Church acoustics reflect what a congregation believes are important sounds. Church acoustics also reveal what church leaders think the Hears of the Word should hear. That’s one reason Protestant Reformers changed their church buildings—they wanted to hear different sounds, like a sermon. And today, a church that uses a contemporary worship style will design a very different space than a church that uses only acoustic instruments.
Here’s a snapshot on how congregations have shaped their buildings’ acoustics over the centuries.
Medieval Church Buildings
Stone walls and tall ceilings produce an echoey space that is somewhat like being inside an instrument’s soundbox. The congregation can sink into an ambient cushion of sound, but they can’t hear crisply enunciated words (like a priest’s prayer) or distinguish polyphonic musical lines.
The image below shows a typical layout of a medieval church. Besides the hard surfaces like walls and columns that create echoes, churches of this style usually had a screen between the chancel and nave. The screen and the priest’s celebration of the Eucharist facing eastward (facing the same direction as the congregation) further increase the sensation of being inside of “a beautifully executed, very large musical instrument” (Rath, How Early America Sounded, p.98).
Changing ideals in the Protestant Reformation
Changing theological ideals altered the soundscape in Reformation-era Protestant churches. The congregation was meant to hear and understand the spoken words of church leaders. As a result, many church buildings were retrofitted with draperies, galleries (to bring congregants closer to the speakers), and sounding boards above pulpits. These changes dampened echoes and directed spoken word from the preacher to the congregation. For example, after redesign at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig (where J. S. Bach later worked), the reverberations lasted only 1/5 of what they were before.
North American Colonies: New Buildings with Clear Acoustic Intentions
In the North American colonies, the congregations’ intentions shaped their building from the very beginning. The #1 priority was focused direction of sound from the pulpit to the congregation so that sermons would be audible. Resonant congregational singing was a secondary priority.
Richard Cullen Rath’s How Early America Sounded explores these priorities in detail. Here’s what he says is the result in early-18th-century Anglican churches in Chesapeake, VA and in 17th-century New England meeting houses:
- Elevated pulpits attached to a wall and sounding boards increased speakers’ audibility.
- Preachers’ audibility was more important than visibility, so congregants couldn’t always see the speaker.
- Tall ceilings allowed for the sound waves of congregational singing to rise up and reverberate, adding fullness to the sound.
- Congregational meeting houses in 17th-century New England were usually square or nearly square and sometimes had galleries. This layout kept people close to the pulpit for better audibility.
A Quaker Exception
Some of these elements might seem obvious, but early Quaker buildings in the North American colonies reveal a different set of priorities.
Quakers’ egalitarian social ideals resulted in meeting houses that were usually square (or nearly so), hexagonal, or octagonal. Ceiling were shallow, acting as sounding boards across the whole space. Any speaker could be heard clearly, and everyone heard a similarly rich sound.
The Modern Soundscape
Fast-forward to the early twentieth century and to a seismic shift in the church buildings’ acoustics.
Emily Thompson’s definitive work The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933 shows how technological developments like sound absorbing tiles and electronic amplification allow for a “reformulation of perceptions of space and time” that marks the modern soundscape (p. 187).
This reformulation means that what we see isn’t necessarily what we hear.
For example, vaulted ceilings would usually produce echoey spaces. But new kinds of tile—beginning with Rumford tile (1913) and later Akoustolith tile (1916)—could absorb sound.
So, NYC’s St. Thomas Church looks like it would have similar echoes as the Gothic churches it was modeled on. But it was the first building to use Rumford tiles. The result is a substantial reduction in the building’s reverberance.
Around the same time, the rise in electronic amplification in the 1920s and 1930s allowed for people to hear “a soft voice at loud volume” (Rath p. 98). Electronic amplification caused a huge change in how speakers could project their voices while remaining audible.
Electronic amplification also allowed for leaders’ visibility to become more important because people could sit further away from a speaker and still hear him or her. Before, Protestant buildings usually prioritized audibility over visibility, so congregants sometimes had seats where they could hear a preacher but not see him.
Church buildings still use sound absorption and electronic amplification. Acoustic tiles, carpet, pew cushions and so on absorb sound, while increasingly high tech sound systems project speakers’ voices (and sometimes vocalists and instruments) to the congregation.
So: what’s important according to YOUR church’s acoustics?
Curious to hear more about acoustics? Check out this episode of the Music and the Church podcast!
