YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

THE ROLE OF ACOUSTICS IN THE PERFORMANCE
OF RENAISSANCE POLYPHONY AT
THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF SAINT MARY IN AACHEN
Eric Rice
University of Connecticut
On 25 January 1414, the canons of the Collegiate Church of Saint Mary in Aachen
gathered to witness the dedication of a new addition to their basilica. This addition,
a Gothic choir that had required sixty years to build, was the most profound physical
change in the history of the church (see Figure 1). When the canons decided to begin
construction in the mid-fourteenth century, Aachen’s collegiate church was already
an enduring symbol of the Holy Roman Empire. Its distinctive outward profile, an
octagonal tower rising out of a sixteen-sided, two-story building with a small eastern
apse, was consistently and faithfully represented in the iconography of Charlemagne
(see Figure 2), its founder, and its architectural plan had been imitated numerous
times. 1 The decision to build such a substantial addition, with its concomitant change
in external profile and internal space, was thus an especially significant one. The reasons
for the construction of the choir were numerous and complex, though they probably
did not include acoustical or even musical considerations. 2 However, evidence
for the use of surviving polyphony from the church, together with the canons’response
to acoustical problems once the choir was completed, show that the new addition was
the preferred space for the performance of polyphony despite the continued use of
both new and old spaces.
The primary sources of information on the liturgical and musical life of the
Marienkirche are four ordinals preserved in Aachen’s Domarchiv. The oldest two date
from the mid-fourteenth and late-fifteenth centuries, which is to say before and after
the completion of the Gothic choir in 1414. 3 They mention several times when improvised
polyphony and organ playing were to embellish the liturgy. Further information
about such practices is available in the church’s necrologies, which list endowments
for services, sometimes with specific instructions regarding payments to an
organist and/or singers of specific vocal ranges. Payment records indicate the presence
of an organist from 1367, the oldest record available, but do not specify pay-
1 A. VERBEEK, Zentralbauten in der Nachfolge der Aachener Pfalzkapelle, in V. ELBERN ed., Das
erste Jahrtausend – Kultur und Kunst im werdenden Abendland an Rhein und Ruhr, 1-3, Düsseldorf,
1964, Textband 2, pp. 898–947.
2 E. RICE, Music and Ritual at the Collegiate Church of Saint Mary in Aachen, 1300–1600, Ph.D. diss.,
Columbia University, 2002, pp. 114–115.
3 O. GATZWEILER, Die liturgischen Handschriften des Aachener Münsterstifts, in Zeitschrift des
Aachener Geschichtsvereins, 46 (1924), pp. 12–23.
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