Sound, Space, and Sensory Perception
Deborah Howard · 2020
Infused with Byzantine characteristics in its architecture, decoration, and liturgy, the church of San Marco served as the focus of Venetian devotional life and state ritual for almost a millennium. As exemplified by the ceremonial of the Easter Mass, the whole space became a multisensory theatre for religious drama, in which the secular and religious were intertwined. This paper explains how a recent Cambridge-based research project examined the acoustics of the church in order to show how the musical innovations of the sixteenth century depended on the optimal placing of singers and listeners within the space. How can digital technology be used to interpret performance practice of the past? Devotional experience cannot be quantified, but scientific examination of the boundary conditions can help us to understand its impact.