Archaeoacoustic Examination of Lazarica Church

Abstract

The acoustic analysis provides additional information on building tradition and related indoor practice that includes sound, thus deepening our understanding of architectural heritage. In this paper, the sound field of the Orthodox medieval church Lazarica (Kruševac city, Serbia) is examined. Lazarica is a representative of Morava architectural style, developed in the final period of the Serbian medieval state, when also the chanting art thrived, proving the importance of the aural environment in Serbian churches. The church plan is a combination of a traditional inscribed cross and a triconch. After the in situ measurement of acoustic impulse response using EASERA software, we built a computer model in the acoustic simulation software EASE and calibrated it accordingly. Following the parameters (reverberation time (T30), early decay time (EDT) and speech transmission index (STI)), we examined the acoustic effect of the space occupancy, central dome and the iconostasis. In all the cases, no significant deviation between T30 and EDT parameter was observed, which indicates uniform sound energy decay. Closing the dome with a flat ceiling did not show any significant impact on T30, but it lowered speech intelligibility. The height of iconostasis showed no significant influence on the acoustics of Lazarica church.

The Proscenium of Opera Houses as a Disappeared Intangible Heritage: A Virtual Reconstruction of the 1840s Original Design of the Alighieri Theatre in Ravenna

“…The reliability of the method used in the present study may be evaluated through the point of view of the so-called archeo-acoustics. A taxonomy of the procedures used in the previous studies [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] is shown in Table 2. Table 2.…”

“…Lazarica Church [40] Impulse response measurement Calibrated model using on-site measurement results.…”

Review of Acoustic Sources Alternatives to a Dodecahedron Speaker

“…In the study, it was stated "a directional sound source might be a better approximation than an omnidirectional sound source for the purpose of the present research". The same approach was followed by Brezina [129] for the measurement of intelligibility and clarity of speech in Romanesque churches and by Dordevic et al [132] for an Orthodox church.…”

Historically Based Room Acoustic Analysis and Auralization of a Church in the 1470s

“…Since UNESCO's adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage [2] in 2003, the acoustics and acoustical experiences of churches have been established as an important area of research. The interaction between ritualistic and cultural expressions in churches and their acoustics have been the topic of several research projects [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. The comprehensive review article on church acoustics by Girón et al [11] discusses the efforts of several research teams who have acoustically characterized a large number of churches across the world and, specifically, Europe.…”