Il progetto dello spazio musicale: chiese e oratori della Roma barocca

Sound, whether prayer or sacred music, concurs with vision to form the perception of the worship space. In the Renaissance and Baroque eras, religious architecture was experienced in synaesthetic processional rites that involved sight as well as hearing, and in some cases also smell and touch. The form of sacred music that developed in Rome on the eve of the Baroque exploit, namely »polychorality«, favoured sound spatialisation, requiring architects to shape and place venues for musical performances integrated into buildings: in a word, to design the sound of the religious architecture. The essay discusses the ways in which musical devices (choir lofts, loggias, balconies) were given an architectural form to the layout of roman churches and oratories, starting from the 16th-century beginnings of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Giacomo Della Porta. After the type was fixed under Paul V (Pauline Chapel, Gesù), in the proper Baroque age choirs proliferated – between Santi Luca e Martina and Santa Maria in Campitelli – so as to fill every cavity of the church with musical sound. In the peculiar case of Francesco Borromini, the design of sound took on specific devotions (Oratorio) and even theological symbolism (Sapienza). Finally, when polichoralty was abandoned at the end of the 17th century, the advent of concerto practices favoured lavish organ balconies on the counter-façade, such as in Santa Maria della Vittoria, Maddalena and Sant’Antonio dei Portoghesi, rivaling in somptuousness with the altars.