Sacred Sound – Sacred Space: In Search Of Lost Sound

The Exploration Full Fund
Sacred Sound (University of Tübingen, 2018
–2020) investigates the interacting of architecture and furnishings of sacred spaces with sound and the relations between concepts of sacred spaces and religious experience as well as the shaping of liturgical forms.

Such complex systems of relations are particularly demanding if sacred buildings and their acoustics don't exist anymore or at least not in their original form. New approaches of research are provided by recently refined methods of virtual reconstruction of historical acoustics based on reconstructed 3D-models of the architecture (Vorländer, 2008; Suárez et al., 2016).
This research project will explore the contextualization of liturgical singing in its original sound space. We expect that chant as a sacred sound was embedded in a complex system of relations between movement within sacred space during the liturgy and the acoustical characteristics of the space. As a result we are looking for new insights into the shaping parameters for transmission, notation and performance practice of liturgical music.
Since the 1990s computer-aided methods are well established in acoustic research as well as the rendering of data into audible sound, which is called "auralization" (Vorländer, 2008). For sacred spaces however there is still lacking reliable in-depth data, although research into acoustics of churches Meyer, 2015; Girón et al., 2017) and the intelligibility of speech is well documented. Still lacking are investigations into the relations between acoustics of space and liturgical rituals performed within them. The Institut für Technische Akustik (ITA) at RWTH Aachen provides technical means to set up a simulator with auralization, as complete simulation of room acoustics, auralization and 3D-audio reproduction. The ITA is one of the leading centers for auralization technology and will collaborate with the research project. A case study on the acoustical reconstruction of a 11th century church in Spain has been already carried out (Pedrero et al., 2013).
The innovative character of the research project consists in the combination of musicological, liturgical and ritual studies with techniques of Digital Humanities.
The project will start with the UNESCO World Heritage Cistercian monastery church of Maulbronn/Germany, one of the best-preserved churches of its kind. A 3D-laserscan of the church is performed in spring 2019 by the Hochschule Karlsruhe. In August 2019 we will record the office for St. Bernhard of Clairvaux (12th century) with ensemble Ordo Virtutum for medieval music (dir.: Stefan Morent, 6 singers a capella) in the church in collaboration with the Südwest Rundfunk (SWR).
In parallel the real acoustic will be measured. The 3D-model will be used as a basis to render the virtual acoustic of the church, taking into account its material and interior surfaces. Selected pieces of the music will then be recorded by the singers in an enechoic chamber at Aachen with a 32 microphones array, giving the singers the auralization of the sound of the church in real time. Both recordings will be compared in order to callibrate our results. The singers will also perform in the AixCave-space at Aachen, the biggest 5-side virtual acoustic immersion room of Europe. There it will be possible to test various positions of singing in the virtual model and its results on the acoustics.
We hope to be able to describe the connection between Cistercian chant (reform), theology and acoustics. There exist several papers on the acoustics of Cistercian churches but none of them used the amount of advanced techniques and music we intend to use.
If the experiment is succesful we plan in 2020 a recording of the offices for St. Gall and St. Ottmar in a virtual reconstructed model of the former monastery church of St. Gall with its virtual acoustic.
In the future we also intend to do recordings for Cluny and St. Peter and Paul of Hirsau, which was influenced by Cluny, but presents a different concept of architecture and acoustics at the beginning of the Hirsau reform. Virtual reconstructions of these churches (Fritsch and Klein, 2012; Morosan, 2013) shall help to reveal the character of their acoustics. We hope to be able to describe the difference in sound concepts of a Benedictine church of the 9th century and a Cistercian church of the 12th century.
Though this paper can't present results (which will be able only in 2020), it will describe what we want to do, which techniques will be used, what will be the challenges and questions and what impact on academic research and performance practice we expect.
This short paper will present the current status of the project and its challenges and goals as a work-in-progress.

Bibliography

Fritsch, D. and Klein, M. (2012
). 3D Preservation of Buildings – Reconstructing the Past. Multimedia Tools and Applications. Berlin: Springer. DOI 10.1007/s11042-017-4654-5.

Girón, S., Álvarez-Morales, L. and Zamarreño, T. (2017). Church acoustics: A state-of-the-art review after several decades of research.
Journal of Sound and Vibration, 411 (2017): 378–408.

Khosravani, Ali M. (2010).
Digital Preservation of the Hirsau Abbey by the Means of HDS and Low Cost Range Photogrammetry. Master Thesis, University of Stuttgart. http://www.ifp.uni-stuttgart.de/lehre/diplomarbeiten/ali-khosravani/index.html.

Meyer, J. (2015).
Kirchenakustik. 6. Auflage, Bergkirchen: Bochinsky.

Morosan, R. (2013).
Digital Preservation of the Aurelius Church and the Museum Complex by Means of HDS and Photogrammetric Texture Mapping. Master Thesis University of Stuttgart. http://www.geoengine.uni-stuttgart.de/forum/master/morosan/130926-Morosan-thesis-resume.pdf.

Pedrero, A., Díaz-Chyla, A., Pelzer, S., Pollow, M., Díaz, C. and Vorländer, M. (2013).
Auralization of Mozarabic chant in a pre-romanesque church. Proc. Tecniacustica Valladolid, Spain, October 2013.

Suárez, R., Alonso, A., Sendra, Juan J. (2016). Archaeoacoustics of intangible cultural heritage: The sound of the Maior Ecclesia of Cluny.
Journal of Cultural Heritage, 19 (2016): 567–72.

Vorländer, M. (2008).
Auralization – Fundamentals of acoustics, modelling, simulation, algorithms and acoustic virtual reality. Berlin: Springer.