Past Event: Echoes Through Time: Perspectives on Sacred Space Acoustics (Mar 27 - 28)

All events will take place in the Miller Hall Common Room.

1:15–1:30 Symposium Opening

Dr. Martin Jean (Yale Institute of Sacred Music director)

1:30–3:30 Music and Architecture

• A 1000-year Comparative Study of Byzantine Church Acoustics

  Dr. Chris Kyriakakis (University of Southern California) 

• Architectural Acoustics and Historically Informed Performance Practices

  Dr. Jonathan Berger (Stanford University)

• Exploring Gorgora Iyaäsus’ Intangible Acoustic Cultural Heritage in the Christian Kingdom of 17th-Century Ethiopia

  Dr. Janie Cole (University of Connecticut)

• Experiencing Cultural Plurality in Medieval Sicily. Music, Rite, and Architecture of Siculo-Norman Sacred Spaces

  Dr. Tobias Weißmann (Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz and Universität Zürich)

3:30–4:00 Coffee break 

4:00–5:30 Sacred Space Acoustics in Non-Christian Spaces 

• Mapping Sound in Chauvet Cave: GIS, Auralizations, and Archaeological Meaning 

  Luna Valentin (Stanford University)

• Resonating Rocks: The Acoustics of Hindu Cave Temples 

  Dr. Shashank Aswathanarayana (American University)

• Researching the Soundscapes of North Saqqara at the Time of State Formation 

  Sergio Alarcón Robledo (Harvard University)

All events will take place in the Miller Hall Common Room.

9:15–10:00 Breakfast 

10:00–12:00 Acoustics of Speech and Voice

• Experiencing the Sacred in Space and Time: The Virtual St Paul’s Cathedral Project 

  Rev. Dr. John Wall (North Carolina State University)

• Early Protestant Church Acoustics: Huldrych Zwingli and the Zürich Grossmünster 

  Dr. Braxton Boren (American University)

• Acoustics, Audibility, and Political Culture in the House of Commons, 1800–34 

  Dr. Aglaia Foteinou (University of York)

• Choral Time Travel: Medieval Music and Acoustics at Notre-Dame de Paris 

  Dr. Sarabeth Mullins (Treble Technologies and Sorbonne Université)

12:00–1:30 Lunch 

1:30–3:00 Virtual Reality, Affect, and Emotion 

• Dynamic Ambisonic Convolution Reverb in Virtual Reality 

  Eito Murakami (Stanford University)

• Resonant Portals: Transformative Sonic Experiences 

  Dr. Alaa Algargoosh (Virginia Tech)

• The Sonic Sublime: Investigating Auditory Awe in Immersive Experiences for Emotional Well-Being 

  Nima Farzaneh (Stanford University)

3:00–3:15 Coffee Break

3:15–3:45 Open Discussion on Interdisciplinary Collaboration

3:45–4:00 Symposium Closing

This talk delves into the profound interplay between sound, space, and human perception, revealing how soundscapes shape emotional experiences, foster well-being, and enhance social connections. By drawing on insights from architectural acoustics, soundscape research, psychoacoustics, and environmental psychology, the presentation examines how acoustic environments evoke emotions ranging from serenity to awe, fostering personal and collective well-being.

Highlighting the transformative potential of sound, the talk explores how acoustic experiences transcend physical boundaries to connect people to their environments, cultural heritage, and shared identities, offering continuity and belonging. Whether through the resonance of sacred spaces, the restorative power of soundscapes, or innovative augmented environments, the discussion uncovers how sound can alter perceptions of time and space, creating immersive experiences for rejuvenation, reflection, and connection.

Alaa Algargoosh is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Virginia Tech, specializing in architectural acoustics, psychoacoustics, and soundscape design. Her interdisciplinary research bridges architecture, environmental psychology, and computational design, focusing on the transformative role of sound in shaping human experiences, enhancing well-being, and fostering social connection.

Recognized as an Innovator Under 35 by MIT Technology Review, Algargoosh has received prestigious awards in architecture, sustainability, and the humanities. Her work has been published in leading journals such as The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and Applied Acoustics and featured in media outlets including Live Sound Magazine and the Dubai Future Podcast.

Her research has been showcased in international exhibitions, including the ArtScience Exhibition at Le Laboratoire in Paris, Ibtikar in Riyadh, and Mapping the Egalitarian Metropolis: Spaces of Hope in Detroit, supported by the Mellon Foundation. Most recently, her work was presented at the MIT Museum’s Meditation, Art, and Neuroscience in Conversation event, where she explored sound’s role in enhancing well-being through immersive experiences.

Sound has played a fundamental role in Hindu worship since the early Vedic period (ca. 2000 BCE). History indicates that Indian civilizations had a strong oral tradition and relied on knowledge being transmitted through oral means rather than written text. The start of the post-Vedic period (ca. 1st century BCE) was marked by the emergence of temple worship, with rock-cut cave temples among the first structures. While cave temples are critical to the evolution of Hindu religious practices, their acoustics remain an unexplored area. This work addresses the gap by analyzing the acoustics of four Hindu cave temples in the Badami region of present-day Karnataka, Southern India. These caves carved into red sandstone date back to the 6th and 7th centuries CE, with two dedicated to Lord Vishnu and two to Lord Shiva. We analyzed the impulse responses and decay curves measured at Cave temples 1, 2, and 3 in Badami as well as the Ravana Phadi cave temple in Aihole. Standard acoustic parameters like T30, C80, D50 as well as non-standard parameters like resonance quality and resonance width are computed to provide insight into their acoustic properties.

Shashank Aswathanarayana is a music technologist, percussionist and researcher from Bengaluru, India. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Audio Technology at American University. He received a PhD in Media Arts and Technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He also holds a Master’s degree in Music Technology from New York University (NYU) and a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) in India.

Shashank’s research interests include spatial/3D audio, psychoacoustics, soundscape studies, music, and religious studies. Currently he is working on studying the Acoustics of Hindu Temples in India. In his free time, he enjoys making music, trekking, traveling, and playing sports.

Historical studies of architectural acoustics consider how music and oration sounded in a given space. Some studies consider how a particular musical style or texture was heard, particularly in terms of clarity. Studies of historically informed performance practices consider period instruments and how they were played, as well as inferences of tempo, dynamics and articulation principally based upon treatises and written accounts. Here we consider how performers adapt to the acoustic features of a structure, and how the architectural features of a space may influence the composition as well as its realization.

Jonathan Berger is the Denning Family Provostial Professor in Music at Stanford University, and the Director of Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.

One of the main concerns of the Protestant Reformation was the perspicacity of Scripture—the idea that God’s word was clear and understandable by lay people rather than restricted to clerics trained in ancient languages. As a result, the Reformation tended to favor translation of key parts of the church service into the vernacular of the local church. This tendency caused Reformation churches to prize both clarity (through the elevation of the sermon over the Eucharist) and simplicity (by ridding the church of images, which previously filled a narrative role when most congregants did not speak Latin). These twin goals caused many Reformation churches to ensure clear sight lines and seating, in many cases reducing reverberation and improving intelligibility. However, the Swiss Reformation and related movements often stripped walls bare, reducing sound diffusion and potentially increasing specular reflection and standing wave resonances. This study examines the acoustics of the Zürich Grossmünster, where Huldrych Zwingli fostered many key reforms shortly after Martin Luther in Germany. Using impulse response measurements, the time-domain and frequency-domain characteristics of the church are considered relative to the stated ecclesiastical goals of Swiss Reformers like Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Calvin.

Braxton Boren is an Associate Professor of Audio Technology at American University, specializing in room acoustics and sound simulation. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Northwestern University and received a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue his Master’s in Physics from the University of Cambridge. He completed his PhD in the Music and Audio Research Laboratory at New York University. He worked for two years as a researcher in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at Princeton University before beginning his current position at American University. He teaches courses on room acoustics, computer simulation, digital signal processing, and the human auditory system. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a Full Member of the Acoustical Society of America and the Audio Engineering Society. 

Music was central to the articulation of faith, liturgy, and power in the early modern Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, and the Jesuit period of expansion on the highlands (1557–1632) was no exception. New and bold Afro-Eurasian architectural projects were developed as symbols of religious renewal that served as sacred Catholic spaces of the divine and were underlaid by royal Ethiopian patronage that shaped these cultural dynamics. Encountering an ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Christianity and a vibrant royal court culture, European Jesuit missionaries sought a theological mechanism of inculturation whereby music and ritual sounds created spatial dimensions and reverberant acoustics to activate the architectural auralities of these sacred spaces and to create profound transcendent spiritual experiences. Drawing on new archival documentation, 16th- and 17th-century travelers’ accounts, and indigenous sources, this paper centers on a virtual acoustical modeling of the key Ethiopian archaeological site of Gorgora Iyäsus that combines an examination of the materialities of the space, potential acoustic data, and its sonic manifestations in the form of Jesuit Catholic service, multisensorial ceremonies with indigenous Ethiopian and Asian components at the intersections of sacred space, sound and rite. It addresses the challenges of 3D reconstructions and virtual auralizations ‘in the void’ when architectural sites, such as Gorgora Iyäsus, are largely lost, and proposes a new innovative solution for a virtual acoustical modeling of Gorgora Iyäsus, combining the incorporation of potential acoustic data into a spatial model, historical performance practices and repertories, and interpretative choices that can enable an immersive simulation of its multi-sensorial experience. The study of sacred sound at Gorgora Iyäsus puts a focus on an embodied experience which can more fully explain the physical appearance of this exceptional Ethiopian monument by combining acoustical, visual and sonic considerations from an entangled early modern Indian Ocean world.

Dr. Janie Cole’s specialty research areas are three-fold, focusing on musical practices, instruments and thought in early modern African kingdoms and Afro-Eurasian encounters; music, poetry and spectacle in late Renaissance and early Baroque Italy and France; and music, social change and prisons in the anti-apartheid struggle in 20th-century South Africa. Her current work centers on early modern musical culture at the royal court in the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia and intertwined sonic histories of entanglement with the Latin Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean world. She is the author of two books, as well as numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. Notable fellowships and awards include from The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (2005–6), the Getty Foundation (2007–9), the Janet Levy Prize from the American Musicological Society (2010), the Author Grant Award from the Academic and Non-Fiction Authors Association of South Africa (2015), and the Claude V. Palisca Fellowship Award in Musicology from the Renaissance Society of America (2020). She is currently the founding Discipline Representative in Africana Studies at the Renaissance Society of America (2018–), serves on the Yale Institute of Sacred Music Fellows’ Committee (2024–), is co-founder of the International Musicological Society Study Group Early African Sound Worlds (2023–), and the founder/executive director of Music Beyond Borders.

Dr. Janie Cole (PhD University of London) is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Connecticut and a Research Affiliate of the Council on African Studies at Yale University. She is currently Research Officer for East Africa on the University of the Witwatersrand and University of Cape Town’s interdisciplinary project Re-Centring AfroAsia (2018–) and a Research Associate at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (2022–). In 2023/24, she was a Research Scholar at Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music and Visiting Professor teaching at Yale’s Department of Music. Prior to this, she was a Senior Lecturer (adjunct) at the University of Cape Town’s South African College of Music for nine years (2015–23). 

This study investigates how variations in architectural geometry and acoustic properties influence the experience of awe, using virtual reality (VR) to simulate real-world conditions. The experiment incorporates environments that differ in spatial dimensions, complexity, and novelty (conventional to unconventional designs). Acoustic conditions are systematically manipulated along three factors: frequency emphasis (low, balanced, high), echo density (short, medium, high), and liveliness (damped, reverberant). Participants’ responses will be assessed using a combination of methods, including physiological measures, self-reported awe ratings, and spatial perception surveys to evaluate the emotional and cognitive impact of these settings. Additionally, the study considers the integration of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to examine implicit cognitive and emotional associations between specific room geometries and awe-related attributes such as “Vastness” and “Majestic.” Currently in the pilot testing phase, the research aims to validate stimuli and refine procedures for comprehensive data collection. By incorporating diverse spatial properties and combining explicit and implicit measures, this study seeks to provide insights into how spatial and acoustic features can evoke awe, contributing to advancements in VR design, architectural theory, and well-being research.

Nima Farzaneh is an architectural designer and researcher specializing in musical and architectural acoustics, pursuing a PhD at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). His research explores the sonic dimension of awe, examining how architectural geometry and acoustic properties shape cognitive processing and spatial perception, integrating virtual acoustics, psychoacoustics, and VR. With a background in architecture, computational design, and acoustics, he holds degrees from Iran (BArch) and Pratt Institute (MS in Architecture). After nearly a decade in architectural practice in New York City (2011–2019), he specialized in architectural acoustics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). His work also extends to archeoacoustics, examining how historical and sacred spaces were designed for auditory experience. By employing 3D acoustic modeling and immersive reconstructions, he investigates the sonic dimensions of ritual, perception, and transcendence, contributing to spatial audio research, virtual heritage, and immersive storytelling.

What did the UK House of Commons sound like before it was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1834? The chamber is a theatre for confrontational political performance, speechmaking and Parliamentary debate. The interior of the Commons chamber had undergone multiple changes since its conversion from St Stephen’s Chapel in the Palace of Westminster in the mid-sixteenth century. We focus on the last stage before it was severely damaged by a fire in Westminster Palace in 1834 and demolished in 1837. 

Through an acoustic reconstruction of the space following historical evidence of its design and use at the time, we explore the acoustic experience and intelligibility of speeches from the Speaker’s chair, and the front and back benches of the house. The results are interpreted for their impact on the political culture of the chamber, including choice of seating in the chamber, experience of reporters in the gallery and women in the ventilator space gathered to listen to the debates below.

Dr. Aglaia Foteinou is an Associate Researcher at the University of York. She has worked as a Research Fellow at XR Stories and as a Research Associate at the University of York on the EU JPI-CH PHE: The Past Has Ears project, focusing on the acoustic reconstruction of the UK House of Commons between c. 1800 and 1834. Before joining these research projects, Aglaia was a Senior Lecturer in Music Technology in the Performing Arts at the University of Wolverhampton for eight years. She completed her PhD in Music Technology in 2014 and MSc in Music Technology at the University of York in 2010. Aglaia has been awarded with scholarships and grants throughout her studies and she wa selected to present her work at the Set of Britain Awards at the House of Commons in 2011. She has collaborated on a variety of national and international projects related to acoustic modelling and impulse response measurements of Heritage sites. Her work has been presented in several journal articles and at national and international conferences. 

Soundscapes of Byzantium is an international collaborative effort that seeks to investigate Byzantine liturgical spaces through the analysis of acoustics in conjunction with the study of changing architectural forms, the documentation of imagery inspired by choral performance and hymn composition, and the transcription and recording of medieval chant. We will present results from a study conducted by an interdisciplinary team of scholars who examined eight of medieval Thessaloniki’s most significant churches in order to assess the relationship of architectural design and acoustics, the association of chant, acoustics, architecture, and the role of sound in the experience of the medieval worshipper.

The project team, led by Sharon Gerstel (Art History and Archaeology, UCLA) and Chris Kyriakakis (Electrical Engineering, USC), includes specialists from a variety of fields: Spyridon Antonopoulos (Musicology and Performance); James Donahue (Music Production and Engineering); and Konstantinos Raptis (Architecture and Archaeology)

Professor Chris Kyriakakis teaches and conducts research at the intersection of audio signal processing, acoustics, and psychoacoustics at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. His work is driven by a passion for interdisciplinary collaboration. His research has unlocked new ways of capturing, processing, and rendering immersive sound that aim to suspend disbelief and makes listeners believe they are in alternate realities. He has authored more than 100 technical papers, a textbook on Immersive Audio, and holds more than 20 patents. He is the recipient of the World Technology Network award in Media and Journalism and his work has been featured in the NY Times, in NPR’s All Things Considered, and The Atlantic.

The acoustic environment of a space profoundly shapes musical performance, influencing The acoustic environment of a space profoundly shapes musical performance, influencing everything from vocal technique to ensemble coordination. This work explores the evolving relationship between Notre-Dame de Paris and the early music cultures that developed within its sanctuary in the 12th–14th centuries. Using acoustical modeling and archival documentation, a series of reconstructed acoustical environments was created to support real-time experimentation with choirs specializing in early music. These experiments allowed the choirs to “step into” the cathedral at various points in its history and provided valuable insights into how performers adapted to the famously long reverberation of the space.

While the choirs involved in these studies are not the same as the original musical occupants of the cathedral, their experiences navigating the reconstructed acoustics offer important clues about past performance practices. Their responses to the space such as adjustments in tempo, articulation, and phrasing, highlight how Notre-Dame’s acoustics may have shaped medieval musical techniques. By examining these modern interpretations in historical contexts, we gain a deeper understanding of the dynamic interplay between sound, space, and musical expression over centuries. In this talk, we’ll touch on the acoustic models, the experiments, and the challenges and lessons of interdisciplinary research.

Sarabeth Mullins conducted her doctoral research on the acoustic reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris at the Institut d’Alembert of Sorbonne Université. With degrees in music composition and acoustics, she takes a holistic approach to the study of the human experience of music and acoustics. Transitioning into the field through computational acoustics and simulation, her work integrates methodologies from acoustics, digital humanities, and heritage studies to explore how sound shaped the cathedral’s cultural heritage across time.

Her research was supported by the CNRS Chantier Scientifique at Notre-Dame, the ERC project The Past Has Ears at Notre-Dame, and Sorbonne Université. Beyond her academic work, she enjoys knitting, practicing medieval recipes, and playing with her feline research assistant.

Our research involves creating virtual reality scenes that present visual and auditory characteristics of historical sites, including places that are no longer existent or accessible. Achieving a sense of realism requires techniques that maximize the limited resources that have been collected from fieldwork or historical documents. Simultaneously, the methods that are used to convert such data into an interactive experience must be both computationally efficient and universally applicable. Our virtual reality project features spatial reverb that utilizes binaural rendering of ambisonic impulse responses. The sets of multi-channel impulse responses are dynamically interpolated such that a listener can freely move around in the virtual environment.

Eito Murakami is a PhD student at Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University. He graduated from University of California San Diego with bachelor’s degrees in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Music (ICAM) and Political Science/International Relations. He completed a master’s degree in Music, Science, and Technology at CCRMA with a capstone project titled “RayTone: A Node-based Audiovisual Sequencing Environment”. Eito is an electronic composer, performer, sound designer, and virtual reality developer. By combining his classical music training with proficiency in audio and graphics software, he creates digital interfaces and instruments that promote playful workflows for multimedia performances. At CCRMA, his research involves designing audio playback systems in virtual reality to process dynamic spatial reverb and multiplayer interactions.

The generalized prominence of the visual over other senses in the modern West has led to other sensorial perceptions of ancient material remains often being overlooked. This lecture presents the results of a project that researches whether ancient Egyptian builders considered the acoustic properties of the spaces while designing the tombs of the elites. North Saqqara was the main elite cemetery of Memphis at the time of state formation, and in these grounds we find some of the first monumental buildings in the history of Egypt. This landscape served as the setting of ritual practices where the foremen of the state negotiated their power and legitimacy.

In this lecture I will use tomb 3506 as a case study to show how architectural initiatives adapted the spaces of the structure to changing ritual needs, adapting the building to the ceremonies that were celebrated before, during, and after the funeral of their owners. I will analyze the design of the tomb and its acoustic agency, paying attention to how these were altered throughout the life of the monument.

The results of the analysis show that the architecture of the tombs created very specific auditory atmospheres that influenced ceremonial practices and shaped the experiences of those involved in very particular ways. By investigating these sonic dimensions, we highlight the potential of cutting edge methods of digital analysis to achieve a better understanding of the multi-sensory perceptions of the past.

Sergio Alarcón Robledo is a PhD candidate in Egyptology at Harvard University. He is a trained architect (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), and obtained an MPhil in Egyptology (University of Cambridge) and an MA in Archaeology (University of California, Los Angeles). Sergio has extensive fieldwork experience in Egypt, and he has worked with materials ranging from the Early Dynastic Period to Greco-Roman times. In his doctoral dissertation, he uses the North Saqqara plateau as a case study to research the earliest developments of monumental architecture in Egypt at the time of state formation.

The prehistoric art of Chauvet Cave, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in southern France, has long captivated archaeologists, art historians, and the broader public. The spectacular paintings—dating back 36,000 years—have been studied extensively for their visual import and cultural significance, along with other archaeological remains such as fire sites, paleontological deposits, and anthropic structures. Yet these artifacts and artworks also exist in an environment shaped by unique—and largely unexamined—acoustic phenomena. This presentation explores how the Chauvet Paleoacoustics Project utilizes room acoustics research methods to investigate how ancient humans may have experienced the underground galleries. To achieve this, we deploy an array of both omnidirectional and ambisonic microphones to record a spatial high-resolution of impulse responses, capturing the cave’s spatial and reverberant characteristics. Our approach adheres to strict conservation protocols, space limitations and room acoustic measurement practices. Acoustic parameters such as reverberation time, strength, sound clarity, spectral balance, echo density, and envelopment are extracted from the measured impulse responses.  These metrics are then integrated into GIS-based spatial maps of the cave which enables statistical comparisons with archaeological data, facilitating hypothesis testing regarding site usage and cultural practices. Furthermore, the auralizations resulting from acoustical measurements—ranging from individual immersive simulations to larger-scale and museum installations—allow listeners to experience and interact with the prehistoric acoustic environment.

Luna Valentin is a PhD candidate in archaeoacoustics at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Her work focuses on reconstructing historical soundscapes—whether in natural caves or sacred structures—to explore how acoustics shape human experience. Integrating field measurements, advanced signal processing, 3D modeling, and GIS, she develops tools like PyRAT (Python Room Acoustics Toolkit) to analyze acoustical data and offer immersive auralizations. A key part of her research is the Paleoacoustics project at Chauvet Cave, conducted in collaboration with teams in Norway, and France. Since 2022, Luna has led acoustic measurement campaigns in the cave’s galleries, gathering data and working towards creating models that account for geologic transformations spanning over 30,000 years. This interdisciplinary effort, which combines archaeology, geology, and acoustics, provides an in-depth look into Paleolithic sound environments. 

The Virtual St Paul’s Cathedral Project enables us to explore the English Reformation experientially. It provides recreations of two full days of worship inside St Paul’s Cathedral. One is a festival occasion—Easter Sunday, March 28th, 1624, a festival occasion. The day begins with Sung Matins, continues with the Great Litany and Holy Communion, including Bishop Lancelot Andrewes’ sermon for that day, then concludes with Evensong and the sermon John Donne preached at the cathedral on that day in 1624. 

The second day of services is for the Tuesday after the First Sunday in Advent in 1625, an ordinary (or ferial) day on the calendar of the Church of England, a day defined only by the observation of Matins and Evensong. Both these services are set within a detailed model of the cathedral itself, as well as the buildings and spaces that surrounded it in Paul’s Churchyard, as they were until they were all swept away by the Great Fire of London in 1666. 

The St Paul’s Cathedral Project enables us to explore how—through use of the Prayer Book—the Bible was received and the parishioners’ relationships with God were negotiated through public worship, the public performances of lectionary readings, preaching from biblical texts, and performance of biblically-derived Prayer Book liturgies.  In these worship services, parishioners were no longer passive observers of rites performed in Latin by clergy, but were active participants in these rites, joining in corporate confession, recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and the Creeds, and reception of the bread and wine of Holy Communion. They heard the Bible read sequentially, year after year. They watched the Seasons of the Church Year bring them through fasts and festivals, through the annual remembrance of Jesus’ life and the Church’s reflection on its calling as the Body of Christ.

Rev. Dr. John N. Wall retired in 2023 after a 50-year career as a professor of English literature at North Carolina State University. In preparation for this career, he was awarded a BA with Highest Honors in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1967, an MA in English from Duke University in 1969, and a PhD in English from Harvard University in 1973. He was also awarded an MDiv from the Episcopal Divinity School in 1972 and ordained a priest of the Episcopal Church in 1974. 

During his academic career, Wall was twice named a Fellow of the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC. He received individual grants from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. These grants enabled him to publish numerous books and articles, including especially Transformations of the Word: Spenser, Herbert, Vaughan (1988) and The English Works of George Herbert (1981), which is still in print after 40 years.

Starting in the 2000’s, Wall assembled a team of actors, singers, architects, acoustic engineers, and digital modelers who collaborated to create the four websites of the Virtual John Donne Project (http://virtualdonne.chass.ncsu.edu/). Funded by digital humanities project grants from the NEH, these websites combine visual and acoustic models of buildings and worship spaces associated with John Donne’s career as Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral (1621–1631) with reenactments of worship services at which Donne preached.

In the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, which functioned as both the palace chapel and representation room for the Kings of Sicily, idioms from different cultures were combined in a unique manner: hymns were sung in Latin, Greek and Arabic, and it is quite conceivable that the homilies recited by the court preachers were accompanied by Arabic string instruments, which are depicted in the ceiling paintings of the central nave. The rite and liturgical chants, on the other hand, were influenced by the Norman homeland of the Kings and the high clergy, which is evident in the copies of liturgical books and tropers of northern French cathedrals and monasteries, but Italian and Sicilian elements can also be traced in the music and liturgy. The palace chapel itself, which formed the stage for these religious and secular ceremonies, represented a unique synthesis of Italo-Romanesque, Byzantine and Islamic-Arabic elements in its architectural design and artistic decoration. With this extraordinary amalgamation of different cultural idioms in the Cappella Palatina, its founder Roger II demonstrated the ethnic and religious diversity in his kingdom and his claim to power in the Mediterranean region.

The lecture will examine this complex interrelation of music, rite, visual art and architecture in the Palermitan palace chapel and other Siculo-Norman sacred spaces of the 12th-century and explore the potential of digital technologies to gain a better understanding of how the multisensory rites made cultural plurality in medieval Sicily tangible to the senses.

Tobias C. Weißmann is a research fellow and lecturer at the University of Zurich and at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. He took his PhD from Humboldt University Berlin in 2019 with a dissertation on the interrelation of music, sound and visual arts in the festival culture of baroque Rome. The interdisciplinary study was awarded the Rudolf Arnheim Prize 2019, the Hans Janssen Prize 2022 and the Premio Daria Borghese 2023. He has held scholarships at the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani in Venice, the German Historical Institute in Rome, the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institute for Art History and the Leibniz Institute for European History. 

Since 2018 he has been a research fellow for the project “CANTORIA – Music and Sacred Architecture” at Mainz University, and since 2020 head of the scientific network “Religious Plurality in the 19th Century”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). As a member of the project “Performance Practice in Spanish Cathedrals (1563–1833)”, funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain, he conducts a project on Polychoral Performance Practice and Architectural Adaptions in Roman Churches. His scholarly interests focus on the social, political and religious functions of music and the visuals arts (12th to 19th centuries), intermediality of music, painting and architecture, cultural transfer, sensory studies and digital humanities. In his current book project he investigates the interrelation of music, rite and architecture in the Cappella Palatina in Palermo and other sacred spaces in medieval Sicily.