O man I heard this on the radio and it gave me chills.
The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
61–70 of 91 posts
Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
#62I remember the first time I saw a drawing of Hagia Sophia in my history book. I was so amazed! It baffles me that the designers and builders of these “ancient” marvels often did not know why, from a scientific standpoint, that these buildings didn’t just topple over.
This sound bite is magical.
Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
#63This sounds very much like modern day Georgian choir singing.
Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
#64I find chants very relaxing. And, it has nothing to do with a specific religion. P.S. Its weird, but the Orthodox, generally speaking, "hate" Catholics more than they hate Muslims. In fact, a Muslim was /is the referee to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre https://www.reuters.com/article/us-religion-jerusalem-church... Might have to do with the split and a tiny thing like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constanti…
Context for the sack:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins
Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
#65do the acoustics of the Hagia Sophia differ from that of the Pantheon/Basilica of St. Mary and the Martyrs in Rome?
Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I appreciate the links and your story sounds interesting. I’m an Orthodox catechumen myself and am very interested in learning to sing the Liturgy as well as other chants. Might you have any tips or resources on how one might start really learning (besides just practicing)?
For Byzantine chant, I strongly recommend immersing yourself in the music by listening to it as much as possible. Try to focus on music in your native language--if it's English, then there are more and more recordings coming out. Become familiar with the scales that are used and learn what tone each song is going with. Memorize and sing back the simpler melodies that you can manage, such as the troparia commonly sung…
Thanks so much.
Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
#67The next step (that will probably never happen) would be to refurnish the Hagia Sophia, as it would have been before it was plundered in the fourth crusade, and seat an audience in it, as if for a mass. Then pop another balloon. All those extra furnishings and bodies would have had a significant impact on how the space sounded. The plastered over mosaics might also create a noticeable effect that would need to be com…
I find it strange that people and historians are so fixated on the 4th Crusade as the be all end all of the Byzantine's and ignore or minimize as much as possible all that irrelevant side business of the centuries of fighting with the Muslims. You know, the guys that fought them far more often and more brutally and actually took away nearly all their territory and destroyed them? In addition to the above comment and a few others in this thread take this video for example.
Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
#68"Only possible in the last 10 years" is not correct. Computer musicians have used the IRCAM ISPW board as far back as 1989 to implement live real time convolution. Single purpose realtime convolution reverb hardware has been commercially available since Sony's 1999 DRE S777. Non-real time convolution has been done for decades as well, including by myself in 1991 and likely hundreds of others during that time period.…
I think Abel was talking about his and his colleagues work in this paper when he said the 10 years comment: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bissera_Pentcheva/publi...
He's not just talking about being able to do convolution.
Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
#69tl;dr: analyzing the sound of a balloon popping in Hagia Sophia, they made an audio filter using techniques and understanding of sound in space that only became available in last 10 years. Cappella Romana made an album called Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia using this filter to recreate the experience of listening to Christian chants in that space. It's available on Spotify, headphones probably best.
> they made an audio filter using techniques and understanding of sound in space that only became available in last 10 years. This is an old technique. The idea of convolving the impulse response of a system with an input to yield the output is the basis of LTI systems theory. And while convolution isn't the most computationally light operation in the world, computers have been up to the task of practically performin…
I wonder why one would need an impulse response recording. The dimensions and materials of the chamber are known. Seems like the effect could be synthesized from that.
Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
#70The next step (that will probably never happen) would be to refurnish the Hagia Sophia, as it would have been before it was plundered in the fourth crusade, and seat an audience in it, as if for a mass. Then pop another balloon. All those extra furnishings and bodies would have had a significant impact on how the space sounded. The plastered over mosaics might also create a noticeable effect that would need to be com…
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