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148th ASA Meeting, San Diego, CA


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Acoustics at the Shrine of St. Werburgh

David Lubman - dlubman@ix.netcom.com
Acoustical Consultant
14301 Middletown Lane Westminster, CA 92683

Popular version of paper 2aAA3
Presented Tuesday morning, November 16, 2004
148th ASA Meeting, San Diego, CA

England's Chester Cathedral (Anglican) houses a shrine to its patron saint, St. Werburgh, a 7th c. Saxon princess of Mercia who became a nun and abbess.

Figure 1: The Saint

Figure 2: The Shrine

The original shrine may date from as early as the 9th c. It was a place of pilgrimage and reported miracles. It is believed that pilgrims uttered petitions to the saint at the shrine. The present shrine contains six recesses where kneeling pilgrims inserted their heads while speaking their petitions.


Figure 3: Detail of Recess

The sensory experience of petitioning pilgrims surely comprised emotionally powerful theater. Can the sensory acoustical experiences of medieval pilgrims at this shrine be reproduced for contemporary listeners? To find out, binaural recordings were made of utterances spoken into a recess.


Figure 4: Author wearing binaural microphone, kneeling at
Shrine in preparation for digital recording

Compare sounds heard with head in/out of a recess A gross loudness increase occurs when the talker's head is in a recess. This is easily heard by listening to sound files on a computer loudspeaker. More subtle three-dimensional sonic effects can be heard best by listening to binaural sound files at adequate volume with high quality stereophonic headphones. These may be clues to a deeper level of emotional experience.

The investigator twice reads portions of a prayer to St. Werburgh. In sound file 1 the talker's head is outside of the recess. In sound file 2 the talker's head is fully in the recess. The recording gain is unchanged. The talker has endeavored to use the same voice effort.

Analyses of the full-length binaural recordings show that vocalizations made with the talker's head in a recess are strongly reinforced and distorted by resonances (the strongest is 25.1 dB @ 125 Hz.) This can be seen in Tables I and II and in the graph below.

Table I: Overall enhancement of voice in recess

Weighting
Speech Level Enhancement
Speech Level Enhancement
15.5 dB
A-Weighted
10.4 dB (doubling of loudness)

Table II: Insertion gain in several 1/3 octave bands

1/3 Octave Band Frequency [Hz]
Max Insertion Gain [dB]
125
25.1
400
17.8
2000
17.2
6300
18.4

 

Interpretation: An Intimate Encounter with a Saint The total sonic effect suggests that petitioners may have experienced intimate encounters with the saint, whose spirit they believed was accessible to at the shrine. Supporting observations and speculations are listed below.

  • With one's head in a recess, visual stimulation is diminished. The auditory sense is thus heightened and the auditory experience becomes central.
  • With one's head in a recess, other cathedral sounds are attenuated. Petitioners are less aware of other voices. The spoken communication is private.
  • Doubled loudness with normal voice effort prompts petitioners to reduce their vocal effort ("Lombard effect"), thus contributing to a sense of intimate communication with the saint.
  • An auditory percept of "proximity" also contributes to a sense of intimacy. (Can you sense this intimacy by headphone listening?)
  • Frequency distortion produced is by resonances. This could plausibly contribute to petitioner's sense of communicating with another world.

Assuming that the acoustical features demonstrated here were extant in medieval times, as seems likely, their impact on the petitioner's experience was surely dramatic. Sonic aspects of the drama must have been central, and would seem to have reinforced the purpose of petition and pilgrimage.

Does the shrine comprise a form of pre-Reformation theater?I suggest that the shrine comprises a forgotten or previously unknown form of religious theater-for-one. The sound experience is important in other forms of theater, but is more important here because the visual sense is largely displaced.

Was the acoustical design intentional or accidental? I do not know the designers' intention. It is possible that historical research can provide answers or at least illumination. I find it entirely plausible that the sonic effects of recesses were found accidentally and later used intentionally.

Is this acoustical design idea pertinent in the modern world? After the English Reformation, Anglicans apparently ceased (but did not prohibit) the petitioning of saints. The author understands that Roman and Eastern-Rite catholic churches continue the practice of petitioning saints at sacred shrines. (Please contact the author if his lay interpretation of these matters needs refinement.) But with or without ecclesiastical sanction, there is no doubt that the practice of pilgrimage to religious shrines remains powerfully extant both inside and outside of the Christian world.

Application: Virtual reality experience recreates history Recordings such as these can help to enliven and deepen the study of history by providing an authentic sensory experience. Sensory experience is another way of knowing. Sensory archaeology is a step toward recreating history experientially.

This auditory experience for modern listeners can be improved. By capturing the impulse response of a recess with a talker's head in it, an auditory virtual reality can be created.

With an auditory virtual reality experience, persons located anywhere in the world can speak into a microphone and instantly hear their voices amplified and resonated almost exactly as did ancient pilgrims at the shrine.

Students of medieval history, theology, drama, and psychology, and museum goers can thus be drawn closer to the medieval experience.

It seems possible to add olfactory sensation as well. Imagine adding to the auditory experience the mingled odors of incense and candle wax.

Who were the designers? The creators of this shrine are lost to history. But we can admire and celebrate their acoustical engineering achievements of the medieval era. What directions do you suppose the designers were given by the monasteries? Imagine the response if the same challenge were given to a contemporary sound designer.

This finding is another in a growing list suggesting that ancients in many cultures had more awareness of acoustics and greater acoustical engineering skills than is generally recognized. We are rediscovering lost acoustic technologies.

What other acoustical achievements have been overlooked? Other shrines and portions of churches with similar structures may also merit acoustical investigation. Please contact the author if you have such information.

Web References
Chester cathedral: http://www.chestercathedral.com/ and http://www.bwpics.co.uk/cathedral.html

St. Werburgh: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15588b.htm

Medieval pilgrimage: http://www.intst.net/humanities/vs/pilgrims/motive.htm

Dog Rose Trust: http://www.dogrose-trust.org.uk/

Appendix I: Shrine history The tomb of St. Werburgh had become a place of veneration and miracles by the early 8th c. The tomb was moved to a more conspicuous place in an earlier church in 708 by St. Werburgh's brother Kenred, who had by then become king of Mercia. It is believed that a shrine was created sometime after 708.

It is emphasized that the original design of the shrine is unknown. The present shrine is a 19th c. restoration of a 14th c. enlargement. It is not known if the earlier shrine(s) had recesses. I speculate that the earlier shrine(s) had fewer recesses. Its enlargement would permit simultaneous use by up to six persons

The shrine has undergone at least two physical transformations in its long history. It was enlarged around 1340, apparently because of its popularity as a place of pilgrimage and reported miracles.

The shrine was smashed by 16th c. Henrician reformers and restored in the 19th c. The restoration returned earlier pieces of the shrine which had been used for podium and canopy of the bishop's throne (in the quire) and in the west end of the nave.

Appendix II: Binaural Recording Sixteen-bit binaural recordings were made with a Core Sound binaural microphone, Mic 2496 preamplifier and digitizer, and a Sony TCD 9 recorder.

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