5. Klára Benešovská: Rhythm and Architecture: Paradigms at St. Vitus' Lodge, Prague around 1400.
Channel: SMNF cz
Date: 23/12/2020

Cantus Fractus 2020 conference
http://www.smnf.cz/en/news/Virtual-conference-Rhythm-in-Music-and-the-Arts-in-the-Late-Middle-Ages/

Rhythm and Architecture in Prague around 1400: Changing Architectural Paradigms at St. Vitus' Lodge

Klára Benešovská, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague


Jean-Claude Schmitt's book, Les rythmes au Moyen Age (Paris Gallimard 2016), was the impetus for joining the debate on Rhythm in Music and the Arts in the Late Middle Ages. The author here writes about rhythm in a general sense from a sociological, anthropological, and historical point of view. The first of these - as far as I know - thematises the concept of rhythm in medieval society. The starting point is the biblical book of Genesis I, 1-30, the first 6 days of creation: according to the rhythm of these 6 days, including the day of the seventh, it structures the whole book and, among other things, very wittily contrasts the notion of rhythm in medieval and modern society.
However, I want to draw attention to the question of the relationship of rhythm in architecture and music, especially around 1400. What qualifies me?
Medieval architecture and music are known to have a common core in the classical theory of proportion. Moreover, in the system of the seven liberal arts, the arts linked to architecture, arithmetic and geometry stand just before the music, forming a quadrivium along with astronomy. Proportion, order, and harmony play a crucial role in music as well as in architecture. I therefore believe that architecture cannot be ignored at a conference dedicated to Rhythm in the Middle Ages.
Rhythm in medieval architecture is best seen in monumental longitudinal temple spaces such as the basilica, where rows of pillars or columns and vaulting inflections, corresponding to vaulting fields, form a regular rhythm in the interior, matched by the same rhythm of windows and buttresses or arches on the exterior.
The paradigm shift only occurs with the unwinding of this regular rhythm, which is related to the freer treatment of the existing tradition of cathedral building as we can see it in the creation of Parléř's St. Vitus' Cathedral lodge in Prague. I will try to visualise this moment of radical transformation of regular rhythm and order at the end of the 14th century in Luxembourg's Prague, and offer it for comparison with what takes place in the music of that time.