Sonus Paradisi/Hauptwerk.cz

Sonus Paradisi is a project concerned with the recording, documenting and archiving of the sound of significant historical pipe organs. The research is localized in the Institute for Classical Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and the responsible person for the project is Jiri Zurek, Th.D. It is a satellite of the project CLAVIS, which is concerned with the documentation and research of the cultural heritage of the Czech lands.

The project Sonus paradisi is concerned with archiving the sound of historic and significant church pipe organs in the Czech Republic (Europe), making them available for software samplers like Hauptwerk. In this way, playable "images" of the original instruments are offered to users. The sound of each individual pipe is recorded and stored in the database which is available for all those who want to examine the sound scientifically. They employ the ambient recording technique to store all the aspects of the sound being that especially the original church reverberation (acoustics), minor wind oscillations of pipes, even slight instabilities of pipes and similar; these features contribute to the "presence" of the sound. The main purpose is to make sure (as much as possible) the exact sonic "fingerprint" of the current state of the given instrument is archived, and to preserve it for future.

Website: http://www.hauptwerk.cz