[ebooks] Musical Concerns: Essays in Philosophy of Music by Jerrold Levinson in Arts-Photography

Description

Architecture is a great stone book in which nations have recorded their annals; before the days of the printing-press: have written their thoughts; expressed their aspirations; and embodied their feelings as clearly and truly as by any other form of utterance. We know Egypt as vividly by its pyramids; the age of Pericles by the Parthenon of Athens; Imperial Rome by the Flavian Amphitheatre and the Baths of Caracalla; as from the pages of their respective literature. The mediæval cathedrals; monasteries; and churches are a living record of the faith and devotion of mediæval men; who have left besides them but little else whereby we can know their aspirations and civilisation; we find in them an expression of the deepest life that characterised the periods to which they belong; and a record which; though often mutilated; and sometimes nearly obliterated; never deceives. Wherever these architectural creations are found; there also a voice ought to be heard; telling what at that spot and at some previous time men thought and felt; what their civilisation enabled them to accomplish; and to what state they had attained in their conception of God. In a very true sense it can be said that the architecture of a country is the history of that country; and that the record of the architecture is the record of its civilisation.