Liquid Skylines: The Music of Architecture explores the deep, often surprising connections between sound and structure—how the built environment resonates not just visually, but musically.
This talk will delve into the long-standing relationship between architecture and music, from the long explored shared harmonic ratios and structures of architectures and music, to modern experiments where skylines become symphonies. The presentation will include animations of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s New York Skyline Melody, a remarkable composition that transcribes the 1920s Manhattan skyline directly into music, as well as existing music re-imagined as virtual architecture; allowing audiences to see and hear the cityscape unfold as score and sound. The talk culminates in the unveiling of a new collaboration with CityStage, Liquid Skylines a project using digital technology and generative music techniques to create ever-evolving soundscapes based on the architecture around us.
This initiative turns buildings into instruments, citizens into composers, and invites us to consider how our everyday environments might sound—and how music can help us hear our cities anew.
Milton Mermikides is the Gresham Professor of Music, Professor of Music at the University of Surrey, Professor of Guitar at the Royal College of Music and author of Hidden Music (Cambridge University Press).
