Sacred Number

Sounds from the Deep

The continuity of subterranean spaces such as caves into burial mounds, dolmen chambers, and the spaces within temples, churches, cathedrals and crypts, involves more than a structural similarity. All these spaces have the effect of creating sound spaces, an acoustic experience.

Acoustic archaeology is a recent development, popularised by Paul Deveraux a British artiquarian and “ley line hunter”. His book, Stone Age Soundtracks, follows the continuity of acoustics within ancient sacred spaces. This implies that sound as well as proportion should be registered when intepreting such spaces.

Going back to the Stone Age, spanning a period as broad as 30000 to 8000 BC, Iegor Reznikoff with others have found a correlation between resonant acoustics within cave systems and cave paintings at those specific points. Similar findings were made beneath paintings on cliff faces, and there is a surviving tradition in Australia of aboriginal communities performing music and reciting stories below aboriginal art in a multi-media tradition. This indicates that stone paintings were intended in some cases to be supplemented with interpretive elements and were incomplete without the traditional knowledge that accompanied them. That a tradition was in existence is clear from the fact that painting styles often remained constant over thousands of years, as was the case with Egyptian sacred painting.

Work by others within dolmen has identified resonances within a limited range, corresponding with the male voice, that results from dimensions that encouraged a given length of standing wave. Such resonance amplifies a given frequency and can also give the impression of sound arising from out of the space as if independent of the original source.

The acoustic of Thoronet (Chapter 8 of Sacred Number) will have a very deep resonance spread over a range of infra-sound and hence over the higher frequencies octaves above it. Rather than amplication this spread spectrum of receptivity probably does provide high fidelity of the full range of notes as Larcher asserts. The exciting acoustics of the echo chamber is contained therefore as is found in the effects developed in older recording studios.

In terms of acoustic science Thoronet resembles the equal tempered scale in which all notes are given equality of separation, whilst the monks, using the human voice, were employing pure numerical intervals within their strict Gregorian form now called Cistercian chant. In “Earth to the Unknown Power” David Hykes sent the live sound of the concert, digitally encoded, to Le Thoronet Abbey over ISDN telephone lines, played back live through a sound system in the extraordinary Abbey acoustics, then re-encoded and sent back to The Kitchen in New York, placing the audience within the ‘Virtual Abbey.’

The Golden Mean ratio of 1.618 includes all the notes up to 8/5 of 1.6, a note that is just a semitone of 16/15 above the fifth of 3/2. 8/5 is the characteristic ratio between the Earth year of 365 days and the Venus synodic period. The creation of a space such a Thoronet represents the continuity of what was prehistoric experimentation, initially noting sensational effects but maturing with the numerical sciences into a space modelled on cosmic proportions in order to model the temple to the planets and the Sun. This idea bridges gap between theory and practice perhaps?

The style of Gregorian chanting was probably similar to how Norse epics were told. The roots of traditions need to be sought since the pagan-christian divide occurred over hundreds of years, years in which both traditions were borrowing each others clothes so that the Norse became Christians as the Romans had, influencing the new amalgum and injecting new components. It is only church history that need clear cut absolutes, real cultures being far more permissive if not promiscous.

Another enigma might be solved once acoustics is entertained as a core numerical science within the traditional art called “music”. In chapter 3 (now in Metrology Appendix 2), I showed that the ancient measures implicitly embody a network of musical intervals. The use for such a network is only weakly explained until the use of measures to create acoustic resonances is considered.

The speed of sound in air means that there is an inverse relationship between frequency and the wavelength of that frequency. For this reason organ pipes are of different lengths according to frequency and stone age flutes have been found in which the location of note-holes would have corresponded with lengths along the pipe made of, for example, bone. The size of a resonant cavity therefore determines the resonant frequency and it is ancient measures that would have been used to construct acoustic spaces with a resonant character.

If a chamber build in English feet resonates in B, then rebuilding it using the same number of Assyrian feet would mean it resonated at C since Assyrian feet are 9/10 feet long and the chamber would be smaller with a higher resonance.

There is an interesting type of structure that was built identically using different types of foot – The Scottish Brochs.