This image is a reproduction of an excerpt from Josquin des Prez's 'Cueur langoreulx', printed by Tielman Susato in Antwerp in 1545, overlaid with handprinted acetates. It forms part of James Wilkes's ongoing project to rewrite Josquin's chansons.

This lute was made in about 1630 and shows little sign of alteration, which makes it much prized by musicologists and luthiers. Although its provenance remains unknown, it is more likely to have served as an artist’s prop rather than a professional musician’s instrument after the early 1800s. Image provided by Joanna Norman.

In the sixteenth broadcast of the series Dr. Simon King, Professor of Speech Processing at The University of Edinburgh, where he is director of The Centre for Speech Technology Research, will be talking about different methods of speech synthesis, the sound of natural speech as gold standard, and the status of listening as a development cycle in the production of synthetic speech.

"When you are listening to synthetic speech are you using the brain in the same way as when listening to natural speech?"

In this seventeenth broadcast we hear from Dr. James Wilkes poet, writer and Senior Researcher in the Department of Geography, University of Durham; Associate Director of Hubbub a collective of researchers and artists exploring rest and its opposites – including noise, work and mindwandering. James works with the textures and rhythms of spoken and heard language and will be talking about imagining into being a distant world by listening to 15th Century Chansons.

In this eighteenth broadcast we hear from Marcel Cobussen, Professor of Auditory Culture at Leiden University, The Netherlands,and editor of the Journal of Sonic Studies, who will be considering music from its silence and its space and debate the need for dialogue and an ethics of listening.

In this nineteenth broadcast in the series we hear from Joanna Norman, Senior Curator at V&A, and Lead Curator for the Scottish Design Galleries at V&A Museum of Design Dundee, who will be talking about listening in the context of the V&A. In particular she will be discussing the museum’s musical instrument collection addressing the paradox of its mute display. Her presentation asks how curators can try to get around the silence of the artefact?

In the twentieth broadcast of the series Thomas Gardner, composer, improviser, teacher, computer programmer and academic, course leader of the MA Sound Arts at the London College of Communication, UAL, will be talking about musical measurements, equality and hierarchy; and put his audience through an exercise of rhythmic counting.

In this twenty-first broadcast we will be hearing from Daniela Cascella, a London-based Italian writer whose work focuses on sound and literature across a range of publications and projects. On the occasion of her presentation she makes her audience read quietly from the text 'Beginning to write after Clarice, after Clarice’s', asking them to listen out for sonic moments in the text.

In this twenty-second broadcast we will be hearing from Holger Schulze, Professor of Musicology at Copenhagen University, Principle Investigator of the Sound Studies lab and founding member of the European Sound Studies Association, who will be introducing the idea of alien forms of listening - and the beginning of talking. 

In this twenty-third and final broadcast in the series we will be hearing from Michael Bull, Professor of Sound Studies at Sussex University, co-editor Sound Studies Journal, and author of many publications on sound and the social sphere, who will be talking about listening to people, air raid sirens, conflict and war.