While such major figures as Heinrich Schenker and Leonard Meyer express reservations about explaining music through the metaphor of architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright enthusiastically describes Beethoven as a master architect of tones. The valuable insights behind this metaphor are worth rediscovering, which I explore in three stages. First, I critique some of its most prominent applications in music theory, analysis and criticism, in each case questioning aesthetic assumptions and examining analytical validity. Examples include excerpts from the writings of Arnold Schoenberg, Rudolph RÈti, Charles Rosen, and Robert Morgan, and focus on the compositional process, the perception of form, and the role of the aesthetic categories of symmetry, proportion and balance in depicting historical style change.
Secondly, I consider how the metaphor of architecture invites additional considerations from the perspectives of Gestalt psychology and Husserl's Phenomenology - particularly through the work of Victor Zuckerkandl, Leonard Meyer, David Lewin, and Kevin Korsyn - which compel us to rethink issues of time, order, and memory in the process of musical perception. I conclude by offering additional perspectives on architectural imagery in music that extend "beyond analysis" as such. I suggest that describing a piece of music as an architectural masterpiece conveys a sense of grandeur that we associate with public monuments. In addition, I explore how the "architecture" of music refers to the conceptual/spiritual side of composition, to the notion that the musical work is a fantasy space for the imagination.