and regular division of time into beats, and 
of these beats into measures. Over this 
soundless and invisible warp is woven an 
infinitely various melodic pattern, made up 
of tones of different pitch and duration 
arithmetically related and combined accord¬ 
ing to the laws of harmony. Architecture 
implies the rhythmical division of space, and 
obedience to laws numerical and geometrical. 
A certain identity, therefore, exists between 
simple harmqny in music, and simple propor¬ 
tion in architecture. By translating the con¬ 
sonant tone intervals into number, “ the 
universal solvent,” it is possible to give them 
a spatial, that is, an architectural expression. 
Such expression, considered as proportion 
only and divorced from ornament, will prove 
pleasing to the eye in the same way that its 
correlative is pleasing 
to the ear, because in 
either case it is not the 
special organ of sense 
which is gratified, but 
thesoul itself,in which 
all senses are one. 
Containing within 
itself the mystery of 
number, it thrills 
responsive to every 
audible or visible 
presentment of that 
mystery. 
If a vibrating string 
yielding any given 
m u s i cal note be 
stopped in its centre, 
that is, divided by 
half, it will then give 
the octave of the 
original note. The 
numerical ratio which 
expresses the interval 
of the octave is, 
therefore, 1:2. If 
one-third instead of 
one-half of the string be stopped, and the 
remaining two-thirds struck, it will yield the 
musical fifth of the original note, which thus 
corresponds to the ratio 2:3. The length 
represented by 3:4 yields the fourth, 4:5 
the major third, and 5:6 the minor third. 
These comprise the principal consonant in¬ 
tervals within the scope of one octave. The 
ratios of inverted intervals, so-called, are 
found by doubling the smaller number of the 
1 The second of Mr. Bragdon’s series of articles entitled :—“The 
Beautiful Necessity : being Essays upon Architectural Esthetics,” begun 
in thejanuary number of House and Garden. 
57 
