Soundscapes of the Middle Ages

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Clauss
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 447681058

The network addresses soundscapes of medieval societies and the methods of their examination. Sound is mentioned in a great variety of sources which shows how important it is to look at this aspect of the Middle Ages. This is methodologically challenging not only because of the non-permanent nature of any sound. The presentation of sound in our sources is structured by processes of transformation starting at the sound and aiming at different forms of medialisation. These processes can vary in different types of sources and do not always adhere to the boundaries of modern scholarly traditions. This is why it is not sufficient to conceptualize the topic solely in terms of a history of listening. Our network follows a broader approach that includes the input of all the disciplines involved and aims at an understanding how the different modes of medialisation affect representations of sounds and their functions. In order to analyse the great variety of sounds the network will differentiate narrative, normative and plausible sounds. Narrative sounds refer to the function of sounds within a narrative and within the narrated historical reality. With normative sounds medialisations come into focus that want to regulate sound. Here the implementation of the norm has to be analysed as well as its rules. Plausible sounds look at the what sounds have been selected in the transformation process and what socio-cultural assessments are responsible for that. All in all, the history of listening is widened in order to make an interdisciplinary exchange possible. This exchange focusses on two complexes ‘mediality/intermediality’ and ‘acoustic spaces’ – each of which will be treated in a big conference. It is at the dividing line between different medias where the topic sound has its impact, e.g. from text to picture or from notation to architecture. The same can be said for the overlapping areas of different acoustic spaces.Within the network scholars from different fields work together (history, German studies, musicology, art history, byzantine studies, Latin) to find a common approach to this field of research. It wants to find a methodological approach that suits all disciplines and sources and a common wording to describe the acoustic phenomena. Therefore, two conferences and four workshops will be organized and a source collection will be published. It will contain examples for various sources, translate and comment them in order to make the medieval soundscapes accessible for further research.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Gesine Schochow-Mierke