One of the most significant enclosures in worship spaces is that of the choir. Generally, from a historical point of view, the choir is a semi-enclosed and privileged area reserved for the clergy, whose position and configuration gives it a private c...
Choral singing is a widely practiced form of group music-making that has been associated with various positive well-being outcomes. While existing research highlights its benefits for adults and clinical populations, how choir participation affects h...
Participation in group activities such as choirs has been shown to have positive effects on emotional health and overall well-being. Inclusive choirs, which integrate individuals of various abilities and diverse backgrounds, provide a unique space fo...
International students beginning university face challenges, including loneliness and isolation. Research shows that choir singing can enhance social bonds and emotional wellbeing. However, its effect on international students remains underexplored....
Engaging with music has been shown to have a positive impact on the quality of life of residents in care homes, who are known to be affected by anxiety, depression and loneliness. Based on the known benefits of in-person singing activities, a new Vir...
In this paper we discuss a journey through different collective singing experiences held between 2019 and 2023 in Lebanon, Mozambique, Benin, and Greece. It is an autoethnographic work that includes the short-term participant observation of a choir i...
Prayer in human life enables directing attention to God and a transcendent goal beyond Earthly life. Singing has been present in the life of Israel since the oldest times, which is proved on the pages of the Holy Scriptures, in the Books of Exodus an...
Choirs in female monastic and convent communities are spaces whose complexity has been highlighted because of their multipurpose and multifunctional nature. Although they are within the community’s private sphere of prayer of the divine office,...
Inclusion promotes equal opportunities, and aims to eliminate discrimination, by ensuring full access, participation, and representation for all individuals in society, with music playing a crucial role in addressing this global challenge, and foster...
Arches and vaults are typical elements of ancient buildings. They are formed by voussoirs that resist the pressure they receive and transmit them through compression forces. The transmission of these forces justifies their curved shape. For this reas...
The aim of this paper is three-fold. First, the basics of binaural and ambisonic techniques are briefly presented. Then, details related to audio-visual recordings of a remote performance of the Academic Choir of the Gdansk University of Technology a...
This paper discusses a cross-disciplinary, international collaboration aimed at researching a series of 15th century choir books at the abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore on the homonymous island in Venice. Produced for the abbey itself, the books have ne...
Resulting in pervasive feelings of despair, the culture of incarceration in the U.S. relies on punitive correctional strategies such as solitary confinement to control the behavior of incarcerated individuals. Inevitably, correctional culture which f...
Secularisation theory proposed that the modernisation of society would bring about a decline in religiosity across the West, leading to ‘entzauberung’ (disenchantment). Eventually, society would be devoid of belief in the transcendent. So...
Previous research indicates that choir singing enhances mental well-being. This study explores whether these well-being benefits are related to the personality traits of singers. We assessed the personality traits of 760 German amateur choral singers...
In the present work, a method is proposed that combines spectrofluorimetry with multivariate analysis (cluster and principal components) to non-invasively investigate natural dyes used, mainly in the form of lakes, in illuminations. First, a consiste...
Background: We report UK findings from Music Interventions for Depression and Dementia in Elderly care (MIDDEL), a cross-national, clustered, randomised trial undertaken in 2018–2023 to evaluate the effectiveness of music interventions for depr...
During development, as tissues expand and grow, they require circulatory, lymphatic, and nervous system expansion for proper function and support. Similarly, as tumors arise and develop, they also require the expansion of these systems to support the...
Music viewed from the real praxis could trigger positive religious emotions as the path of beauty in those searching for the meaning of life or the higher one in God. The article aims to encourage interdisciplinarity in teaching Catholic RE in Croati...
Background/Objectives: As the global population ages, the need for effective nonpharmacological interventions to support cognitive health has become increasingly urgent. Singing has been identified as a promising strategy to enhance cognitive functio...
28 November 2020
Maintaining a high quality of work and life can be a challenge for working adults. Most working adults do not have the opportunity to participate in activities that promote physical and emotional health. Working adults need to improve their potential...
This paper explores the proposal that music, and particularly singing, has unique properties that render it amenable to encounters with “the other” or the sacred stranger. Drawing on the deconstructionist works of Kristeva and Derrida, as well as the...
12 June 2019
The objective of the present study was to give a detailed overview on the leisure behavior of adolescents (frequency, differences between gender, age groups and social class, time trends, and inter-relations). In total, 1449 10- to 18-year-old German...
The paper argues for the importance and richness of gaze communication during orchestra and choir conduction, and presents three studies on this issue. First, an interview with five choir and orchestra conductors reveals that they are not so deeply a...
The compressed life review (CLR) is a mnemonic illusion of having “your entire life flashing before your eyes”. This research was guided by concerns over the retrospective methodology used in CLR studies. To depart from this methodology,...
The PHEND (Past Has Ears at Notre-Dame) collaborative research project is being carried out by a team of multidisciplinary researchers interested in the acoustic history of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. The project involved the creation of seven dig...
The institutionalisation of older adults is often associated with negative perceptions from the past, influenced by asylums and hospices that were seen as marginalising older people. These views have contributed to a dominant social representation of...
A diagnostic analysis of the painting depicting San Patroba che predica ai fedeli di Pozzuoli by Massimo Stanzione was carried out. The painting was completed in 1635–1637 to decorate the choir of the Cathedral of Saint Procolo in Pozzuoli (Nap...
Opera houses are often used as concert halls with the use of a temporary acoustic shell set on stage. In most cases, the shell shape and its position in the fly tower are decided by theatre technicians, after evaluating the concert programme and cons...
The article presents a method for segmentation of ethnomusicological field recordings. Field recordings are integral documents of folk music performances captured in the field, and typically contain performances, intertwined with interviews and comme...
This essay explores how sanctity at Helfta was defined not by the perfection of song but by its interruption. The Book of Special Grace and the Herald of Divine Love praise Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrude the Great as singers of surpassing sweetn...
Two significant spaces define the soundscape of worship in a church: chancel and nave. The chancel is a space with the primary function of a sound source, where the preachers and choir are often seated during church services. Church design and layout...
This sociological study describes the exceptional qualities of the 2016 Notre Dame liturgies. My criterion of evaluation is authenticity, defined as faithfulness to a transcendent purpose in liturgical performances. The four areas of prayer, singing,...
13 May 2023
There are many music experiences for people with dementia and their caregivers including but not limited to individualized playlists, music and singing groups, dementia-inclusive choirs and concerts, and music therapy. While the benefits of these mus...
I was 13 years old when I heard Judy Collins’ rendition of “Amazing Grace” over the radio. At that time, I thought it was an unusual song to be played over a rock station. Collins sang the first verse with a pure yet moving vocal qu...
The article answers the question of how the custom of religious singing was created in Kashubia and constitutes an integral part of the worship of the Church and local piety/religiosity until modern times. Nowadays, musical worship is manifested both...
The period between 1080 and 1160 saw an explosion in monastic construction throughout Western Europe. The textual sources from this period document this building boom and explicitly tie construction and refurbishment to monastic reform and the creati...
Therapeutic applications of singing (e.g., melodic intonation therapy) for acquired neurogenic communication disorders (ANCD) such as post-stroke aphasia, dysarthria, or neurodegenerative diseases have emerged from innovations by clinical speech-lang...
General models of talent development have highlighted the importance of a community of practice to nurture talent potential, with recent studies refining factors that contribute to the developmental journey. In music, an early model described three p...
Plainchant has formed a core sacred vocal repertory for Western Christianity for over a millennium, and following a surge of interest in chant as an early music repertory over the twentieth century and beyond, it has accrued particular significance f...
Dalle de verre windows consist of thick slabs of coloured glass set in a matrix of reinforced concrete. The invention of this special art form is closely linked to the developments in modern architecture in the first half of the 20th century that are...
3 November 2020
The role of aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 viruses in airborne transmission of COVID-19 has been debated. The aerosols are transmitted through breathing and vocalization by infectious subjects. Some authors state that this represents the dominant route of sp...
The Harrist Church in Ivory Coast, West Africa, emerged from the ministry of Liberian William Wadé Harris who baptized between 100,000 and 200,000 people during his eighteen-month evangelistic tour, 1913–1915. This story is full of linguistic complex...
The aim of this paper is to show the presence of religion and the particular evolution of lyrical matrixes connected to religion in the Polish poems of female poets. There is a particular presence of women in the roots of the Polish literary and lyri...