Seville cathedral: a wedding in heaven

More from the beautiful city of Seville in Spain today, as we visit perhaps its most famous building, the mighty Catedral de Seville.

Inside the almost incalculably-vast Seville Cathedral, we took this field recording which attempts to capture some of the sonic confusion within. The space is so vast that the overriding impression is one of almost endless reverberation, as voices and footsteps echo and blend into one another.

The cathedral’s interior is so vast that it even seems to have its own internal weather system, with gusts of light wind appearing as if from nowhere every so often, clearly audible in the recording.

The best way to get a decent field recording in the cathedral is head in close and zoom in on some of the human interactions and conversations taking place – these are characterised by huge numbers of tourists each led by a guide, speaking everything from English and German to Japanese and Chinese.

So here we have a walkthrough a few tourist groups, after which one of the many chapels in the cathedral announces a wedding about to take place with a fanfare of organs.

Alexander McHattie, who previously contributed to our Quiet Street project, took on this recording and created something appropriately celestial from the field recording, as if a wedding were taking place at the very gates of heaven.

City version:

Memory version: