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Sheds new light on the concept of "soundscapes", enriching our understanding of the functions of music and sound in medieval and early modern cultures.
Scholarly interest in the idea of the "soundscape" has grown steadily in recent years, particularly in relation to the ways in which music and sound shaped communities, articulated social hierarchies, and marked significant events. However, while detailed studies have illuminated the sonic life of individual medieval and early modern cities, broader approaches to historical sensory experience have remained comparatively underexplored. This volume addresses that gap by asking how the sensory phenomena of the past might be recovered and understood. Moving beyond a primary focus on urban spaces and formal musical practice, it places sensory reality at its centre, across both urban and rural contexts, and examines the emotional and physical effects that sound and music exerted on participants and listeners alike.
Organised into three thematic sections - sacred soundscapes; sound, identity, and belonging; and processional soundscapes - this book reconsiders the concept of the "soundscape" across the countries of medieval western Europe. It explores rural environments and liturgical atmospheres, sounds during processions and rituals, the sensory dimensions of pilgrimages and sea journeys, and the relationship between sound and collective identity. Drawing on previously unexamined archival sources, it brings medieval and early modern acoustic worlds vividly to life, highlighting diverse musical practices and forms of musicking across a variety of settings, from bell-ringing in medieval Avignon to the progresses of Henry VIII of England.
This volume is open access with funding provided by the Universidad de Granada and the European Research Council ERC-2021-ADG no.101054069.
Scholarly interest in the idea of the "soundscape" has grown steadily in recent years, particularly in relation to the ways in which music and sound shaped communities, articulated social hierarchies, and marked significant events. However, while detailed studies have illuminated the sonic life of individual medieval and early modern cities, broader approaches to historical sensory experience have remained comparatively underexplored. This volume addresses that gap by asking how the sensory phenomena of the past might be recovered and understood. Moving beyond a primary focus on urban spaces and formal musical practice, it places sensory reality at its centre, across both urban and rural contexts, and examines the emotional and physical effects that sound and music exerted on participants and listeners alike.
Organised into three thematic sections - sacred soundscapes; sound, identity, and belonging; and processional soundscapes - this book reconsiders the concept of the "soundscape" across the countries of medieval western Europe. It explores rural environments and liturgical atmospheres, sounds during processions and rituals, the sensory dimensions of pilgrimages and sea journeys, and the relationship between sound and collective identity. Drawing on previously unexamined archival sources, it brings medieval and early modern acoustic worlds vividly to life, highlighting diverse musical practices and forms of musicking across a variety of settings, from bell-ringing in medieval Avignon to the progresses of Henry VIII of England.
This volume is open access with funding provided by the Universidad de Granada and the European Research Council ERC-2021-ADG no.101054069.
Price: $36.95
Pages: 288
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: Boydell Press
Publication Date:
29 September 2026
Trim Size: 9.21 X 6.14 in
ISBN: 9781837655106
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
MUSIC / History & Criticism, Theory of music and musicology, RELIGION / History, Prayers and liturgical material, European history: medieval period, middle ages
Introduction
Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita
I. Sacred Soundscapes
1. Sounding Penance in the Motet Fusa cum silencio/Labem lavat/Manere: Tears of Contrition, Priestly Reform and St John the Evangelist
Catherine Saucier
2. An Absence That Speaks: The Birth of Modern Silence
Sergi Zauner Espinosa
3. Children's Songs in the Streets of a Confessionally Divided City: Kurrende Singing in Augsburg Before 1550
Moritz Kelber
4. Ceremony and Reform: Cardinal Giannettino Doria's Contribution to Palermo's Soundscape
Ilaria Grippaudo
5. Sound and Music in the Festivities Held in Portugal for the Canonisation of St Ignatius and St Francis Xavier (1622): A Preliminary Survey
Alberto Medina de Seiça
II. Sound, Identity and Belonging
6. Sacred Soundscapes of the Medieval World: The Role of Percussion Instruments in Landscape Sacralisation
Zorana Đorđević, Joshua Kumbani and Lidia Álvarez-Morales
7. Listening for Rural England in Manuscripts and Fields: The Village of Laxton, 1635-68
Chantal Berry
8. Sounding Religion and Ceremony in the 'isle sonnante': Bells and Bell Ringers in and Around Renaissance Avignon (c.1500-c.1630)
Alexander Robinson
9. Thunder, Songs and Whistles: Sonic Agency and Ad Hoc Communities of Early Modern Pilgrimage
Tin Cugelj
10. Sensorial Cartography of Francisco Guerrero's El viage de Hierusalem (Seville, 1592)
Juan Ruiz Jiménez
11. Henry VIII's Royal Progresses and the Liturgical Calendar
Magnus Williamson
III. Processional Soundscapes
12. The Organisation and Sonic Articulation of pro pluvia Processions in Early Modern Valencia and Barcelona
Francesc Orts-Ruiz, Chiara Mazzoletti and Lola Peña-Fernández
13. Mapping the Trajectories of pro pluvia Processions and Their Sonic Identities in Early Modern Barcelona and Tarragona
Sergi González González and Helen Herbert
14. 'Through penance, we weep for our sins': Moving Emotions in the Rogative Procession's Iberian Soundspace
Pablo Acosta-García, Antonio Arnieri and Andrea Gutiérrez Espínola
15. Collective Devotional Practice: Affective Discourses in the Performance of Funerary and Rogative Processions c.1500
Tess Knighton
16. Negotiating Sound and Space in Early Modern Augsburg: Gregor Aichinger's Solennia (1606) for the Confraternity of Corpus Christi
Alexander J. Fisher
Bibliography
Index
Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita
I. Sacred Soundscapes
1. Sounding Penance in the Motet Fusa cum silencio/Labem lavat/Manere: Tears of Contrition, Priestly Reform and St John the Evangelist
Catherine Saucier
2. An Absence That Speaks: The Birth of Modern Silence
Sergi Zauner Espinosa
3. Children's Songs in the Streets of a Confessionally Divided City: Kurrende Singing in Augsburg Before 1550
Moritz Kelber
4. Ceremony and Reform: Cardinal Giannettino Doria's Contribution to Palermo's Soundscape
Ilaria Grippaudo
5. Sound and Music in the Festivities Held in Portugal for the Canonisation of St Ignatius and St Francis Xavier (1622): A Preliminary Survey
Alberto Medina de Seiça
II. Sound, Identity and Belonging
6. Sacred Soundscapes of the Medieval World: The Role of Percussion Instruments in Landscape Sacralisation
Zorana Đorđević, Joshua Kumbani and Lidia Álvarez-Morales
7. Listening for Rural England in Manuscripts and Fields: The Village of Laxton, 1635-68
Chantal Berry
8. Sounding Religion and Ceremony in the 'isle sonnante': Bells and Bell Ringers in and Around Renaissance Avignon (c.1500-c.1630)
Alexander Robinson
9. Thunder, Songs and Whistles: Sonic Agency and Ad Hoc Communities of Early Modern Pilgrimage
Tin Cugelj
10. Sensorial Cartography of Francisco Guerrero's El viage de Hierusalem (Seville, 1592)
Juan Ruiz Jiménez
11. Henry VIII's Royal Progresses and the Liturgical Calendar
Magnus Williamson
III. Processional Soundscapes
12. The Organisation and Sonic Articulation of pro pluvia Processions in Early Modern Valencia and Barcelona
Francesc Orts-Ruiz, Chiara Mazzoletti and Lola Peña-Fernández
13. Mapping the Trajectories of pro pluvia Processions and Their Sonic Identities in Early Modern Barcelona and Tarragona
Sergi González González and Helen Herbert
14. 'Through penance, we weep for our sins': Moving Emotions in the Rogative Procession's Iberian Soundspace
Pablo Acosta-García, Antonio Arnieri and Andrea Gutiérrez Espínola
15. Collective Devotional Practice: Affective Discourses in the Performance of Funerary and Rogative Processions c.1500
Tess Knighton
16. Negotiating Sound and Space in Early Modern Augsburg: Gregor Aichinger's Solennia (1606) for the Confraternity of Corpus Christi
Alexander J. Fisher
Bibliography
Index