Routledge. - 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 pre-modern 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 V. Pentcheva is professor of medieval art at Stanford University, USA. She has published three books to date: Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium, and Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium. Her articles on phenomenology and aesthetics of medieval art have appeared in The Art Bulletin, Gesta, Speculum, RES Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics, Performance Research International, and Dumbarton Oaks Papers.

Music, Acoustics, and Ritual

Edited By
Bissera V. Pentcheva

First published 2018
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Pentcheva, Bissera V., editor.
Title: Aural architecture in Byzantium : music, acoustics, and ritual / edited by Bissera V. Pentcheva.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016053632| ISBN 9781472485151 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315203058 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Architectural acoustics. | Architecture, Byzantine. | Music, Byzantine. | Orthodox Eastern ChurchLiturgy.
Classification: LCC NA2800 .A873 2017 | DDC 723/.2dc23
LC record available at https://www.lccn.loc.gov/2016053632

ISBN: 978-1-4724-8515-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-20305-8 (ebk)

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Bissera V. Pentcheva

Peter Jeffery

Christina Maranci

Christian Troelsgrd

Walter D. Ray

Ravinder S. Binning

Lora Webb

Laura Steenberge

Ruth Webb

Wieslaw Woszczyk

Jonathan S. Abel and Kurt James Werner

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Jonathan S. Abel is consulting professor at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in the Department of Music at Stanford University, where he explores audio and music applications of signal and array processing.

Ravinder S. Binning is a PhD candidate in medieval art history at Stanford University as well as a Mellon fellow in the Cathedral Program, Santiago de Compostela, Spain and the 20162019 Paul Mellon predoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery, Washington, DC. His current research focuses on the relationship between fear, art, and architecture.

Peter Jeffery is the Michael P. Grace II Chair of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he is also professor of music, concurrent professor of theology, and concurrent professor of anthropology. He is simultaneously the Scheide Professor of Music History at Princeton University. He has published many books and articles on the medieval eastern and western traditions of Christian chant and liturgy. He is currently working on a book tentatively entitled Religious and Civic Ritual in Eighth-Century Rome: Ordo Romanus Primus.

Christina Maranci is the Arthur H. Dadian and Ara T. Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art and Architectural History at Tufts University. Her books include Medieval Armenian Architecture: Constructions of Race and Nation (Peeters, 2001), and Vigilant Powers: Three Churches of Early Medieval Armenia (Brepols, 2015).

Bissera V. Pentcheva is professor of medieval art at Stanford University. Her books include Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006); The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual and the Senses in Byzantium (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010) and Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017).

Walter D. Ray is associate professor in library affairs at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His primary area of research is early and Eastern Christian liturgy. He has published studies on early Egyptian Eucharistic prayers and on the early Jerusalem liturgical calendar, and a recent book on Byzantine liturgy, Tasting Heaven on Earth: Worship in Sixth-Century Constantinople (Eerdmans, 2012).

Laura Steenberge is a performercomposer who recently completed a DMA in music composition at Stanford University. As a researcher she studies language, the voice, harmony, and acoustics. Her creative work engages with questions about the origins and transformations of instruments, songs, myths, and science through the ages.

Lora Webb is a PhD candidate in medieval art history at Stanford University. In addition to architecture, her current research centers on treasury arts: understanding how they were made, used, traveled, and were altered over time.

Ruth Webb is professor of Greek language and literature at the Universit Lille 3 (France). She has published widely on the use of appeals to the visual imagination in Ancient Greek and Byzantine literature and rhetoric as well as on theatre and dance in Late Antiquity and Byzantium.

Christian Troelsgrd