Sounds of Royalty: Accessing Valois Soundscapes (c. 1400) Digitally

Project Information

VALSOUNDS

Grant agreement ID: 101113450

DOI

10.3030/101113450

Project closed

EC signature date 24 July 2023

Start date 1 August 2023

End date 31 January 2025

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 150 000,00

Coordinated by

KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - VALSOUNDS (Sounds of Royalty: Accessing Valois Soundscapes (c. 1400) Digitally)

Reporting period: 2023-08-01 to 2025-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

VALSOUNDS consolidates findings reached in the earlier ERC Advanced Grant-funded MALMECC project, directed by Karl Kügle at the University of Oxford from 2016 to 2022. VALSOUNDS’s mission is to bridge the gap between the past and the present by bringing to life the sounds of a long-forgotten era and making them accessible to heritage sites and the general public through digital means. By digitally reconstructing the acoustic properties of now-lost or substantially changed architectural sites (specifically, the Valois castles, c. 1400), and taking into account features like bois d’Illande wall paneling, VALSOUNDS (1) enhances our understanding of the interaction between music and architecture in late-medieval France; (2) influences historically-informed performance practice by providing historically-informed digital models that simulate the acoustics of spaces where music of the ars nova and ars subtilior, such as the works of Machaut, was in all likelihood consumed, and for which these repertories therefore might have been created; (3) pioneers transdisciplinary research across the fields of acoustics, archaeology, architectural engineering, architectural history, art history, digital humanities, historical musicology, and historically-informed performance practice; (4) demonstrates how to help elevate public awareness and visibility of heritage sites by providing them with a low-cost/low-threshold route for displaying historically-informed simulations of sounds that once filled their spaces. The project explored the sound/space/music connection through collaboration between academics, early-music performers, heritage sites, and digital designers. It impacts heritage consumption by enhancing scholars’ and the public’s awareness of the much-neglected sonic dimension of cultural heritage. Having created a replicable model for future exploration, we hope to change the ways how we interact with the sounds of history.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Work began with creating the VALSOUNDS recording archive (October 2023), when team members from acoustics and historical musicology collaborated with early-music performers from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis to record pertinent sound samples in KU Leuven’s anechoic chamber. The samples replicate key components of the presumptive acoustic spectrum of musical genres and performance options available at the French royal court and its satellites (Anjou, Berry, Burgundy) in the early Valois period. They include plainchant, sacred and secular polyphony (all vocal), as well as instrumental and vocal/instrumental renditions, reflecting the current state of research in historical musicology and performance practice. In parallel to the sound recording sessions, team members from acoustics and architectural history took spatial and acoustic measurements of relevant sections (private chapels and oratories; semi-private and private residential spaces) at the two best-preserved sites remaining of the early Valois period, Germolles (Dept. Saône-et-Loire, FR; October 2023) and Vincennes (Dept. Val-de-Marne, FR; November 2023). A field trip to the Anjou castles at Saumur and Angers (Dept. Maine-et-Loire, FR; February 2024) helped fill in gaps in our understanding of contemporaneous interiors and materials, such as the fabric of the Angers Apocalypse commissioned in Paris between 1377 and 1382. The data obtained formed the basis of new digital reconstructions of the private chapel and oratory, the salle du roi and the chambre du roi of the King’s (and Queen’s) apartment in the Louvre as re-built by King Charles V (r. 1364-80), and of digitally restoring the acoustics of the comparable spaces at Vincennes. Next, the reconstructions were combined with the sound samples relevant for the sacred and secular spaces. This allowed us to reconstruct the soundscapes of the Louvre as well as Vincennes (auralisations).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Work-in-progress reports were presented at the international conference Résonances gothiques (Avignon) in September 2023, and research colloquia in digital humanities at LMU Munich (October 2023) and in musicology at KU Leuven (December 2023). Full results were presented to an international audience by the entire team in a themed session at the 2024 Medieval and Renaissance Music conference in Granada (July 2024). Invited presentations on the project were given in Avignon (Colloque Pétrarque, May 2024), Basel (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, November 2024), and to the Auditory History study group of the International Musicological Society (online, April 2025).
A project website (www.valsounds.eu) was set up and continuously updated since the start of the project. The site will remain active for two more years, allowing us to showcase further results. At the end of January 2027, the website will be archived by KU Leuven and remain accessible indefinitely online. We have published our research data on Zenodo (zenodo.org) where they are available to researchers indefinitely as stipulated by the ERC’s FAIR principles. A suite of open-access publications in leading international journals of the various disciplines involved is in the works (Applied Acoustics, Bulletin monumental, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Early Music).
The original plan to develop a special app to showcase the results of our work in a yet-to-be-defined format ('digitorial') had to be abandoned. However, it emerged early on that existing apps would probably be able to accommodate the content created by VALSOUNDS without requiring any special software development, and at low cost. The FARO ErfgoedApp was identified as suitable; as a publicly funded organisation, FARO allowed VALSOUNDS to use their app without cost.
Preliminary discussions with heritage sites and museums in England, Belgium and France demonstrated the potential of our approach for enhancing awareness of the auditory aspects of cultural heritage as part of a multisensory approach fit for the digital age. The biggest obstacle to implementing our approach on a larger scale is the need for conducting the site- or object-specific research bespoke to a given site or object. Once the research – which would need to be funded by a third party – is in place, the design of app content is straightforward and well within the PR budget of (semi-)commercial institutions (heritage sites, museums).
A demo version showcasing how we envision a low-cast low-threshold dissemination of archaeo-acoustic work is available through our project website (www.valsounds.eu). By using this or similar apps combined with cutting-edge site- or object-specific research, heritage sites around the world will be able to provide up-to-date audio materials on-site as well as online at low cost to everyone in possession of a smartphone or equivalent device, any time, anywhere.