Five narratives which conjure the importance of sound in the distant past, when humans were at the mercy of natural forces. Or almost at the mercy - for prehistoric people were beginning to learn how to manipulate the sounds of the landscapes around them and create ‘magical’ phenomena which ‘accessed’ hidden worlds. In the rainforests, where it was almost impossible to see anything, tribes relied almost totally on close-listening; they also developed a language of drumming that was sophisticated enough to express mood as well as pass on vital information. In caves, paintings are found in very specific acoustic spaces, suggesting that sound was as important as image in accessing ‘other worlds’. These early acoustic experiments – playing with the sonic properties of different spaces, hesitant steps towards music, droning and drumming – have laid down patterns of sound-making and communication that remain with us today: signalling, calling, whistling, humming, chanting, trance-music – expressive sounds, beyond language but rich in meaning and, especially, emotional impact.

Five narratives drawing largely on the medieval world to explore sound as a battleground between Good and Evil – and as a hidden aspect of our daily struggle to achieve the ‘life well-lived’. Sound wasn’t ever just about communication – the theme of the previous five programmes; it was also about the social and moral organization of the world. In East and West, for example, music is seen as problematic: it excited and stirred up the spirits in and about the heart, making the listener tremble: was this dangerous or Godly? These five episodes immerse us in a world dominated by religion and faith and hierarchy – where the Church’s influence is not just over our souls but in every aspect of how we ‘hear’ and shape the immediate world around us.

Five narratives from the 17^th to 19^th centuries, which explore how struggles for power have been struggles in which sounds play their part – for both sides. We explore the state’s ability to instil discipline and devotion through aural spectacles; the power of the wealthy to protect themselves from the noisy squalor of the poor; the power of slaveholders to enforce silence or encourage songs at their pleasure – and the power of slaves to resist them through a coded language of taps and whispers; the way in which military skirmishes could be won or lost through the ability of soldiers to scare their opponents through loud noises and to move about without being heard; the power of the well-to-do to erect more and more interior walls so as to create spaces for confidential talk away from servants and children – and the new art of eavesdropping that emerged in response to these changes in domestic life.

Five narratives that explore the dawn of the modern age, when science and engineering and the growth of cities combined to make the world emphatically noisier- and we started to worry about its ill-effects. This theme centres around the sudden and dramatic amplification of the world that came with the rise of factories, cities, machines - and the growing anxiety about humans losing control over their environment and needing to protect listening and quietude as dying phenomena.