Monks in Byzantium said it was the gently pulsing rhythms, uplifting melodies and resonating harmonies of liturgical chants floating through the corridors, sanctuaries and domes of their brick and stone churches.<\/p>\n
But in 2015, with advanced recording and acoustic measuring technology now available, what do we really mean by angelic sounds? UCLA Byzantine art history and archaeology professor Sharon Gerstel and a multidisciplinary, international team of scholars have devoted much of the last year trying to find that out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted the best scientific testing possible to understand what it meant when the Byzantines said, \u2018It sounds like there are angels in the buildings,\u2019\u201d Gerstel said.<\/p>\n
So Gerstel and a team that included an audio and acoustics professor from USC, a recording engineer, an archaeologist, an architectural historian and a musicologist who specializes in transcriptions of 14th-century Byzantine music spent two weeks in northern Greece last summer trying to capture the ethereal.<\/p>\n
The 14th century was significant to the team\u2019s work for several reasons: It marked the end of a five-centuries-long period when Byzantine churches were shrinking in size. In that time period, the paintings and mosaics in these churches depicted the singers as well as the lyrics of the chants. And the music in Byzantium changed into a form called kalophonic (beautiful voice), putting the emphasis on soloists who would riff on the music and create beautiful melodies.<\/p>\n
Previously, scholars had said the move to build smaller churches was the result of congregations or monastic communities getting smaller, Gerstel said. But with artwork incorporating inscriptions from hymns and depicting figures gesturing to one another from opposite walls in churches as if they were conversing, Gerstel posited another theory: These new churches were designed to be smaller \u2014 and even decorated differently \u2014 to enhance the performance of the chants.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think people who work on architectural typology tend to divorce the buildings from the people who use them. It was especially a trend in studying church architecture for much of the 20th century to not discuss religion [that was practiced] in the buildings because discussing religion was not considered scholarly,\u201d Gerstel said. \u201cBut these are churches, so to take out the ritual from the architecture means you\u2019re not understanding the architecture correctly.\u201d<\/p>\n
To test Gerstel\u2019s theory, the team spent hours every day measuring acoustical characteristics and recording performances of period liturgical music in nine churches in Thessaloniki, Greece, which was the second capital of the Byzantine Empire and where Gerstel studied at Aristotle University years ago. These churches have remained architecturally unchanged for hundreds of years and still have original paintings and mosaics on the walls.<\/p>\n
In the church of St. Nicholas Orphanos, for example, the words of a hymn and chanters are depicted on the wall above a portal outside the central nave of the church. Gerstel said that she thought the placement of the painting was to signify where chanters were meant to stand when they performed.<\/p>\n
To test her intuition, the team had a single chanter stand at the threshold of the opening to the sanctuary facing east, while Gerstel stood below the image of the chanters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sound rolled out through the portal as if through a microphone,\u201d Gerstel said, \u201cas if the monks [in the painting] were singing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every time the chanters performed, Gerstel said, the results were startling. The reverberating harmonies of liturgical chanting washed over them. Even when watching videos of the performances, each singer\u2019s individual vocal part still cuts through clearly enough to be heard, almost as if a listener were to simultaneously look at a tapestry and its individual fibers.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when you stand in a church, you feel as if you\u2019re penetrated by the sound and at the same time, you\u2019re looking at the wall seeing these figures that appear to be moving,\u201d Gerstel said. \u201cYou\u2019re not standing there listening, you\u2019re enveloped.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the testing, Gerstel and others noticed that the chanters subtly changed the tempo of the music based on the reverberation of the sound. \u201cIf they\u2019re in a highly reverberant space they will slow down the chant so that they hear it coming around,\u201d she said. \u201cRather than overlaying their voices, they wait for the voice to come back. That also is a kind of responsive singing that we\u2019re just not attuned to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Byzantines say that the churches are heaven on Earth. It\u2019s become such a trope to hear that that we don\u2019t even unpack that statement,\u201d Gerstel said. \u201cBut when you return to the idea of the angels singing, and you hear the voices coming back at you without seeing the source, you really understand that they weren\u2019t kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n
______<\/p>\n