Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics, and Ritual

Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics, and Ritual
Author: Bissera Pentcheva
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2017-07-14
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 135178689X

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Aural architecture identifies those features of a building that can be perceived by the act of listening in them. Emerging from the challenge to reconstruct sonic and spatial experiences of the deep past, this book invites readers into the complex world of the Byzantine liturgy, experienced in its chanted form in interiors covered with monumental mosaics and frescoes. The multidisciplinary collection of ten essays explores the intersection of Byzantine liturgy, music, acoustics, and architecture in the Late Antique churches of Constantinople, Jerusalem and Rome, and reflects on the role digital technology can play in re-creating aspects of the sensually rich performance of the divine word.

Icons of Sound

Icons of Sound
Author: Bissera V. Pentcheva
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2020-11-23
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1000207366

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Icons of Sound: Voice, Architecture, and Imagination in Medieval Art brings together art history and sound studies to offer new perspectives on medieval churches and cathedrals as spaces where the perception of the visual is inherently shaped by sound. The chapters encompass a wide geographic and historical range, from the fifth to the fifteenth century, and from Armenia and Byzantium to Venice, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela. Contributors offer nuanced explorations of the intangible sonic aura produced in these places by the ritual music and harness the use of digital technology to reconstruct historical aural environments. Rooted in a decade-long interdisciplinary research project at Stanford University, Icons of Sound expands our understanding of the inherently intertwined relationship between medieval chant and liturgy, the acoustics of architectural spaces, and their visual aesthetics. Together, the contributors provide insights that are relevant across art history, sound studies, musicology, and medieval studies.

Performing the Gospels in Byzantium

Performing the Gospels in Byzantium
Author: Roland Betancourt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2021-05-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108870872

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Tracing the Gospel text from script to illustration to recitation, this study looks at how illuminated manuscripts operated within ritual and architecture. Focusing on a group of richly illuminated lectionaries from the late eleventh century, the book articulates how the process of textual recitation produced marginalia and miniatures that reflected and subverted the manner in which the Gospel was read and simultaneously imagined by readers and listeners alike. This unique approach to manuscript illumination points to images that slowly unfolded in the mind of its listeners as they imagined the text being recited, as meaning carefully changed and built as the text proceeded. By examining this process within specific acoustic architectural spaces and the sonic conditions of medieval chant, the volume brings together the concerns of sound studies, liturgical studies, and art history to demonstrate how images, texts, and recitations played with the environment of the Middle Byzantine church.

Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium

Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium
Author: Andrew Mellas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2020-07-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108487599

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Emotions in Byzantium came to life through hymnody, which invited the faithful to step into a liturgical world of compunction.

Building the Body of Christ

Building the Body of Christ
Author: Daniel C. Cochran
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2020-11-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 197870769X

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In Building the Body of Christ, Daniel C. Cochran argues that monumental Christian art and architecture played a crucial role in the formation of individual and communal identities in late antique Italy. The ecclesiastical buildings and artistic programs that emerged during the fourth and fifth centuries not only reflected Christianity’s changing status within the Roman Empire but also actively shaped those who used them. Emphasizing the importance of materiality and the body in early Christian thought and practice, Cochran shows how bishops and their supporters employed the visual arts to present a Christian identity rooted in the sacred past but expressed in the present through church unity and episcopal authority. He weaves together archaeological and textual evidence to contextualize case studies from Rome, Aquileia, and Ravenna, showing how these sites responded to the diversity of early Christianity as expressed through private rituals and the imperial appropriation of the saints. Cochran shows how these early ecclesiastical buildings and artistic programs worked in conjunction with the liturgy to persuade individuals to adopt alternative beliefs, practices, and values that contributed to the formation of institutional Christianity and the “Christianization” of late antique Italy.

The Oxford Handbook of Light in Archaeology

The Oxford Handbook of Light in Archaeology
Author: Costas Papadopoulos
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 816
Release: 2021-12-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0191092320

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Light has a fundamental role to play in our perception of the world. Natural or artificial lightscapes orchestrate uses and experiences of space and, in turn, influence how people construct and negotiate their identities, form social relationships, and attribute meaning to (im)material practices. Archaeological practice seeks to analyse the material culture of past societies by examining the interaction between people, things, and spaces. As light is a crucial factor that mediates these relationships, understanding its principles and addressing illumination's impact on sensory experience and perception should be a fundamental pursuit in archaeology. However, in archaeological reasoning, studies of lightscapes have remained largely neglected and understudied. This volume provides a comprehensive and accessible consideration of light in archaeology and beyond by including dedicated and fully illustrated chapters covering diverse aspects of illumination in different spatial and temporal contexts, from prehistory to the present. Written by leading international scholars, it interrogates the qualities and affordances of light in different contexts and (im)material environments, explores its manipulation, and problematises its elusive properties. The result is a synthesis of invaluable insights into sensory experience and perception, demonstrating illumination's vital impact on social, cultural, and artistic contexts.

Cultural Transfer of Music between Byzantium and the West?

Cultural Transfer of Music between Byzantium and the West?
Author: Nina-Maria Wanek
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 687
Release: 2024-04-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004514880

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This is the first comprehensive study of Greek language ordinary chants (Gloria/Doxa, Credo/Pisteuo, Sanctus/Hagios and Agnus Dei/Amnos tu theu) in Western manuscripts from the 9th to 14th centuries. These chants – known as “Missa Graeca” – have been the subject of academic research for over a hundred years. So far, however, research has been almost exclusively from a Western point of view, without knowledge of the Byzantine sources. For the first time, this book presents an in-depth analysis of these chants and their historical, linguistic and theological-liturgical environment from a Byzantine perspective. The new approach enables the author to refute numerous (and largely contradictory) theories on the origin and development of the Missa Graeca and provides new answers to old questions.

The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture

The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture
Author: Ellen C. Schwartz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 665
Release: 2021-11-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0197572200

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Byzantine art has been an underappreciated field, often treated as an adjunct to the arts of the medieval West, if considered at all. In illustrating the richness and diversity of art in the Byzantine world, this handbook will help establish the subject as a distinct field worthy of serious inquiry. Essays consider Byzantine art as art made in the eastern Mediterranean world, including the Balkans, Russia, the Near East and north Africa, between the years 330 and 1453. Much of this art was made for religious purposes, created to enhance and beautify the Orthodox liturgy and worship space, as well as to serve in a royal or domestic context. Discussions in this volume will consider both aspects of this artistic creation, across a wide swath of geography and a long span of time. The volume marries older, object-based considerations of themes and monuments which form the backbone of art history, to considerations drawing on many different methodologies-sociology, semiotics, anthropology, archaeology, reception theory, deconstruction theory, and so on-in an up-to-date synthesis of scholarship on Byzantine art and architecture. The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture is a comprehensive overview of a particularly rich field of study, offering a window into the world of this fascinating and beautiful period of art.

Voyages and Travel Accounts in Historiography and Literature. Volume I

Voyages and Travel Accounts in Historiography and Literature. Volume I
Author: Boris Stojkovski
Publisher: Trivent Publishing
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2020-12-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 6158179345

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Travelling is one of the most fascinating phenomena that has inspired writers and scholars from Antiquity to our postmodern age. The father of history, Herodotus, was also a traveller, whose Histories can easily be considered a travel account. The first volume of this book is dedicated to the period starting from Herodotus himself until the end of the Middle Ages with focus on the Balkans, the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic world, and South-Eastern Europe. Research on travellers who connected civilizations; manuscript and literary traditions; musicology; geography; flora and fauna as reflected in travel accounts, are all part of this thought-provoking collected volume dedicated to detailed aspects of voyages and travel accounts up to the end of the sixteenth century. The second volume of this book is dedicated to the period between Early Modernity and today, including modern receptions of travelling in historiography and literature. South-Eastern Europe and Serbia; the Chinese, Ottoman, and British perception of travelling; pilgrimages to the Holy land and other sacred sites; Serbian, Arabic, and English literature; legal history and travelling, and other engaging topics are all part of the second volume dedicated to aspects of voyages and travel accounts up to the contemporary era.

Cultures of Compunction in the Medieval World

Cultures of Compunction in the Medieval World
Author:
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350150398

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Compunction was one of the most important emotions for medieval Christianity; in fact, through its confessional function, compunction became the primary means for an affective sinner to gain redemption. Cultures of Compunction in the Medieval World explores how such emotion could be expressed, experienced and performed in medieval European society. Using a range of disciplinary approaches – including history, philosophy, art history, literary studies, performance studies and linguistics – this book examines how and why emotions which now form the bedrock of modern western culture were idealized in the Middle Ages. By bringing together expertise across disciplines and medieval languages, this important book demonstrates the ubiquity and impact of compunction for medieval life and makes wider connections between devotional, secular and quotidian areas of experience.