In 1321, St Catherine’s Benedictine monastery in Rouen installed a clock whose bells, every hour, on the hour, played the Advent hymn Conditor alme siderum (Dear Creator of the Stars). Over the course of the next three centuries, musical clocks and carillons were installed across Europe, sounded through the turbulent years of the reformations, crossed the Atlantic to the Americas, and travelled with the Jesuits into Asia. How did hearing shape the experience of time across this period of change? How did the mechanical sounds of time affect relationships between technology and human agency? This transdisciplinary project aims to review the medieval and early-modern history of time through the lens of sound, bringing microhistorical methodologies into dialogue with global history, and contributing to the burgeoning fields of sound studies, the history of science and technology, and the history of temporalities.

The Sounds of Time is a funded project of the Australian Research Council as part of the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE200101479, running from December 2020– December 2025.