In Byzantine studies, the impetus to think about the senses and perception was initiated well over twenty-five years ago, fitting into broader theorizations of visuality and visual studies. During these decades, the other senses have come to the foreground in scholarship focused on material culture that has been closely modeled on how we have studied visuality.1 It is in this context that Bissera V. Pentcheva’s Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium emerges. This volume is not a radical departure nor a break or redirection from the field. Examining architecture in terms of sound, aurality, and acoustics, it contributes instead as a careful and meticulous methodological crescendo within the so-called “phenomenological turn,” defined in the framework of Byzantine studies as a multisensory approach to visual culture and aesthetics. In the critique of extant scholarship with which she begins the book, Pentcheva rightly asserts the need to move past a study of medieval materiality that testifies to “the rich variety of symbolism invested in materials” in order to “recognize the performance of . . . ‘material flux,’ such as glitter, shadow, reverberation, and scent—phenomena produced in and through matter but remaining ungraspable and ineffable” (p. 10). Throughout the book’s seven chapters, Pentcheva demonstrates her conception of an alternative to established forms of material iconography by examining the intertwining of aurality, acoustics, architecture, and performance in the Hagia Sophia church in Istanbul. Beginning with a survey of the phenomenological and historical stakes of her project, Pentcheva investigates how space is conceptualized as sacred (chapter 1) and how it is made sacred through ritual consecration (chapter 2). These introductory questions aim to shift our conception of the sacred as being inherently tied to matter or the visual so as to stress the aniconic dimensions of Byzantine ritual. From there, Pentcheva zeroes in on the manner in which liturgical chant inspirits the site and makes the presence of the divine in the space a nonrepresentational and temporal manifestation through performance (chapter 3). This conversation is then situated within the space of Hagia Sophia through meticulous re-creations of the acoustic soundscape of the church (chapter 4). With these points Pentcheva returns to her long-standing interest in the fluxes of matter and sound, drawing our attention once again to the well-known associations in Byzantine culture between sound, water, and marble (chapter 5). The penultimate chapter of the book emphatically rehearses Pentcheva’s thesis on Byzantine poetics’ roots in the tropes of mirroring (esoptron) and inspiriting (empsychōsis). Finally, the book attempts to telescope out from Byzantium and touch on matters of empathy and affect by considering the disjunctions between these approaches to space and aurality and the image of Western Renaissance art and its legacies. Throughout the book, Pentcheva offers exciting readings and formal analyses of texts, objects, images, smells, architecture, and their various intersections. She carefully walks the reader through how chant animates the space and repeatedly intimates the possibility for an aniconic experience of the divine that is nonetheless structured, formalized, and performative, in all senses of the term. In the two chapters that are the volume’s most compelling highlights, “Aural Architecture” (chapter 4) and “Material Flux: Marble, Water, and Chant” (chapter 5), the author presents the experimental reconstruction of Hagia Sophia’s acoustics and the meticulous unfolding of chant within that soundscape. Not only does chapter 4 publish exciting new work on the re-creation of Hagia Sophia’s acoustic profile but also chapter 5 then allows us to comprehend the complex interrelations of architecture, sound, materiality, and performance. These segments are exemplars of the contribution made by Pentcheva’s work, her ingenuity and creativity as a scholar. With them she provides the language and imagination for students and scholars alike to flesh out the interconnected realms of Byzantine art across traditional disciplinary divisions. The strength of Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium is particularly evident when it is read in conjunction with Reviews

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圣索菲亚大教堂：《拜占庭》中的声音，空间和精神，作者：Bissera V. Pentcheva

在拜占庭式的研究中，对感觉和感知进行思考的动力是在25年前提出的，适合视觉和视觉研究的更广泛理论。在这几十年中，专注于物质文化的学术领域中的其他感官已经成为人们关注的焦点，这种感官已经与我们研究视觉的方式密切相关。1在这种情况下，比塞拉五世·彭切瓦（Bissera V. Pentcheva）的《圣索菲亚大教堂：声音，空间和精神》在拜占庭出现。该卷既不是从根本上偏离，也不是中断或重定向。从声音，听觉和声学的角度审视建筑，它在所谓的“现象学转向”内作为一种谨慎而细致的方法论渐进式贡献，在拜占庭研究框架内定义为一种视觉文化和美学的多感觉方法。在她开始书本时对现存学术的批判中，彭切娃正确地断言有必要超越对中世纪物质性的研究，该研究证明“对材料进行了丰富的象征主义装饰”以“认识到……的表现”。。。“物质通量”，例如闪光，阴影，混响和气味-在物质中和通过物质产生的现象，但仍然无法理解和无法理解”（第10页）。在本书的七章中，彭特瓦（Pentcheva）通过检查伊斯坦布尔圣索非亚大教堂（Hagia Sophia）教堂中听觉，声学，建筑和性能的交织，证明了她对既定形式的物质肖像术的替代概念。从对她的项目的现象学和历史意义进行调查开始，彭特奇瓦研究如何将空间概念化为神圣（第1章），以及如何通过仪式奉献使空间神圣化（第2章）。这些介绍性问题旨在改变我们对神圣的观念，因为其固有地与物质或视觉联系在一起，从而强调了拜占庭仪式的反讽之意。从那里开始，Pentcheva将礼仪圣歌启发该场所的方式归零，并通过表演使神在空间中的存在成为非代表性和时间性的表现（第3章）。然后，通过对教堂的声学声景进行精心的重新创建，将对话放置在圣索非亚大教堂的空间内（第4章）。有了这些论点，彭特瓦（Pentcheva）回到了她对物质和声音的波动的长期兴趣，再次提请我们注意拜占庭文化中声音，水和大理石之间的著名关联（第5章）。该书倒数第二章着重演练了彭切娃关于拜占庭诗学根源于镜像（esoptron）和鼓舞（empsychōsis）等比喻的论点。最后，该书试图通过考虑拜占庭的空间和听觉方法与西方文艺复兴时期的艺术形象及其遗产之间的脱节，从拜占庭解脱出来，探讨同情和影响。在整本书中，Pentcheva都提供了令人兴奋的阅读材料，并对文本，物体，图像，气味，建筑及其各个交叉点进行了形式化分析。她仔细地向读者介绍了如何为空间增添生气，并反复暗示在某种意义上，结构化，形式化和表演化的神性反讽体验的可能性。在该卷最引人注目的两章中，“听觉建筑”（第4章）和“材料通量：大理石，水和圣歌”（第5章），作者介绍了圣索菲亚大教堂的声学效果和细致入微的实验性重构。在那声景中的歌声正在展开。第四章不仅发表了关于重新创作圣索菲亚大教堂声学配置的激动人心的新著作，而且第五章还使我们理解了建筑，声音，物质性和性能之间的复杂联系。这些部分是Pentcheva所做的贡献的典范，她作为学者的才智和创造力。她与他们一起为学生和学者提供语言和想象力，以充实跨越传统学科领域的拜占庭艺术相互联系的领域。与评论一起阅读时，圣索菲亚大教堂的力量：拜占庭中的声音，空间和精神特别明显