Virtual restoration of the sound of the Hispanic Rite

Abstract

The virtual acoustic reality techniques are powerful tools for the recovery of acoustical heritage of historic buildings. Through the acoustic modeling and auralization techniques it´s possible to reconstruct the sound of disappeared buildings or the ones with significant modifications over the years, knowing the original geometry and the acoustic characteristics of their surfaces. This paper shows the results of a research project whose goal is the virtual recovery of the sound of the Hispanic Rite, the rite celebrated by Christians of the Iberian Peninsula before the imposition of the Roman Rite in the mid-eleventh century. For this purpose, acoustic models of a series of Pre-Romanesque churches were made. These acoustic models represent the churches in their original state, following the reconstruction hypothesis proposed by leading researchers in medieval liturgical archeology. Multichannel anechoic recordings of several pieces of the music of the Hispanic Rite have been carried out using a spherical array composed of 31 microphones. Finally, static and dynamic auralizations have been developed, involving the different liturgical configurations which were usual in this rite.