The Sonic Architecture of Time: a Dialogical Exploration of Musical Acoustics and Human Experience

Abstract This essay offers a synthesis of a recorded interdisciplinary conversation moderated by the author with Christian Seidler , a Munich based church organist, Swedish jazz bassist Anders Jormin, Joel Speerstra , a clavichord builder/musicologist from the University of Gothenburg, and Rainer Ahrens , a veteran sound engineer from national German Television. The participants examine how time, in relation to space and technological mediation, shapes musical meaning. Moving from the “micro-dimension” of musical time to broader cultural and metaphysical frames, the essay organizes the dialogue into eight themes: (1) reverb as imaginative architecture; (2) performer–instrument–room ecologies; (3) authenticity, manipulation, and aesthetics; (4) visuality versus aurality in organ performance; (5) drones, ambience, and eternity; (6) silence and the aesthetics of ma ; (7) recording as re-creation of space; and (8) kairos and lived temporality.