Saint Mark's basilica was where many Venetian polyphonic works had their debut performances, but the reverb presented a puzzle for historians.
Ah, the Renaissance---lots of deep thinkers, gorgeous art, busty maidens, fried dough on a stick (if Ren faires are to be believed), and the liveliest music this side of the Middle Ages. But when you compare the elaborate, up-tempo harmonies of late Renaissance polyphony
to the churches where they would have been performed, a serious discrepancy pops up. Giant Renaissance churches like Saint Mark's basilica
and the Redentore
, both in Venice, have way too long of a reverberation time for those tunes to sound good. It takes a full 7 seconds for a note to fade after it's played or sung, and that means that songs, especially fast ones, blend into a giant muddy mess. A physicist and a music technologist, who presented their work at the American ...
