Word and Mystery: The Acoustics of Cultural Transmission During the Protestant Reformation.

This article explores the history and modernity of orthodox churches with a multi-level structure of liturgical spaces. The authors have defined a method of temple architecture, which consists in introducing relevant components of secular creative concepts to express the truths of Christianity through the interpretation of tradition. For the first time, the authors have identified for research a typological group of Christian churches with liturgical spaces located at various levels with their visual unification. A typology of the studied historical spatial solutions have developed. A modern understanding of the tradition development of the multi-level structure of liturgical premises involving the concept of architectural space have proposed. There were developed the compositional schemes of churches: the placement of chapels or galleries at different levels relative to the main liturgical space; the creation of a unified multi-level liturgical space with a descent to the altar; the spatial system of the semi-underground crypt and the altar.

Architect Jean-Marie Duthilleul can be reproached with leaving out images in his layout of liturgical spaces. However he may only be tackling the issue in a different way. Indeed the way he fits the assembly in the liturgical space can remind us of the way icons are painted. In this study I will try to see if this hypothesis has any grounding by first recalling the norms concerning liturgical space and images, then by scrutinizing Duthilleul's approach to liturgical space and then by comparing it with that of an iconographer from three specific points of view : presence, face and light.

The Sancrosanctum Concilium approaches the artistic aspects of architecture from the liturgy, while the Charter of Venice approaches the architectural space from the principles of heritage protection. Both emphasized simplicity, functionality and readability. The significance and the combined effect of the two documents in the practice of church construction in Eastern Europe can be considered significant, since the possibility of redesigning the liturgical space arose mainly in the context of the renovation of historic buildings in the atheist political environment. The proof of this statement is presented in the manuscript of the architect Ödön Dümmerling. The architect - a practitioner of monument restorations and an admirer of the spirit of modern architecture - was called upon to draw up design guide after the Second Vatican Council was closed, making recommendations for new equipment for liturgical spaces.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in analyzing the manufacturing techniques of Byzantine church doors in laboratory settings. However, the connection between the iconography and significance of the décor of church doors and their liturgical performativity, as well as their parallels with iconostases in Byzantium, remained a relatively underexplored area of study. This article seeks to delve deeper into these intersections. By focusing on the relationship between the iconography of church doors in Middle to Late Byzantium and their connection to the sacred space and liturgical practices, I aim to shed light on how these artworks played a crucial role in the sacred experience of the Byzantines. This exploration will not highlight only the aesthetic evolution of church door artwork but also emphasize the communal and embodied nature of the religious experience during the Byzantine era. Their intricate designs were not merely decorative elements but served as portals to the divine, enriching the salvation journey of worshippers as they crossed the threshold into the liturgical spaces. By conducting an examination of the development of door iconography and their symbolism throughout the empire’s history, the transformation of narrative depictions from the Middle Byzantine era to the Palaiologan period, culminating in a convergence of symbolic meanings within the sacred space of the church, is delineated. This transformation is further exemplified by a sculpted church door from the Principality of Wallachia. By bridging the gap between art history and religious studies, this article aims to rekindle interest in the profound symbolism and significance of Byzantine church doors and their relation to sacred liturgical space, offering a broader perspective on an important aspect of Byzantine heritage.

The worship service occupies a central position in the life of the believer and therefore the atmosphere in the worship service is vital. The variations through history are studied in this article. The viewpoints of the first four centuries, the Middle Ages, Reformation, post-Reformation and twentieth century came under discussion. Lessons from history are stated. The atmosphere in the worship service should be such that the worshipper meets God with the necessary awe and respect. The service must also create an atmosphere of love, warmth, friendliness, and joy. All present must be invited and made welcome by the service. The atmosphere must further encourage and create room for everybody to participate and use their specific gifts. It can therefore change from service to service and within a single service. Important instruments in the atmosphere are the liturgical space, symbols, rituals, physical movement, gestures, music, song and the senses.

The Catholic Church of Korea has built the Church buildings focused on the liturgical space from the very beginning of the Church history. In the early days of its history, the Church had a liturgical space and a rectory, however, since the Second Vatican Council in 1962, it has expanded its space with the catechetical and the missionary space. In modern times, the building site has been getting smaller and the Church building has become a multipurpose one. This study seeks the characteristics of the Church area since 1990. It shows what is different in the Church architecture before and after 1990. The result is as follows. First, the Church becomes an high-rise and huge multipurpose building which has a basement. Second, when it becomes huge and high-rise, the 42.3% of the total space of the Church is used for a corridor, a hall and a basement garage. Third, the liturgical space is still plane and cross section after the Church became an multipurpose building. Fourth, the area for catechism and koinonia has been larger, but they are located in an basement level. The Church has been getting bigger year by year and the Church architecture considers an efficient use of the Church building, but still we need to plan more efficient space with its proper arrangement, minimizing additional spaces such as a corridor and a hall.

This article describes the basic elements of Catholic piety and religious practice in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It focuses especially on the liturgy and the sacraments; images, books, and sacred places; and changes to piety and religious practice brought by the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. Piety can be defined as the cultivation of habits of reverence and fidelity. Religious practice comprised the gestures, prayers, and rites through which people expressed their faith. Both were deeply entangled in social life. Religious practice also made intensive use of the material world, incorporating objects such as altar vessels, water, blessed oil, images, books, and sacred spaces. By attending liturgical or worship services, people expressed belief in God and the saints, and implicitly showed faith in the Catholic Church, their parish, the clergy, and religious orders. They also strengthened bonds with kin, neighbors, and fellow community members. Priests, bishops, and teachers claimed a defining role in shaping religious life. Yet much of religion escaped the authorities’ control. Catholicism was an inheritance passed down from one’s ancestors, a life of faith that was profoundly shaped by custom. The quest for eternal salvation was at the heart of Christian life. Christianity is by definition intercessory, because Christians believed that Christ interceded with God the father, allowing himself to be crucified for the salvation of humanity. By the late Middle Ages, intercession had developed into a complex system of exchange and reciprocity. Two of the system’s defining features were purgatory and devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints. The eternal souls of the departed who were deemed neither quite deserving of a heavenly reward nor evil enough to be condemned to hell were believed to go to purgatory. There they suffered for their sins, and awaited help from the living faithful in the form of prayers that would allow them entrance into heaven. Also available to help both the living and the souls in purgatory were the saints, deceased men and women who by their virtuous lives had earned a place in heaven and thus could intercede with God on behalf of others. The most formal religious practices were liturgical and sacramental, formulated by the church over centuries of debate and tradition. Christians in the late Middle Ages and Catholics in the early modern period believed that the liturgy and the sacraments—rites of collective or public worship—were the principal means through which God granted his grace and assistance to humanity. The Eucharist was the most important sacrament, and the Mass was the most essential rite of the faith. Because the Sunday parish Mass gathered an entire community together in a shared rite of sacrifice, prayer, hymns, communion, and almsgiving, it was also central to collective religious experience. Early modern Catholicism was intensely material. The ceremony of sacraments included water, oil, altar vessels and crucifixes, and church furnishings such as altars and baptismal fonts. Most religious practices engaged in some way with images, books, and sacred places. People prayed before images of saints, read and recited prayers from books, lighted candles upon altars in churches and knelt before them, and visited pilgrim shrines. The Protestant and Catholic Reformations transformed some aspects of Catholic religious practice. Examining piety and religious practice over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and understanding how deeply embedded they were in the social world, helps us to understand why differences over religion could erode old social bonds and create new ones. We can also see how religious change could create rifts in families, communities, and institutions. In 1700, following the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, religious practice had experienced some change. But Catholicism remained entangled in community and materiality.

For anyone passingly familiar with the Second Vatican Council, impressions of the council and its implementation in the United States can conjure up distinct notions of a changed Catholicism beginning in the 1960s: priests celebrating Mass facing the congregation, the vernacular liturgy, increased roles for the laity through parish councils and committees, and the building and renovation of liturgical space. Invoking the post-conciliar Catholic Church calls to mind these and other elements that serve as markers of what changed after the council. Despite the council’s relative silence on liturgical space, church renovations served as a highly visible marker of either acceptance or rejection of the council. Using Sacred Heart Church (now a basilica) on the campus of the University of Notre Dame as a case study, this article argues that, after the council ended in 1965, the legacy and memory of Vatican II became a shibboleth in a hotly contested wave of church construction and renovation. In Vatican II’s role as this narrowly-defined rhetorical device, the council’s legacy was invoked by partisans embracing a view of conciliar and postconciliar directives emanating from the highest levels of ecclesiastical authority as either prescriptive or permissive . Both of these perspectives carry deep implications for the authority of the council itself and the factors motivating significant modifications to the space of Catholic liturgical worship.

Artykuł przedstawia krótką historię usytuowania ołtarza w przestrzeni liturgicznej, znaku krzyża z wizerunkiem Ukrzyżowanego umieszczanego na nim i kierunku zanoszonych modlitw od ołtarza. Ołtarz w dziejach Kościoła był zazwyczaj umieszczany w absydzie bądź pośród zgromadzenia. Przez setki lat obowiązywała zasada, że celebrujący stojący przy ołtarzu głównym, jak i wierni uczestniczący we mszy świętej zanosili modlitwy w kierunku wschodnim. W pierwszym tysiącleciu w Kościele rzymskokatolickim na ołtarzu składano tylko dary do konsekracji, a dopiero na początku drugiego tysiąclecia postawiono na nim najpierw kandelabry, a potem krzyż z wizerunkiem Ukrzyżowanego. Po przyjęciu przez Sobór Watykański II mszy świętej dialogowanej i formy celebracji versus populum krzyż umieszcza się obok ołtarza – zazwyczaj jako krzyż procesyjny zwrócony wizerunkiem Jezusa Chrystusa ku wiernym. Od 2007 roku podczas celebracji Eucharystii, której przewodniczy Benedykt XVI, krzyż stoi w centralnym miejscu na ołtarzu wraz z wizerunkiem Ukrzyżowanego skierowanym ku głównemu celebransowi.

Music-making has played a fundamental part in Catholic faith and worship since the beginnings of the Church. Today, music-making remains embedded in the spiritual life of the Catholic Church, where it can potentially shape the spiritual realities of those performing and hearing it. Yet accessing and understanding these spiritual realities can be inherently difficult for the researcher. To address this, this chapter takes as its starting point a basic tenet of the Catholic faith: namely its rejection of a dualistic separation of body and spirit, in favour of the complete integration of spirit and body in the human person, which is understood as a body-soul composite. The chapter proposes that understanding “the body” in Catholic music-making can open up a viable path to a better understanding of music-makers’ spiritual realities and experiences. Using a case study of music-making in St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh, where the author is director of music, bodily positioning of choir members in the liturgical space, clothing and robes, and the individual singer vis-à-vis the ensemble are discussed. In doing so, the chapter argues that the body is a valid and potentially fruitful place to begin understanding the spiritual realities of Catholic music-makers. Likewise, it argues that a greater understanding of this could be at the heart not just of fulfilling the musical and practical dimensions of the music director role, but also of fulfilling its spiritual ends most effectively.

Faith Tweets: Ambient Religious Communication and Microblogging Rituals

Dunfermline Abbey originated from a priory church at Dunfermline, Scotland, was founded by Queen Margaret of Scotland in 1070. The abbey became a burial place of Queen Margaret, who was canonized in 1249, and other members of the royal family. However, it is difficult to identify the medieval liturgical space of Dunfermline, because of the destruction of large parts of the church at the abbey during the Reformation and later on, and the building of the new parish church on the site of the medieval choir and transept in the early nineteenth century. Therefore, this article aims to recreate the development of the Dunfermline liturgical space from the beginning of King David’s reign in 1124 to the translation of St. Margaret’s remains in 1180, and discuss the significance the transformation in devotional space in relation to the focus of devotional activities during the same period of time.

The speech closed interior spaces are distinguished from other closed interior spaces by almost the usual fixed positions of both the sound source and the listener (Ex; students classroom, conference room, lecture hall, etc). Thus, it is possible to acoustically help both the speaker and the listener through the usage of proper acoustic interior design for the space. The main acoustic defect which the listener in the speech closed interior space always complain of is that speech intelligibility is particularly poor. This is normally due to the noise, the uncontrolled sound direction and the reverberation time which is too long . As a result of factors these factors the speech intelligibility cannot often be met by all the seats. Also, in speech closed interior spaces, although the areas of acoustical treatment (reflective, absorptive and diffusive) were adequate, they might not be placed correctly in the ceiling, walls and floor and so not effective to reduce noise, control sound direction and addressing other acoustical issues arising in the interior space. Hence, speech closed spaces should be Architecturally designed according to the latest knowledge concerning the acoustical requirements. In the case of renovations, for various reasons, the acoustics of speech closed interior spaces often do not fulfill the acoustical requirements. A listener cannot be affected and convinced efficiently by what the speaker says if he/ she cannot hear the speaker clearly. So, the relationship between the speaker and the listener will be damaged. Acoustic interior design has a role concerning the proper management of such problem to improve such closed spaces. In this paper, to address this defect to improve intelligibility in speech closed interior spaces, the author considered new appropriate optimum acoustic interior design solution for the ceiling, walls and floor. Problem:- Difficult speech communication is considered a common issue in many speech closed spaces such as conference rooms, lecture halls, student’s class rooms, etc. Numerous listeners are suffering from poor speech intelligibility .The listener cannot be affected and convinced efficiently by what the speaker says if he cannot hear the speaker clearly, thus, the relationship between the speaker and the listener will be damaged, also The areas of some acoustical treatments using reflective, absorptive and diffusive materials to reinforce sound and decrease noise may not be placed correctly on the ceiling, walls and floor of the speech closed interior space and so they are not effective. Objective : introduce an optimum acoustic interior design solution to improve speech intelligibility for speech closed spaces leading to a uniformly diffused strong sound field, free of any defects, arriving to all listeners, and thus a good acoustical environment and present a sustainable strategies to obtain efficient use of energy and efficient use of materials.

Communicating the Garífuna Culture in Contemporary Church Music Francisca Norales (bio) Introduction The manner in which a person views the universe originates from her/his culture. If someone were asked of the predominant element found in every culture that has for centuries given people their perspective of the universe, certainly, the answer would be, Religion! The responsibility of generating and preserving the elements of one’s perspective of the universe has rested with religious institutions such as Methodist, Protestant, or Roman Catholic churches or spiritual leaders such as the Buddha. Whether the element is developed through the teaching of the Holy Bible, Catechism, Vedas, or Koran, people in the universe, including the Garífuna-speaking people of Central America, have always felt the need to seek outside themselves the values and guidance by which they live their lives. Music, one of the components for becoming a recipient of the title “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” for outstanding cultural spaces or forms of expression by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is an integral part of the lives of Garínagu (as they call themselves) in Belize. This paper explores the Garífuna songs that are sung in contemporary worship services in the Roman Catholic Church. It also forms the basis for other denominations to creatively seek viable ways of incorporating Garífuna music and culture into worship services. [End Page 74] A Description of Belize Belize, one of the Central American countries in which Garífuna is spoken, was one of nineteen countries to receive the outstanding title “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.” Belize, formerly known as British Honduras, an independent nation since 1981, lies on the eastern coast of Central America. It shares borders on the north and northwest with Mexico and on the west and south with Guatemala and it is washed along the entire eastern coast by the Caribbean Sea. Belize’s population consists of approximately 250,000 multiethnic people: Garífuna (African descent), Creole (African descent), Mestizo (Spanish-Maya origin), people of Spanish and East Indian descent, a small Mennonite community of European descent, Chinese, Arabs, and other ethnic groups.1 A Brief History of the Garífuna-Speaking Culture According to Crawford, the Garífuna-speaking people of Belize form a biological and cultural amalgam of Arawak and Carib Indians with West African slaves.2 Taylor states that the African component was added to the original Amerindian population of St. Vincent from 1517 to 1646 in the form of runaway slaves from the European-held islands.3 He further states that there they adopted the language spoken in St. Vincent and, to a considerable extent, the culture. Between 1661 and 1668, St. Vincent was described as having all Indians and some Negroes from the loss of two Spanish ships in 1635. Gonzalez states that by 1796, the Black Caribs were completely defeated by the English and were forced to surrender unconditionally.4 The English, fearful of the demonstrated power of some five thousand Caribs, removed them from the island of St. Vincent. Therefore, in 1797 the Black Caribs were landed on the island of Roatán. They did not remain long in Roatán, and at the invitation of the Spanish governor, they spread along the coast east and west of Trujillo, Honduras. Many got involved in the wars between the royalist and republican forces. When the royalist forces eventually lost, some of the Caribs who had served with them were forced to flee to other Central American countries. By 1802, the Garífuna-speaking people, Garínagu (as they call themselves), were settled in Dangriga and in the Toledo district of Belize. Communication, Culture, and Language According to Hernandez, the word “culture” may be defined in many ways,5 but anthropologists agree that the word refers to the complex processes of human social interaction and symbolic communication. It is a dynamic, [End Page 75] creative, and continuous process that includes behaviors, values, and substance learned and shared by people that guides them in their struggle for survival and gives meaning to their lives. Inherent in this definition of culture is the idea...

In recent years, multi-functional lecture halls have developed rapidly and become a symbol of contemporary public spaces and places. This kind of spatial facility that brings together the advantages of land intensiveness and multi-functional integration also faces feedback such as poor acoustic effects. However, current research rarely involves the architectural design perspective, which is actually the root consideration of this problem; that is, how to set up corresponding spatial layout measures to optimize acoustic performance in a relatively economical and simple way. This study uses the academic lecture hall of the School of Architecture and Planning of Yunnan University as a case to try to solve these problems. The research is based on holistic considerations, starting from site selection, architectural design, aesthetic considerations, and environmental noise assessment, and combining simulation results with actual measurement results. Using a prediction–comparison–verification method, key acoustic parameters such as speech intelligibility, loudness, and reverberation time were calculated and evaluated to understand the acoustic design problems of the hall. The study found that the out-of-control reverberation time was the main cause of poor acoustic feedback, and based on this, optimization and transformation were carried out from an architectural perspective. Finally, a renovation suggestion was made that the application of sound-absorbing materials on the rear wall can achieve better acoustic effects inside the hall. Among the space combination methods, the combination of “rear wall, central ceiling, and front ceiling” has the best effect. Practical insights are provided for improving the acoustic performance of the multi-functional lecture halls while taking into account the acoustic design and feasible requirements.