The History of Sound

The story begins in 1917 amid World War I, follows the postwar era through the 1920s, and chronicles Lionel's shift from student to family man and conductor. It culminates in 1980 as an ethnomusicologist revisits a century of memories via a box of wax cylinders.

Locations stretch from the Boston conservatory halls to rural Kentucky farms and Maine coastlines, then traverse Europe to Italy and Oxford as the memory of a lifelong romance unfolds. The landscapes frame a decades-spanning tale of music, work, and family duty, with country manors, campuses, and seaside towns shaping the emotional map.

🎶 Music as Memory

Folk tunes bind lovers and strangers, turning songs into archives that outlive individuals. The melodies travel with the characters across miles and decades, preserving moments otherwise lost to time. Music becomes a living thread linking youth, war, love, and grief.

💞 Love Across Time

Two lives cross in youth and are later separated by distance, duty, and death, yet their bond lingers in letters, recordings, and shared songs. The film examines how affection survives through upheaval, demanding memory and reinvention. The relationship shifts from romance to a chosen memory that guides the present.

🗃️ Archive of Voices

The journey across states and countries doubles as an ethnographic mission to record folk voices on wax cylinders. The endeavor reveals who gets included in history and whose stories are lost, highlighting the fragility of memory archives. The final revelation ties the archive to the personal history of Lionel and David.

🕰️ Time and Loss

Distance and time deepen a sense of absence, culminating in the revelation of David's death and the unspoken acts that followed. Lionel's lifelong pursuit becomes a quest to reconcile with a past that's gone but not forgotten. The film uses time as a character, shaping memory as something you actively carry forward.