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If Legendary Composers Designed Homes
Great architecture is often a symphony of elements, but what would the story of music itself say if cast in brick and stone?
Houzz Contributor. My name is Bud Dietrich and I am an architect located in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. I am licensed to practice architecture in Illinois, Florida, New Jersey & Wisconsin and I am a certificate holder from the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). Since 1996 I have worked from my home office and provide full architectural services exclusively to the single family residential market. My passion is to transform my clients' houses into their homes. I strive to have the "new" home accommodate my clients' lives without fighting them at every junction. I look to add curb appeal to encourage a beautiful streetscape. And I design any addition to look and feel like it has always been there.
Our projects have won numerous design awards as well as having...
Houzz Contributor. My name is Bud Dietrich and I am an architect located... More »
My studio must be filled with music when I'm sitting down at my drawing table. Nothing beats designing and drawing to the sounds of music. While some may listen to rock, others to blues and others to country, I find that classical music is what I work best to. The music of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and, above all, Handel have a way of getting the mood just right to ensure that my muse will show up that day.
Surely there has to be a relationship between the style of one's work and the music one listens to. In fact, Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School designs made all the more sense when I learned that he was partial to Beethoven.
So here's a look at some of my favorite composers and how each inspires me.
Surely there has to be a relationship between the style of one's work and the music one listens to. In fact, Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School designs made all the more sense when I learned that he was partial to Beethoven.
So here's a look at some of my favorite composers and how each inspires me.
Surely the world would be a much poorer place if not for the music of George Frideric Handel. It seems I can't go a day without listening to an oratorio, an opera or another piece by this composer. There's a richness to this music that is irresistible. It's at once light and free while also strong and forceful — he had that rare skill of combining two diametrically opposed forces into a sensory delight.
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Giuseppe Verdi wrote opera of immense scale and tragedy. It's a music that combines the vastness of the landscape with a pharaonic sense of majesty to tell the story of love and suffering — like two chairs side by side set against the vastness of the landscape. The story unfolds before them while they sit, not focused on each other but on the world at large.
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While a Franz Josef Hayden composition is truly sublime and enriching, his symphonies are often humorous and carry within their structure a surprise. While we enjoy the familiar language of the piece, we also get the joke for a quiet chuckle. It's like a brick chimney that gets flattened and flared in a way that's the opposite of what one would expect.
by Johnson Berman
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Ludwig van Beethoven is always heroic but with a gentle tranquility that elevates. And I find this music to be quiet. Not the quiet of silence, but the quiet of a struggle to go beyond and to be more. To be heroic in a way that's personal rather than clamorous.
| Antonín Dvořák came to the United States and, as only a newcomer could, taught Americans how to learn from the music of our folk heritage. In fact, this is his great contribution to music, the ability to understand and learn from indigenous and folk sources to create a lasting and inspiring music from the bottom up. |
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The music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is always joyful, exuberant and sensual. And it is a music that must be shared. So as we gather to enjoy one another we are to be surrounded by music that must rise up and fill the space while the light comes streaming in from above.
Johann Sebastian Bach composed music that had incredible structure and order while it was also supple and light. Above all, it's the ability to create this amazing complexity from the simplest of motifs, like simply combining a grid and an arch with sunlight and nature to create a space of amazing richness.
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| Aaron Copland composed what, to my mind, is the best American music of the 20th century. While rooted in the American experience, this music is joyous, optimistic and forward looking. It is a music that speaks to the wondrous landscape of America. |
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by Fallingwater
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| As with Copeland, Madison Avenue has done much to turn the works of George Gershwin into clichés. But no matter, these works embody what would become known as the American century. In what can only be described as symptomatic of so much of America, Gershwin so admired the French composers that he asked to study under them. Surely he was able to beat the French at their own game but didn't, unlike Frank Lloyd Wright, know it. |
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The music of John Adams is reassuring and spiritual. While haunting, it achieves a familiarity that comforts. As we sit at the edge of a new century and a new world, all that nervous energy, all those fits and starts, will give way to a tranquil and spiritual newness. Yes, "It's all good."
Ideabook updated on Sept. 2, 2012.
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A friend's lakeside studio/home was sold out from under her last fall.
She set landscape shots of that 'space' to the music of Avro Part's 'Spiegel im Spiegel' ~
https://vimeo.com/40949627 ~ Hauntingly beautiful. Enjoy.
Very much enjoyed your writing and the selection of illustrations.
Randi
The Beatles Abby Road inspired my gate to my drive way. It makes me smile every time it opens.
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight
thanks very much