Deus et Scientia

Shortly after Evensong one evening last week, a man in an overcoat climbed to the lectern of St. Paul's Cathedral and pointed a pistol toward the great dome. No one made a move to stop him. Two shots, shattering the gloom of the church, made a noise like an artillery barrage booming across nave and transept. For twelve seconds the reverberations echoed.

The man with the pistol was an engineer, demonstrating with blank shells what London churchgoers have known for generations--that St. Paul's acoustics are abominable. Sir Christopher Wren's imposing structure, completed in 1710, has never been right for psalms or sermons. Fine phrases bounce off the high stone walls, sound in some spots like garbled incomprehensible Latin. "Acoustically, St. Paul's is the worst cathedral in Europe," admits the Archdeacon of London, the Venerable O. H. Gibbs-Smith. "Except, of course, St. Peter's in Rome."

In times past, various public-address systems have been tried. Last week, after firing his pistol, the engineer tested the latest contribution of science to the celebration of religion. He spoke into the pulpit microphone and his words were carried to the crypt, where they were recorded on a magnetic disk. After appropriate delays (1/10, 1/20 and 1/40 of a second), they were rebroadcast from strategically located loudspeakers. The timing was such that the recorded speech reinforced rather than interfered with the words that came straight from the pulpit. Echoes were all but drowned out.* The result was faintly hollow and mechanical, but intelligible.

Although there are still troubles to be ironed out (e.g., too much amplification feeds sound from loudspeakers back to microphone, causing a loud, cacophonous howl), churchmen were favorably impressed. Now congregations should be able to listen to historic chants, sermons will sound as if they actually come from the pulpit, not from the older loudspeakers that were spotted under seats and in other improbable locations. The engineers, said Archdeacon Gibbs-Smith, have been clever enough to preserve "the sense of the numinous [consciousness of the Holy] which is so vital in divine worship."

*St. Paul's most famed echo, in the Whispering Gallery, still echoes.

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