The effect of mural paintings on Romanesque Church acoustics
Situated at the north-west of Catalonia, and surrounded by the high Pyrénées, la Vall de Boí has at least one Romanesque church in each of its villages, including mural and fresco paintings inside most of them. Even though there are more than 500 churches that remain intact in all Catalonia, there are just over 50 preserved paintings. La Vall de Boí, where most of these paintings are, was declared UNESCO World Heritage in 2000.
One of the most emblematic painting of the Valley is the Pantocrator found at Sant Climent de Taüll, which is considered one of the most important Romanesque paintings of the world. However, only a small part of the church paintings is preserved, whereas at the time of its construction, in 1123, all the walls were covered.
This project aimed to recreate the acoustics of the church when it was completely covered with paintings. On it, an acoustic survey of the church was done in order to create an accurate ODEON model, and change the properties of the walls to simulate paintings instead of the actual stones. The resulting impulse responses, which were giving a +1 second T30 values, were used later to create some auralisation examples with both models.
Overall, the archived results of the auralisations, and also the acoustics comparison were satisfactory. As expected, the acoustics of the church were different when all its walls were covered with fresco paintings.
According to the models, the T30 values would be 1.3 seconds longer than they actually are in the current state of the church, but with a similar timbre. Consequently, the intelligibility and the clarity of the space would be affected by this reverb time increment, having lower D50 and C80 values. However, the auralisations demonstrate that even these low values, the speech can be understandable from every receiver position, and the singing voice sounds natural and warm with this acoustic changes.
Special thanks Playmodes, to the staff of the Centre del Romànic de la Vall de Boí, who made the acoustic survey possible and very easy running. Also for the acoustic survey: thanks to Pere Casulleras for his help, and Gerard Font, from Catalunya Ràdio , for the help and the ambisonics equipment provided.
One of the most emblematic painting of the Valley is the Pantocrator found at Sant Climent de Taüll, which is considered one of the most important Romanesque paintings of the world. However, only a small part of the church paintings is preserved, whereas at the time of its construction, in 1123, all the walls were covered.
This project aimed to recreate the acoustics of the church when it was completely covered with paintings. On it, an acoustic survey of the church was done in order to create an accurate ODEON model, and change the properties of the walls to simulate paintings instead of the actual stones. The resulting impulse responses, which were giving a +1 second T30 values, were used later to create some auralisation examples with both models.
Overall, the archived results of the auralisations, and also the acoustics comparison were satisfactory. As expected, the acoustics of the church were different when all its walls were covered with fresco paintings.
According to the models, the T30 values would be 1.3 seconds longer than they actually are in the current state of the church, but with a similar timbre. Consequently, the intelligibility and the clarity of the space would be affected by this reverb time increment, having lower D50 and C80 values. However, the auralisations demonstrate that even these low values, the speech can be understandable from every receiver position, and the singing voice sounds natural and warm with this acoustic changes.
Special thanks Playmodes, to the staff of the Centre del Romànic de la Vall de Boí, who made the acoustic survey possible and very easy running. Also for the acoustic survey: thanks to Pere Casulleras for his help, and Gerard Font, from Catalunya Ràdio , for the help and the ambisonics equipment provided.
|
|