CULT-AURAL · AURAL CULTURE: DECODING THE SACRED SOUNDSCAPES OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2023-07-01 → 2025-07-31
- EU contribution
- €181,153
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
AURAL CULTURE: DECODING THE SACRED SOUNDSCAPES OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE
In medieval Europe, Christian monasteries shaped sacred landscapes not only through architecture and art but also through sound. Bells and other large percussion instruments, such as semantra and matraca, resounded across valleys and mountain slopes, structuring daily rhythms and linking monastic communities with their wider surroundings. These sounds marked the hours of prayer, summoned congregations, and announced significant events. More than functional signals, they carried multiple meanings, blending local traditions with Christian liturgy and fostering an authentic aural culture that influenced how people perceived sacred landscapes. Despite their central role in medieval life, monastic soundscapes have been largely overlooked in scholarship. The CULT-AURAL project broke new ground as the first systematic and comparative study of these sound environments, demonstrating their importance for Europe’s auditory culture. In doing so, the project not only advanced academic understanding but also reached wider audiences by reviving and rethinking the medieval soundscapes through lectures and public engagement activities. CULT-AURAL was conceived as a training-through-research project that opened a new research frontier: medieval aural culture as a driver of cohesion and identity. Using case studies from Catalonia, Norway, and Serbia—three contrasting regions that preserve medieval monastic settings in both Catholic and Orthodox traditions—the project pursued three objectives: (1) to analyze medieval monastic sacred soundscapes through systematic acoustic fieldwork, (2) to explore how sound contributed to local identity and social cohesion, and (3) to examine the role of gender in shaping the experience of monastic soundscapes.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Medieval monasteries shaped sacred landscapes of Europe not only visually, but also aurally, with the sound of large percussion instruments – such as bells, matracas, and semantron. Despite they created an authentic aural culture of medieval Europe, the monastic soundscapes remain unexplored. The CULT-AURAL project is interdisciplinary, aiming to explore a novel area of research - the medieval aural culture that infused monastic landscapes, and its role in identity creation. Were the acoustic quality of sacred soundscapes and large percussion instruments relevant for medieval communities? What was the spatial imprint of monasteries’ aural communication? Did male and female monasteries have similar aural imprints in the soundscape? To answer these questions, I will receive training on archaeoacoustic methodology at one of the largest historic soundscape research hubs located at the University of Barcelona, and transversally undertake six case studies in three contrasting regions of Europe – Catalonia, Norway, and Serbia, including male and female monasteries that significantly retained the medieval setting. I will test and document the acoustic properties of soundscapes and large percussion instruments based on the onsite acoustic measurements, explore the audibility of the instruments via the acoustic models, and examine the role of gender through a comparative analysis. I will participate in several research groups for skills and knowledge transfer. Scientific publications for experts and talks for lecturers and students will efficiently disseminate the project’s results. At the secondment (Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo) I will be trained how to communicate research results to the wide public via multisensory exhibitions, which will also add significant impact to the fellowship. Besides at the new medieval exhibition in Oslo, the results will also be communicated through social networks and public interactive talks in all three countries.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101064323
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5075846b6&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e521c09a85&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union