[HN Gopher] The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
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The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago
Author : blegh
Score : 175 points
Date : 2020-03-03 08:16 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| muraiki wrote:
| You can find some recordings of a live concert done using this
| technique on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHpOiX2sO-s
|
| I've been learning and singing Byzantine chant for over a decade
| now. In fact, I ended up learning programming because I wanted to
| create software for Byzantine notation, which is very different
| from western notation. Here's an example of (modern) Byzantine
| notation with renditions in western notation:
| https://cappellaromana.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Cherub...
|
| The top line of western notation shows a fairly straightforward
| version, while the bottom line shows one fully-ornamented
| interpretation. Note that microtones are used. As far as I can
| understand, ornamentation/interpretation can vary by teacher, and
| I once found a paper that analyzed the microtones used by various
| famous chanters to see the differences between them.
|
| I never did end up creating any useful open source software for
| Byzantine chant. I did learn Racket, then Django, then became a
| programmer and now I'm a data scientist. So I partially ended up
| where I am because I was sick of typing out Byzantine chant using
| special fonts in Microsoft Word! There are now actually a lot of
| symbols in unicode for Byzantine music, but I don't think there's
| any way to handle the typesetting necessary for combining neumes
| in the various possible ways yet (think of how Korean works)...
| but I haven't looked into this for a few years.
|
| I love this music, not only for the beauty of its sound but also
| the incredible richness of the hymns. There are teachers in the
| United States working on developing good methods for teaching all
| of this to people without such a cultural background, and
| critically, singing it in English so that the meaning can be
| understood by those who don't know Greek or Arabic. Chanting with
| my choir is one of my greatest joys in life. Glory to God for all
| things.
| mycoborea wrote:
| 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)?
| keiferski wrote:
| Any links or ideas on what it would sound like during the Ottoman
| Era? It was the primary mosque of the empire for centuries, so
| I'd imagine there had to be some form of singing or chanting
| (Sufis, maybe?)
| arriu wrote:
| Truly beautiful, thanks for sharing.
|
| Kind of reminds me of the following bit where deadmau5 talks
| about reverb and compression to create a sound that goes beyond
| what the oscillators generate. He plays a tune without, it
| illustrates a similar effect. (warning: lots of cussing)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYr6nlqV3oA&feature=youtu.be...
| rabboRubble wrote:
| Really beautiful, glad I took the few minutes to listen.
| emmelaich wrote:
| You might like to listen to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_chant
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. For those who listened, Capella Romana's
| "The Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia" is also available on Spotify.
| It's amazing.
| [deleted]
| prgmatic wrote:
| This practice continues in the Armenian church in their
| liturgical music:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmQcQ4M8ROg&t=740s
|
| Not coincidentally, Armenian church and its rituals are some of
| the oldest in the world.
| aksss wrote:
| tl;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.
| ur-whale wrote:
| So it's like they sent a dirac spike in the real thing and
| managed to capture the full response? If so, very neat!
| wl wrote:
| > 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 performing such
| operations on audio signals for at least 20 years.
|
| There's been some more recent work about more efficiently and
| accurately measuring the impulse responses of a space, but
| given they're using balloon pops, they're not using that work.
| 1ceaham wrote:
| Offline audio-rate convolution (particularly with shorter
| impulse responses) has been plausible for a while, but real-
| time convolution reverb has definitely come into its own over
| the last ten or fifteen years. Overlap-adding blocks of audio
| that have been processed in the frequency domain with a low
| enough latency so as to feel instantaneous is a more recent
| capability that likely had an influence on this work.
|
| I think the reason they used balloon pops was because that
| was all they were allowed to use: many heritage or
| archaeological sites can be nervous about researchers
| bringing in large loudspeakers and amplifiers, whereas a
| portable recorder and a bag of balloons can feel a little
| more harmless. Most acoustics researchers are aware of and
| use those new techniques whenever it's possible!
| ninjamayo wrote:
| Truly magical!
| rosybox wrote:
| Just listening to the balloon pop in the Hagia Sophia was amazing
| to hear. Are there any other structures with similar acoustics
| that still holds performances?
|
| Also there's a YouTube playlist of the recording they mention at
| the end, the Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VrJ8XOwJzw&list=OLAK5uy_k98...
| Link- wrote:
| The album of Capella Romana is on Spotify for whoever's
| interested:
| https://open.spotify.com/album/5iB2tDdXCTaV2PMlcgNYdA?si=X_k...
|
| This will be my background music for weeks now :D
| briandear wrote:
| Here's the Apple Music link as well:
| https://music.apple.com/us/album/lost-voices-of-hagia-sophia...
| Brendinooo wrote:
| It says on Cappella Romana's site that "For a thousand years,
| Hagia Sophia was the largest enclosed space in the world."
|
| An interesting fact to get out this rabbit hole.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Beautifully done, especially the transition from the studio to
| the simulated environment.
|
| You can hear similar choral music if you visit an Orthodox Church
| or monastery, specifically a Greek or Georgian one maybe.
| peapicker wrote:
| Convolution reverbs are pretty cool. For Ableton Live Suite
| users, Ableton has made available a MaxForLive device that lets
| you make your own impulse response files for use with their
| convolution reverb, I've used it.
|
| Howto: https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/make-your-own-impulse-
| respon...
| patrickdavey wrote:
| This was beautiful to listen to. By pure luck (should have done
| more reading), I was visiting Pisa in Italy. There's a building
| (the baptistry) _beside_ the leaning tower, which has the most
| perfect acoustics.
|
| Every hour, they close the doors and a person sings a series of
| individual notes which then interact just _beautifully_ in the
| building. Hard to describe. There's a soundcloud[1] here, not
| mine, stars properly around 1:23. I think you really have to be
| there though, it was wonderful.
|
| [1] https://soundcloud.com/miguelisazam/pisa-baptistry-of-st-
| joh... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisa_Baptistery
| 1ceaham wrote:
| If you're interested, researchers from the University of
| Bologna have been working on virtual acoustic models of that
| space in its current form [0] as well as past configurations
| [1] that you might be able to look into. It is truly huge
| reverberation! And thus, pretty difficult to simulate.
|
| [0] https://doi.org/10.1080/19401493.2020.1728382 [1]
| http://pub.dega-akustik.de/ICA2019/data/articles/000682.pdf
| screamingmunch wrote:
| Sad that we don't really consider acoustics when building our
| modern structures/dwellings these days.
| jacobjr23 wrote:
| We do when building halls/stadiums/opera houses/temples/places
| where acoustics matter.
| frandroid wrote:
| I think Parent suggests that acoustics matter more than just
| in spaces for explicit sound consumption.
| jcims wrote:
| Yes like open office plans.
| beloch wrote:
| The 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 compensated for. Even
| with the impressive work of Abel and Pentcheva we still have
| something that would likely sound empty and strangely hollow to
| people familiar with the Hagia Sophia when it was serving as a
| church.
| shrubble wrote:
| The last Orthodox church services were in 1453. So I doubt that
| there will be many critics who remember back that far :)
| sb057 wrote:
| Actually, there was an (incredibly unauthorized) service held
| in 1919 during the Allied occupation of the city:
|
| https://greece.greekreporter.com/2019/09/26/the-brave-
| greek-...
| briandear wrote:
| What an amazing story! Thanks for sharing that.
| peapicker wrote:
| Some Greek chanters got permission to go into the Hagia
| Sophia and record a TV special (for Greek TV) of chant music
| several years ago. While not a service, it is the music that
| would have been used at a service. (Either that, or this is
| another case of convolution reverb and some clever video
| editing. I'm not sure. But it sounds pretty cool.)
|
| Part of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1aUZcHaJb4
|
| Another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eCZyvczZaM&t=98
| mudil wrote:
| I just finished reading "Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries
| of War between Islam and the West" by Raymond Ibrahim, and it's a
| devastating account, and an eye popping book, of Islam's spread
| through Christian lands. 85% of what used to be Christian was
| conquered by jihad, all of north Africa, all Middle East, all
| Anatolia, and all the way to Vienna and Spain. Millions died,
| raped, enslaved, and forcefully converted. White women were
| particular targets. The overarching theme is that followers of
| Islam felt it was their holy duty of jihad to wage the war on
| infidels, no matter what the method and devastation.
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/0306825554/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_F...
| rosybox wrote:
| I'm not sure HN is the venue for you to begin your race war or
| make whatever point you're trying to go for here.
| rwultsch wrote:
| The Hagia Sophia was the site of a significant massacre when
| it was forcibly converted from a church to a mosque.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Unless the blood from that massacre changed the acoustics
| of the space, it's still not enormously relevant to the
| article.
| rwultsch wrote:
| Eh, I will kind of buy that. It was a church before it
| was a mosque and churches tend to have quite a bit more
| music than mosques.
|
| The race war comment above seemed uncharitable.
| samatman wrote:
| Islam is not a race.
|
| The comment you're responding to (which is flagged and dead)
| doesn't belong on HN, but unless you've invented some genetic
| basis to tell apart Anatolian Turks and Greeks (good luck
| with that) try to be more precise about what irks you.
|
| This kind of dismissal makes things worse.
| dang wrote:
| Your comments have been using HN primarily for ideological and
| political and (now) religious battle. That's not what HN is
| for, and as the site guidelines explain, we ban accounts that
| do that. We have to, because we can't have both flamewar and
| curious conversation, the same way you can't have both a forest
| fire and a good hike.
|
| If you'd review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and comment
| only in the intended spirit, we'd be grateful. I don't want to
| ban you, but we've been asking you about this for years now.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| I 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_Constantinople
| sb057 wrote:
| >In fact, a Muslim was /is the referee to the Church of the
| Holy Sepulchre
|
| The Catholic Church has partial jurisdiction and would also be
| subject to any referee-ing.
| praptak wrote:
| Digital reverb algorithms are a huge and interesting area. One
| can recreate the acoustics of a venue from recordings of a
| balloon pop or a pistol shot. One can also create physically
| impossible reverbs, where the echoes precede the actual sound or
| get louder instead of fading.
| derwiki wrote:
| Could you point me to more info/examples on physically
| impossible reverbs?
| wl wrote:
| Convolutional reverb means you convolve the impulse response
| of a system with a "dry" input signal to get your output. If
| the impulse response has any content before t=0, that content
| will cause a sound in your input signal to have an effect on
| the output before it happens. "Acausal" is the jargon.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The "Unnatural" section here covers a few varieties of
| unnatural reverb effect [0]. (I'd also recommend many of the
| items with the "theory" tag on this blog)
|
| In addition to those, reverbs that modulate the pitch signal
| are very common in music, but are physically impossible on a
| large scale. Most are subtle and create a detuned
| "thickening" sort of sound. Some will change the pitch by a
| whole octave or more. [1]
|
| Artificial reverbs can also have their decay rates adjusted
| dynamically, and can even decay "negatively" so that the
| reverb actually grows in volume. Any other parameter could
| also be adjusted in real-time (depending on the reverb) [2]
|
| [0] https://valhalladsp.com/2018/05/14/effect-o-pedia-reverb-
| typ...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlwdmxuBuyM "The Black
| Keys-The Go Getter"
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJDW9l2cw0I&t=60s Make
| Noise Erbe Verb reverb module
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