Abstract

Musical performances in open air situations or in big rooms like yards or churches are often quite great acoustical challenges for the acting artists as well as for the listeners in the audience. The quality of musical performances could easily be deteriorated, because artists on stage have problems to listen to each other which leads to difficulties in the interaction. Furthermore, the audience can face some problems in such acoustical situations, because the human ear is used to listen to music in certain rooms. These facts are especially crucial for unplugged music in smaller ensembles like in chamber music concerts. The idea for this project arose in the context of the Styrian Festival of Chamber Music. Some of the festival concerts take place in different open-air situations or in yards and also in churches with quite huge reverberation times. Conversations with acting artists and my own experience as listener of these concerts showed me, that the use of a certain system of acoustic partition walls or a kind of concert shell would bring a big advantage for the musicians on stage and could also increase the acoustical quality for the listeners a lot. Because of the reason that no appropriate configuration for these special requirements was available, I started to plan and realize such a system. This work is the documentary regarding this project starting with the idea up to the simulations and measurements regarding the implemented orchestra shell. The invented orchestra shell consists of a steel frame construction and of acoustically high reflexive Polycarbonat partition walls. Based on the module construction a simple and fast assembly and disassembly in different setups is possible. This audio engineer project forms a base for further investigations on the orchestra shell and for the future goal of a regular use in concert situations and the possibility of a small series production.

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