The sound of Hagia Sophia was recreated recently by two scholars from California’s Stanford University by simply popping a balloon.
Bissera Pentcheva, a professor of art history, has published a book on the subject titled “Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium.”
Pentcheva’s work is focused on the appreciation of medieval art and architecture, and to truly understand the mystical transcendence worshippers must have felt when attending a service in the great cathedral, she made it her mission to recreate the sound of a 13th-century liturgy there.
Jonathan Abel is a consulting professor at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford. Abel’s specialties lie in audio mapping and acoustics, and it was a specific process he perfected, called “convolution,” which made the recreation of this historic sound possible.
It was this that allowed the professors to finally understand the workings behind the stellar acoustics of the famous Cathedral, and recreate these sonic masterpieces to share with the world.