Sound Effect in Rooms of Note : Acoustics and Atmosphere Tip the Scales for Music Lovers in Capistrano and Newport

Making music at home has a long history--probably dating back to caveman playing makeshift drums--and a wide audience, from neighbors gathered for a simple country hoedown to the well-heeled assembled for the decorous court music of the 18th Century.

While the music room is not a standard feature of most homes today, there are individuals who take so much pleasure in salon-style performances that they have dedicated part of their homes to that purpose.

Among them are Jody Pike of San Juan Capistrano and Marjorie Rawlins of Newport Beach, both of whom have made their homes the setting for intimate concerts.

In the Pike home, the music and instruments hark back to the 14th and 15th centuries; in the Rawlins home, the music and instruments are a few centuries younger.

Designed in the manner of an Italian farmhouse, the large combination music room/living room in the home of Pike and her husband, Jack, was added on to the original structure a few years ago.

The room was created specifically for the enjoyment of live music. It has has a 16-foot-high curved ceiling and a wooden floor free of sound-deadening rugs. The Pikes worked with Gep Durenberger to ensure that the room had the proper acoustic proportions and was aesthetically correct for the old windows and fireplace that were incorporated into the design to give it a feeling of antiquity.

Pike arranged the room into several musical areas. “When we have a concert here, we just use the different instruments in the different areas,” she said.

One area has the parlor grand piano used with a cellist and a violinist for chamber music performances. The east side of the room has a harpsichord and Pike’s collection of Renaissance musical instruments.

“If you have the right acoustics for the right instruments, the sound will be fabulous,” Pike said. “And you won’t need microphones and amplifiers.”

Most of the music that Pike loves was composed around the 14th and 15th centuries. She sings in a women’s madrigal group called Vox Feminae and plays medieval music in area elementary schools with the Landini Trio.

In the center of her music room is a large, circular, wooden Renaissance table. “In the old days, madrigals used to be sung in a circle. We put the music in the center of the table and we sing, often without an audience,” Pike said.

“During the Renaissance period, everyone sang for their own entertainment. The educated person then was as skilled at a musical instrument or at singing as a professional musician is today.”

The Landini Trio takes its name from a Renaissance musician who played a portative--or portable--organ, an instrument that Pike plays. The 20-pound-plus instrument has a keyboard and a bellows like an organ. The portative that Pike plays in the trio also has pipes, like other large organs.

The trio dresses in Renaissance costumes for school performances and introduces students to various types of recorders. Recorders are wooden flutes with nine finger holes, and Pike has five, ranging from a small sopranino (little soprano) to a large bass.

“I think the children like the interesting instruments--like the rauschpfeife, which has terrible, weird and funny sounds and the rackett that looks like a coffee can and makes a low sound. And they also relate to the recorders.”

Pike studied piano as a child and was a music and Renaissance history major at Stanford. Her interest in Italian Renaissance music came about through traveling to Italy and getting involved with the culture and the history there.

Once a year for the past three years, Vox Feminae has traveled to Italy, where they sing Gregorian chants, early medieval and Renaissance music in the towns where it was composed.

Back at home, music is an important part of Pike’s life all year long.

“When we have larger groups of people here to listen to the music, we move the furniture around and add chairs so that everyone can hear.

“The room is wonderful for chamber music and the earlier music. It’s especially beautiful when the concerts are at night and we can hear the music by candlelight. Then you really feel as if you’ve stepped back into the past.”

The music room in Rawlins’ contemporary bay-front home is the entire ground floor. A curved glass wall in the room, which is also the living room, can be opened to the outdoors when a performance is scheduled.

Rawlins and her late husband, Bob, had their love of music in mind when they built their home 14 years ago.

Designed by Los Angeles architect John Lautner, the long house sits on a lot only 30 feet wide. The second floor, with its three bedrooms and two baths, sits like a big wooden box suspended on steel beams above the living area.

On the ground floor, the floor-to-ceiling windows that slide open mechanically on a track let the house be open to the air and waterfront.

“We can open the windows, and then people can walk by and hear the music or just sit and enjoy it,” Rawlins said.

The indoor-outdoor feeling is enhanced by the brownish gold tiles that extend from the house onto the small front patio. The tiles, high redwood ceiling, cement walls and glass create an acoustic dream room for performers.

A long, curving, brown leather sofa (which Rawlins says “is like a worm”) helps set the mood.

“It can be taken apart and made into separate chairs and couches. What we usually do, though, is to move it around in front of the heavy plexiglass coffee table, a process that takes three people.”

The Bosendorfer grand piano, which was put on wheels to make it easier to move, is pushed to the back of the room, and chairs are set up in rows for the guests who come to hear the music.

“We’ve had as many as 72 people here. You’d say that was impossible and, frankly, I don’t know how we did it,” Rawlins said.

Although she has never played professionally, Rawlins studied to be a concert pianist. “I was a choral conductor in Palo Alto for 22 years, and I played the piano then. I haven’t played the piano recently, since I don’t have the time to practice, and if you can’t keep your technique up you can’t stand to hear yourself.

“I’ve had loads of fun with music. My greatest joy outside of my marriage and my children has been music.”

Rawlins says she enjoys going to concerts, having musicians play in her home and helping young music students through scholarships.

Violinist Albert Wu of Irvine is one of two students on music scholarships at UC Irvine because of Rawlins’ endowment to the school. Wu, a sophomore, was assistant concert master of the Los Angeles-based American Youth Symphony this year under Mehli Mehta and plans to play in a chamber orchestra when he graduates.

Last spring Rawlins hosted a concert by the four winners of UCI scholarships given by the Orange County Philharmonic Society.

Rawlins is also involved with Pacific Symphony and Master Chorale and takes an interest in the Angeles String Quartet, because some of her former scholarship students play in it. In addition, she is involved with the Shrine to Music Museum in Vermillion, S.D., which has one of the most extensive collections of musical instruments in the world.

But the music performed in her own home gives her special pleasure.

“People like to hear live music and be close to it when they see it performed. That’s something really special.”