The noisy war and the noises of war. Belliphony in the Middle Ages.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Clauss
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2021
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 464863865

Medieval culture and life were significantly shaped by war and violence. Every war was an acoustic event. To understand how they were planned, conducted, perceived and depicted, one must 'listen' to them: The noise of weapons, shouting, speeches, music and signal sounds created and structured social spaces as instruments of communication and distinction. While historical research has been increasingly concerned with medieval soundscapes in recent years, war has remained a neglected topic despite rich evidence in the sources. The project aims at closing this research gap and intends to develop a comprehensive understanding of medieval belliphony: What functions did sounds fulfill in warfare and war narration? How were they perceived and interpreted? The project also breaks new ground in terms of methodology and combines approaches from sound studies (including terminology), music history (military music) and (medieval) philology (narratology, phonetic performativity).The investigation will be conducted in two synchronously working, complementary sub-projects: The first one asks how belliphony was narrated. It investigates the narrative functions of sounds in historiographic and literary war accounts of the High Middle Ages. First, the specific intratextual location of belliphony in contrast to other soundspheres in the respective works will be determined. In the next step, a comparison across texts and genres can then be made. The aim is to establish a morphology of the acoustics of war that can assign specific functions to individual acoustical narratives.The second subproject focuses on the significance of sounds in late medieval warfare: What were certain noises and sounds used for, how were they received and what effects did they have? In the first place, normative statements on the production and use of sounds in contemporary writings on war theory will be examined. Based on this, the soundscapes of some of the most important military events of the time in question will be recorded and analysed in detail on a broad source basis.The project will create an open access database in which all source material on medieval belliphony will be collected and commented on. In addition to the textual sources, pictorial representations of belliphony will also be studied by way of example. The research endeavour will develop a phenomenology and semantics of medieval belliphony and thus make a fundamental contribution to the understanding of medieval war and the history of senses for the Middle Ages.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants