Icons of Sound: Cappella Romana in a virtual Hagia Sophia - Prokeimenon

From a performance at Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall. February 1, 2013. Sunday Prokeimenon in Mode 1. MS Patmos 221 (ca. 1162-1179) Program note: Dry versus Wet Sound and the Experiment with Live Auralization in Bing Hall Cappella Romana, Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics and the Art & Art History Department Tonight we will experiment with digital technology in the second half of Cappella Romana’s concert in order to transform the Bing Hall into the reverberant soundscape of Hagia Sophia (532-537), which defined the medieval spiritual experience and man’s embeddedness in the world. We live in a culture that values dry, direct, and efficient sound. This aesthetic predisposition emerged during the Machine Age (1900-1933) and it transformed our relationship to sound. Before, speech or chanting reverberating in resonant ancient stone interiors made individual words unclear. The electroacoustic signal,