Past Perfect?

A highlight for me this week was the TV biography of Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-British architect, whose work is, among other things, visually striking. People are inclined to judge the architectural quality of buildings simply by their appearance which is, of course, a subjective call; but there are more objective measurements - such as fitness for purpose and ecological impact - on which the success of a building may be scored. And often overlooked are the intangible ways in which a building can affect our senses, shape our thinking and determine our actions: this, it appears, is where Hadid scores highly. Her designs deliberately test the boundaries of conventional architectural geometries in very imaginative and creative ways, the effect of which can lead us to change our perceptions of what a building should look and feel like. Although she has been based in London for 40 years, there is precious little of her work on the ground in the UK. Perhaps now that she is internationally renowned this will be rectified. 

Or maybe not. The British can be very traditional, as I was reminded when I went earlier in the week to the Victorian spa town of Buxton to see The Pirates of Penzance performed as part of - yes, you guessed it - the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival. The plot is ridiculous but what the story lacks in credibility it makes up for with a healthy lampooning of the establishment and some jolly good songs - which may account for its enduring popularity. More to the point is that the performance was perfectly suited to the chosen venue, Frank Matcham's pretty Victorian Opera House. It was designed, as were the other grand buildings in the centre of Buxton, to accommodate the genteel productions and leisure activities of yesteryear, in which it succeeded to such an extent that those same entertainments are regularly reproduced in faithful detail more than 100 years later. Matcham was no Hadid but he was the expert when it came to designing theatres which had excellent sightlines and acoustics to accommodate productions without the benefits of projection and amplification. As a result, buildings such as his are inextricably entwined in a cultural pas de deux with the arts of the past.

 

A few days later I approached a giant white tepee which squatted, thumbing its nose, in front of Manchester's splendidly Gothic town hall. It was the venue for a contemporary jazz performance which I fancied to counterpoint The Pirates of Penzance. Perhaps others had made the physical journey from Buxton, the cultural crossover excursion from operetta to jazz, but G&S aficionados can be difficult to spot. They don't necessarily wear T shirts imprinted with lines of libretto, or sport tattooed hearts pierced by arrows and inscribed G.S. If any of them had come they might have been disappointed to find that, instead of a Pimm's tent, there was a makeshift bar stocked with local ‘real ale’ and non-country-specific Pinot Grigio. And if I had bumped into one of them we might have discussed the synergy between the avant-garde setting and the exploratory nature of the music played there.

But I didn’t. I was left to muse solo on why The Pirates of Penzance should attract so many more paying customers than any contemporary jazz gig I have ever attended. As John Peel (R.I.P.) once observed “today’s underground music is tomorrow’s pop” so maybe, one day, jazz will become more widely appreciated. Meanwhile the music of the past bids for our affections with the music of the present in much the same way as yesterday’s buildings vie with today’s.

And, further along the cultural continuum, Zaha Hadid imagines the future of our built environment while visionary musicians probe the limits of musical expression. Will someone please commission Hadid to design an auditorium for jazz so that, like Victorian operetta, it too may have a building appropriate to its spirit?