One likes to listen to the voice of one’s beloved. Rain falling on the copper-clad parapets and hail on the alcove’s skylight are nature’s symphonies, as well as the sounds of birds and beasts. Beasts? Yes, from the Brookfield Zoo nearby, one could hear a lion roaring or an elephant trumpeting at times. There also was the soothing sound of water, falling from the corners of the huge main level roof onto the basins. At times, one would hear Those were the sounds to hear. There were also sounds to see. Goethe wrote: “Architecture is frozen music.” If you can read music, if you can listen and see, it is everywhere: in the floor pattern of the entrance hall, in the living and dining room, and in the window patterns. It is in the thin caming of the four divisions of a window square, repeated in the parquet floor. It is in the proportions, the narrow trim, even in the radiator grilles, the same size as the windows diagonally across from them in the living room. One finds it again on the wide ceiling trim or on the wooden supports separating the windows. This narrow oak strip can be found on the inside of the alcove
a gurgle in the radiators that made the house so comfortable during half of the year, especially if we kept the copper containers above them filled with water in winter to increase the humidity. Snow falling in silence, birds chirping, and doves cooing while sleeping with the balcony door open were delights that were not mentioned in the sales brochure for this house. Besides nature’s music, there was the music of mankind: the radio, the records, later the tapes, the CDs, or when
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