This illustrated guide to 100 of the world's most important concert halls and opera houses examines their architecture and engineering and discusses their acoustical quality as judged by conductors and music critics. The descriptions and photographs will serve as a valuable guide for today's peripatetic performers and music lovers. With technical discussions relegated to appendices, the book can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in musical performance. The photographs (specially commissioned for this book) and architectural drawings (all to the same scale) together with modern...

Of all the problems posed by the art and science of acoustics, the design of concert halls is the most mysterious. Listeners, from music lovers to musicians, hear performances in halls of comparable dimensions and find differences in the quality of their listening experiences. Why do so many concert halls fail to live up to expectations?

In The Acoustics of Performance Halls J. Christopher Jaffe, an acclaimed acoustician known for his innovative design concepts, describes the common misconceptions about what makes a successful classical concert space, explains that sound...