The National Museum of Serbia has the exceptional honor and pleasure to invite you to the lecture “The Pursuit of Heights: Romanesque Architecture, Aquitanian Notation, and the Office of Sainte-Foy at Conques” by Prof. Dr. Bissera V. Pentcheva (Stanford University) that will be given on Saturday, 9 May, at 6 pm. The lecture will be delivered in English. Entrance is free, registration is not required.

With rare exceptions, medieval art is predominantly studied as a visual medium and explored through texts even though its material images were originally designed to be experienced in the temporal flow of sound as chant, recitation, and prayer. My forthcoming book Seeing through Chant: Art and Music at Sainte-Foy in Conques (Pennsylvania State University Pres, 2027) explores this interaction across media. In this paper, I will trace the manifestation of the pursuit of heights in the architecture, sculpture, and music. I will argue that audiovision (describing the phenomenon of simultaneous seeing and hearing) activates a series of images in the imagination of the participants which layer over the architectural space and the material objects. These “icons of sound” lack material density and invite us to consider the role of chant in shaping the experience of the metaphysical aniconically.

Bio
Bissera V. Pentcheva is the Victoria and Roger Sant professor of Art at Stanford University. Her innovative work focuses on the interaction of art, architecture, and music in medieval art. She has published three books with Pennsylvania State University

Press: Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium, 2006 (received the Nicholas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy of America, 2010), The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium, 2010, and Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space and Spirit in Byzantium, 2017 (received the 2018 American Academy of Religion Award in excellence in historical studies). She has edited two volumes: Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics, and Ritual, Ashgate 2018 and Icons of Sound: Architecture, Music and Imagination in Medieval Art, Routledge, Routledge 2020.

Image: Sainte-Foy at Conques, second half of the 11th cent., view up towards the dome. Photo: Bissera V. Pentcheva