Aural Architecture in Byzantium ― Music, Acoustics, and Ritual

Emerging from the challenge to reconstruct sonic and spatial experiences of the deep past, this multidisciplinary collection of ten essays explores the intersection of liturgy, acoustics, and art in the churches of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Rome and Armenia, and reflects on the role digital technology can play in re-creating aspects of the sensually rich performance of the divine word. Engaging the material fabric of the buildings in relationship to the liturgical ritual, the book studies the structure of the rite, revealing the important role chant plays in it, and confronts both the acoustics of the physical spaces and the hermeneutic system of reception of the religious services. By then drawing on audio software modelling tools in order to reproduce some of the visual and aural aspects of these multi-sensory public rituals, it inaugurates a synthetic approach to the study of the premodern sacred space, which bridges humanities with exact sciences. The result is a rich contribution to the growing discipline of sound studies and an innovative convergence of the medieval and the digital.

Bissera Pentcheva is an associate professor of medieval art at Stanford University. She has published two books with Pennsylvania State University Press: Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium and The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium. Her articles on phenomenology and aesthetics of medieval art have appeared in the Art Bulletin, Gesta, Res. Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics, Performance Research International, and Dumbarton Oaks Papers. She is currently completing her third monograph on music and acoustics of Hagia Sophia.