In Pesaro, Raphael in Sonosphere: total visual and aural immersion in the Stanza della Segnatura

In the Pesaro Sonosfera, inaugurated by the City of Pesaro in 2020 for Pesaro Unesco Creative City of Music thanks to David Monacchi’s project, an innovative program dedicated to Raphael in collaboration with the Vatican Museums will be presented on Friday, January 14, 2022. Raphael in Sonosfera® is awork of digital linguistic innovation designed to tell the story of the painter through three-dimensional sound and 360° vision. In fact, the Sonosphere is a technological amphitheater for deep listening ecosystems and music, unique in the world and internationally patented as a mobile space. The audience sits in a sound-transparent cavea with 45 speakers positioned in the spherical geometry of an acoustically optimal geode, capable of reproducing the three-dimensional soundscape with ultra-high definition audio, accompanied by a 24k spherical projection crown for 360-degree images.

Thanks to its innovative technology, the Sonosphere will allow visitors to enter one of Raphael’s most significant masterpieces: the fresco cycle of the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican Museums. The entire Stanza will be reconstructed on the large circular projection space and, above all, listened to through the musical decipherment of the symbolic layers in the frescoes: the sound of painted musical instruments, the sound of natural elements, the setting in the architectural acoustics of a mass by Josquin Desprez coeval to the frescoes and a sonnet by Raphael himself specially engraved, and the electroacoustic composition. The historical music was performed by an instrumental and vocal ensemble specializing in early 16th-century repertoire, so that everything is as faithful as possible to the instruments depicted in the fresco. For example, the lyre arm in the hand of Orpheus, instruments from the classical world such as the Athenian lyre, the Roman zither, and the archaic flute are found; the electronic music also was conceived and composed from the geometric/mathematical depictions found in the frescoes. The Tetraktis, sacred decade for the Pythagoreans, meticulously painted by Raphael in Telauge’s hand, illustrates the primary intervals (diapason, diapente, diatesseron) that would become the basis of the Western musical system, and is the nucleus for the electroacoustic composition of the entire work in Sonosphere.

Raphael in Sonosfera is a work by David Monacchi and Simone Sorini, in collaboration with a team of musicians and digital artists who have recomposed the frescoes in great detail, starting with the structural stages of red sinopia, then preparatory cardboard, and finally reaching the color and enlargement of The Disputation of the Sacrament and The School of Athens. The latter will surround the audience by placing them in the focus of the work with a definition never attempted before, thanks to the very high resolution images provided by the Vatican Museums. Sound will come from a system of speakers in spherical geometry, interconnected to recreate an acoustic field very close to reality. The project constitutes an attempt to experience art history in a completely new key, that of sound.

Reservations required (Civic Museums ticket office: 0721 387541, pesaro@sistemamuseo.it). Entrance fee, free for under 18s. More info and updated schedule at www.pesaromusei.it/sonosfera.

Hours: Raphael in Sonosphere will be open to the public starting Saturday, January 15 on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays at 11:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Ph. Credit Luigi Angelucci

In Pesaro, Raphael in Sonosphere: total visual and aural immersion in the Stanza della Segnatura

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