Complete DRAFT Model -- Paul's Churchyard, March 2012

Josh Stephens, our Sketch-Up expert, has completed a First Draft Model of St. Paul's Cathedral and Paul's Churchyard.

This model, lovely to look at though it may be, is a DRAFT model.

John Schofield is reviewing the model to compare it to his findings as reported in his St. Paul's Before Wren (English Heritage, 2011). Josh will be making revisions to the model in light of John's comments later this summer.

Right now, Josh is at work converting this model into the model to be used by Ben Markham and his colleagues at Acentech, in Cambridge, MA, to recreate the acoustic properties of Paul's Churchyard.

This model will be much less detailed. It will only show the surfaces that are acoustically significant, but it will include information about their absorptive and reflective properties.

In the meantime, the model is worth contemplating, since it shows St. Paul's Cathedral and Paul's Churchyard -- approximately -- all together for the first time since the day before the Great Fire of London.

Congratulations to Josh for his fine work. Enjoy!

Recording John Donne -- Anechoic Chamber, Salford, England, 9 March 2012

This photograph shows Ben Crystal and John Wall standing inside the anechoic chamber at the University of Salford, near Manchester, in England, yesterday, during a break in recording.

Ben spent 7 hours yesterday inside this special studio recording Donne's Gunpowder Day Sermon for November 5th, 1622. 

The recording is done; we will soon have the master recording for Ben Markham and his acoustic engineering colleagues at Acentech in Cambridge, MA.

Ben Crystal worked tirelessly under very difficult recording circumstances. He had no acoustic feedback for his performance. He was standing on a wire floor that was acoustically transparent but also springy, like a trampoline. He was working with 3 different microphones.

Ben performed Donne's semon with the goal of making his performance powerful and moving in its own right, and also congruent with contemporary accounts of Donne's preaching.

I think the results are brilliant. We have reached a major milestone in the course of this project.

My thanks to Ben for his generosity with his time, talent, and energy, and to Danny McCaul who runs the Acoustic Facilities at Salford, and especially to recording engineer James Massaglia, who handled the actual recording of Ben's performance.

James also took the photos above of Ben and me and of Ben in recording pose in the anechoic chamber. 

Thanks, James, for helping us document the progress of the Virtual Paul's Cross Project.

John Donne in Manchester, March 8th, 2012

I am in Manchester for Ben Crystal's recording of Donne's Gunpowder Day sermon for November 5th, 1622.

I know that John Donne is here with us.

Yesterday, at the airport, when we were picking up luggage from the luggage carousel, I saw a bag go by on the conveyer belt with a wide red strap around it.

On the strap, in large white letters, was the name "John Dunne."

Suddenly, a hand reached out from the crowd and picked up the bag. The crowd closed around me again before I had a chance to see who had picked it up.

Nevertheless, a good omen, I think, for our work here.

Latest Images of the Virtual Paul's Churchyard

Josh Stephens, our virtual cathedral contractor, has provided new images of the current state of his model. The image above shows the Choir and north transept of St. Paul's, the Paul's Cross Preaching Station, and the beginning of the commercial/residential buildings to the north of Paul's Churchyard.

These buildings were, of course, the home of the English book trade in the early 17th century.

And here is an overhead view.

Josh has also begun to work on the interior of St. Paul's in anticipation of our application for funding to recreate the experience of worship in the Choir. Here is his current version of a model of the Choir.

This image shows the Choir area without the Choir Screen or the stalls or the side walls, or the other furnishings familiar to us from Hollar's engraving.

So there is still much more to do on this model, but we have definitely come a long way in the Cathedral's  reconstruction.

John Donne at the University of Salford

Ben Crystal will be recording John Donne's Gunpowder Day Sermon for November 5th, 1622, in the Anechoic Chamber of the University of Salford, near Manchester, in early March.

An anechoic chamber is a room without echo, a room without reflections from the walls, floor or ceiling.
This means that the room adds no acoustic properties of its own to a recording made there.

As a result, when the sound of Ben's voice is heard in the virtual acoustic environment of Paul's Churchyard, it will sound as though it were being heard in that space, not in the space of the recording studio at the University of Salford.

The sermon Donne preached on November 5th, 1622, was, as we know, intended for delivery at Paul's Cross but was actually delivered in the Choir of St Paul's Cathedral "because of the weather."

So when Ben's voice realizes for us the words of Donne's sermon through our acoustic model of Paul's Cross, those words will be heard in the space where Donne intended to speak them, 400 years ago.