David Phung
Period 6 AP English IV
2-27-11
Buildings (Architecture [Modernism]) and Songs (Music [Jazz]) A foundation is a key to the structures standing. The buildings structure must be sound and balanced in order to rise as a building. A structure is a composition, of parts, the make up of materials that are joined together to make a building. The Fountainhead, with Howard Roark as the protagonist, is an individual that truly sets him part from collaborations and compromise. His independent, rebellious attitude towards compromise strikes him as an individual that has roots of foundation, but prospers in his own wants. His vision, with the combination of music gives him a sense feeling and imagining the abstract structures he has in his mind. Although Roark does not compromise, he’s composed of the roots like a tree, the foundation of the structure that never change, along with the branches and leaves that fall like a deciduous tree, but grow to wave to the winds. Modernism is a style that Roark prefers and only designs. Modernism is the rejection of classical and traditional forms, to modify and break the point of design and new abstract forms in an architectural perspective. The Fountainhead is basically Howard Roark verses the world. The word tries to balance him out. This reflects me with the scene beginning with setting: “ The leaves streamed down, trembling the sun. They were not green; only a few scattered through the torrent, stood out in single drops of a green so bright and pure that it hurt the yes; the rest were not a color, but a light, the substance of fire on metal, living sparks without edges” (Rand, The Fountainhead 503). The leaves resemble the people in the community, which make up the world, as the world is like a tree. This shows the leaves are very similar in thought, in its green from of color. Rand uses this metaphor to show that Howard Roark, as the one, that is not green, the one that stood against society for his own perception. This reflects me with what I seek for and I try to balance myself out with the world, act like a tree, sustain my roots of culture and heritage, but accepted and grow the ideas of the world. The serenity of tree brings balance concept that strive for and structure. “We shape our buildings: thereafter they shape us” by Sir Winston Churchill truly shows what architects do and how society has an influence on them and their buildings. As a young inspiring musician and wanting to practice architecture, I play and draw my art to reflect nature and the surroundings around me. Roark seeks for his own objectivism and to live to his only desire to design only modern style architecture, so he seeks to create he composition, which reflects his perception and ideals. He also reflects with Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe’s quote “Architecture is to make us know and remember who we are.” “There were small houses on the ledges of the hill before him, flowing down to the bottom. He knew that the ledges had not been touched, that no artifice had altered the unplanned beauty of the graded steps. Yet some power had known to build on these ledges in such a way that the houses became inevitable, and one could no longer imagine the hills as beautiful without them- as if the centuries and the series of chances that produced these ledges in the struggle of great blind forces had waited for their final expression, had been only a road to a goal - and the goal was these buildings, part of the ills, shaped but e hills, yet ruling them by giving them a meaning” (Rand, The Fountainhead, 505). I feel this line shows that this houses stand because of balance and how it reflects the hillsides of nature. John Ruskin once said “No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.” The architectural design of this house on a hillside may encompass technical, structural, and defying aspects to stand on a hillside. The big picture is that it may defy the eyes and sense of logic on how its standing up, but its simple enough to show that power is the forces that balances out to lay upon the ledges of the hill and most importantly the architects vision.

It is the new free form art and science that is called architecture. Music also has this relationship with the genre of jazz. “Music, he thought, the promise of the music he had invoked, the sense of it made real – there it was before his eyes – he did not see it – he heard t in chords – he thought that there was a common language of thought, sight and sound – was it mathematics? – the discipline of reason – music was mathematics – and architecture was music in stone – he knew was dizzy because this place below him could not be real (Rand, The Fountainhead, 505). This line is what I believe in my vision, sense, philosophy and ideology for music and architecture. This line reminded me of the quote that “Architecture is like frozen music” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The relationship that music and architecture have is that they’re both composed of structure and free form. The comparison of modernism in architecture can be made to be jazz in music. The feeling and sense when I play jazz unlocks my mind and soul, the sound forms what in envision. A certain lick or phrase may just give me chills or inspiration that can’t be seen, but heard through music. In jazz, the chords played by the rhythm section are the structure to the song and the improviser creates the soul, the vision and forms the song. Music, especially jazz draws to my visions and feelings to be real through sound that can’t be seen. Architecture falls in the same way, with the materials forming the structure and the architect designing the form and vision of the building. When I draw and sketch, I move along with lines that I vision, although I’m no an architect yet, one day, my building will show my visions of this greater feeling of inspiration that can be seen my the eyes.
A structure may provide the basis of the building, but it’s the architect’s vision that defines the buildings forms. The relationship that architecture has to music is just side-to-side, mirroring subjects that reflect nature, and has an architect or musician to envision and form the compositions, as well as modernism and jazz, and materials to chords. The scenes of the leaves, the house on the ledge of the hillside, and the comparison of architecture and music reflects with my ideology and sense for balance in the world. Although Roark rejects compromise, the world still balances him out against his will because without the world, he wouldn’t have a place to design to imagine as an architect.