Aural Histories: Coventry 1451-1642
Reconstructing the sonic environment of historic Coventry to understand the city's cultural life between 1451 and 1642.
An architectural, musicological and audio-visual investigation of the great lost medieval Coventry.
The theme takes Henry VI's visit to Coventry in 1451 as its starting point and is led by Prof. Jamie Savan (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire).
Medieval Coventry was a major mercantile and craft centre. It has been much-researched by art historians, archaeologists, and social historians.
However, less attention has been paid to its thriving musical culture, nurtured by religious institutions, civic guilds, and royal patronage.
Aural Histories redresses this, with Newcastle University's Magnus Williamson leading research on the final flowering of Coventry's pre-Reformation musical traditions during the reign of Henry VIII.
Aural Histories focusses on the aural experience of a late-medieval city. In the 1520s, for instance, what kinds of music would the citizens have encountered?
Both the medieval city and its archival documentation survive only in dislocated fragments. Filling the gaps has required imagination, inductive methods, musical experimentation, and collaboration with the city's public and its civic leaders.
The project has used VR architectural and acoustic modelling techniques to rebuild lost and much-changed spaces as virtual research environments. Bespoke recordings of appropriate historical repertoires have fed into VR models. Architectural sites such as St Michael's church (destroyed 1940) and Holy Trinity church have also been digitally restored to their pre-Reformation states.
