RoS Soundscape - Roberto Cipollina - From Kassia. The Five Stringed Lute and Fivefold Lamp

Sound environment for Economic Downturn #2 of2 by Robin Okeyo Mbera

Divided into six parts, the piece is built, in Kassia’s text, around five figures of martyrs, each placed at the center of a section that takes on their distinctive traits.

It unfolds as an essential sound space—almost bare and outside of time—where the voice guides the listening experience. Around it, bells and electronic effects alternate between supporting and contrasting the voice, outlining a rarefied perceptual landscape, inhabitable in its immersivity.

In moments of greater intensity, vocal organa emerges: voices that imitate, accompany, and emphasize passages of the text, amplifying its expressive tension. The main voice, always at the center of the composition, acts as a pivot; the others are positioned in the surrounding sound space.

Added to these are moving whispers, creating a dimension of intimacy and proximity. The six sections converge towards a climax in the penultimate part, before dissolving into the conclusion, where only the voice remains, followed by distant bells. To close, an isolated male echo amplifies the sense of distance and absence.

THE MUSICAL PROJECT 

Created and coordinated by Alessandra Montali, the project involved twelve musicians, composers, sound designers, and VR developers from Italy, Poland, Greece, and Kenya. Over two years, the musical work developed through four key phases.

Mapping and recording of the architectural space  

To understand and document the acoustic characteristics of the Bazeos Tower, tests were conducted using acoustic impulses generated by balloon bursts in various rooms of the building. The recordings were made using high-resolution ambisonics technology, capable of capturing sound in a three-dimensional format faithful to the real environment. These recordings were then processed to obtain a high-quality acoustic dataset, which formed the basis for the subsequent immersive reconstruction of the spaces.

Live recordings of musical compositions 

Three original pieces were selected following a historical-musicological research process aimed at identifying some of the earliest poetic and musical sources from the Greco-Byzantine area. The selection included:
The tradition of sung oral poetry dates back to the archaic period, with texts by Sappho (7th–6th century BC) reinterpreted in the composition Saffo by contemporary composer Dimitris Papadimitriou.
The sacred Orthodox tradition, with particular reference to a Byzantine Kyrie eleison (9th–10th century AD).
The earliest known musical work in Western history by a female composer, Kassia—abbess, composer, and Byzantine poet of the 9th century AD—with the composition The Five-stringed Lute.

The choice of musical pieces deliberately highlighted two prominent female figures who played a fundamental role in the transmission of poetic and musical culture in the West.

Recordings of these three musical works were made inside three different rooms of the Bazeos Tower in order to capture their authenticity and resonance within the chosen historical and spatial context.

Post-production, auralization, and studio recordings

Through convolution and auralization processes, the recordings made it possible to faithfully simulate the sound propagation and characteristic reflections of the original space within the virtual environment.
In this way, vocal studio recordings and libraries of ancient instruments (Greek and African) are reproduced as if they were actually immersed in the acoustics of the building, allowing visitors to experience the sound environment just as it would occur in the real physical space.
This post-production phase, carried out through the mapping and virtualization of architectural spaces led by José Revez, made it possible to digitally reconstruct the acoustics of the historical spaces and integrate the live performances. 

Creation of Four Soundscape Compositions for the Exhibition TMMSAC© At Naxos

The exhibition Resonances of Stones – TMMSAC© At Naxos: Immersive Hybrid Exhibition was born from the design synergy between the artistic-musical project Resonances of Stones and African collector Mutuma Marangu. Thanks to the crucial contribution of Aleksandra Łukaszewicz, who made the development of this collaboration possible, and to the joint work of the curatorial team—Bogna J. Gladden-Obidzińska, Aleksandra Łukaszewicz, and Alessandra Montali—a Virtual and Physical Tour was conceived, in which a selection of four works from Marangu’s collection enters into dialogue with the exhibition space and the immersive VR experience.

The four soundscape compositions, each inspired by one of the sculptures, are integrated into both the physical and the virtual exhibitions, ensuring experiential continuity between the two levels and amplifying the transcultural and contemporary value of the exhibition. The creation of the four soundscape compositions is based on the integration of traditional Greek and African instruments, environmental sounds from Naxos and Nairobi, and references to the compositions recorded in the Bazeos Tower. This process represents not only a dialogue between cultures, but a true sonic and cultural encounter, capable of embodying reciprocal appreciation, the search for common roots, and the creation of an innovative and multilayered musical language.