Leicester Cathedral commissioned four final-year undergraduate BA music technology students to make works for the 10th anniversary of the reinterment of King Richard III. The project, an installation entitled The Last Plantagenet: Stories in Sound, premiered as part of the city-wide Light Up Leicester festival, 12-15 March, 2025. The students crafted immersive sound pieces that were played through eight speakers positioned around Richard III’s tomb. This multi-directional audio experience enveloped listeners with deeply evocative explorations of different aspects of the King’s legacy and his final resting place within the Cathedral.
The students had privileged access to recordings of people involved in the reinterment events, coordinated by oral historian Rebecca Hale. They also made contemporary recordings of other sounds such as church bells, various instruments and voices, and music played on the cathedral’s organ, and they captured others such as the timeless sound of water from the stream that runs close to the Bosworth battlefield where Richard III died on 22 August 1485.
The project was featured in an article in the Leicester Mercury.
