The Past is Stranger Than We Hear

‘Close your eyes, it’s the 17th century’. This is the tantalising invitation of Lidia Alvares-Morales and Mariana Lopez’s project ‘Cathedral Acoustics in Early Modern England: Exploring and Recreating the Sounds of the Past’ (https://emsoundscapes.co.uk/cathedral-acoustics-in-early-modern-england-exploring-and-recreating-the-sounds-of-the-past/. All weblinks last accessed 27 September 2025). Their premise underpins some of the recently proliferating research on historical sound reconstruction more widely; for ‘seventeenth century’, read any period from before the advent of recording technology. Reconstructing soundscapes from the pre-recording era purportedly allows us not only to gain knowledge about the auditory perceptions of historical subjects, but, if we try hard enough (by shutting our eyes), to recreate those perceptions for ourselves.