Can we listen to the past with our modern ears? What are the challenges of reconstructing a sonic history? Project SOUND: Soundscapes of Rosenborg is an innovative research in sonic history, with a time-specific and site-specific approach. Christine studies the soundscapes and everyday life during the seventeenth century at the Danish court. Rosenborg is quite a unique case in Europe, with extremely well-preserved interiors and its exceptional collection of the “skatkammer”, full of artefacts producing sound, noise, but also objects that have been silenced. 

The court was a site of power and sociability and as such it represents a privileged space to study etiquette, privacy, gender, and rituals through its sonic aspects. Early modern courts had little by way of visual privacy. What could be heard or not is therefore highly significant. Aurality, or the shared hearing of written texts, defines a community, and includes not only the royal families, but also servants and visitors across several social classes, along with animals, carriages, kitchens and food, gardens, entertainments, and music.