Live Auralization of Cappella Romana at the Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University (original) (raw)
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"Liturgy and Music at Hagia Sophia," Oxford Research Encyclopaedia, online, April 2016
and Keywords Hagia Sophia, the former Orthodox Christian cathedral of Constantinople, is the single most important monument that survives from Byzantium. Its daring architecture of cascading dome and semi-domes reflects a unique vision of beauty and power introduced by the emperor Justinian (527–565). Equally impressive is the interior decoration of gold mosaics and marble. Yet, it is the liturgy with its large congregation, officiating clergy, and numerous choirs that brought about the effect of being transported to a place in between heaven and earth. Within its walls, a rich multisensory experience was created through the integration of architecture, music, acoustics, and liturgy. The material fabric of the building and its acoustics together with the liturgy performed by Hagia Sophia's officiating clergy and the chants sung by the choirs formed the character of the cathedral rite. The architectural form and ritual performed in this space harmonized with the Byzantine philosophical and mystagogical explanations and enabled the religious experience of nearness to the divine.
Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, 2018
Edited volume, Contributors include: Peter Jeffery, Aural architecture in Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria Christina Maranci, The great outdoors: liturgical encounters with the early medieval Armenian church Christian Troelsgard, Byzantine chant notation: written documents in an aural tradition Walter D. Ray, Understanding Liturgy: the Byzantine liturgical commentaries Ravinder S. Binning, Christ's all-seeing eye in the dome Lora Webb, Transfigured: mosaic and liturgy at Nea Moni Laura Steenberge, We who musically represent the cherubim Ruth Webb, Spatiality, embodiment, and agency in ekphrasis of church buildings Wieslaw Woszczyk, Acoustics of Hagia Sophia: a scientific approach to the humanities and sacred space Jonathan Abel and Kurt James Werner, Live auralization of Cappella Romana at the Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University
On the Interrelation of Sacred Architecture and Music in Pre-Modern Italy
Sound, Space, and the Aesthetics of the Sublime, 2022
In medieval and early modern Italy, the religious practice and the perception of the divine have been determined by the intersection of sacred space, rite and music. With their form and specific acoustics, church buildings influenced the musical compositions and the performance practice. Vice verse, architecture reacted to ritual and compositional developments by modifying venerable sanctuaries or designing and constructing new buildings. The most distinctive impact of this progress is epitomised by the installation of separate singer balconies in the course of the 16th and 17th century to serve the polychoral musical performance practice. The permanent display of music advanced to become a core element of sacred architecture while the potential of these spaces to promote identification becomes evident in numerous graffiti. Based on selected case studies such as the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, this paper will present the work of the research project “CANTORIA – Music and Sacred Architecture” (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz), which explores the interdependencies between architecture, musical performance practice and liturgy in the interdisciplinary discourse between musicology, art and architecture history.
Journal of the International Society for Orthodox Music
Starting in the ninth century but gaining momentum the late tenth century Byzantium reclaimed its territories in the East: capturing Crete, Antioch, and northern Palestine. These victories were celebrated with triumphal processions in Constantinople. New chants were written specifically to be performed in the Great Church and the palatine chapels. Some of the poetry and music was composed by the emperor himself. Analyzing the melodic contour of some of these songs shows how they strategically used the acoustics of the dome to offer a glittering vision of power. And the same time, the figural mosaics in Hagia Sophia and in the palatine chapels gave an anthropomorphic concreteness to the experience of the divine in the reverberant sound. None of these figural programs survives. Yet, a monastery near Thebes (Greece), Hosios Loukas, preserves one of the most extensive Byzantine mosaic cycles. As this analysis will reveal, it channels the Constantinopolitan liturgy and enables us to expl...