Words and Music

This is an excellent new series pairing words and music. Today:

From London to Paris
Sunday 25 February 2007 22:15-0:00 (Radio 3)

Sophie Okonedo and Kenneth Cranham read a selection of poetry and prose around the theme of two great cities, from Samuel Johnson, Wordsworth and Verlaine to George Orwell and Fleur Adcock. The programme includes music by Gibbons, Noel Coward, Elgar, Pierre Boulez and Yves Montand.

Producer's Note

In putting together this sequence of words and music around London and Paris, I've chosen poems and prose which bind both cities together: the beauty and ugliness, the majestic and the mundane, the city as a symbol of decay, but also a place of love, a place of fear and intimidation or a refuge for immigrants.

But, the sound of the cities is very different - from Francaix's Galop, the grainy chanson La Grande Cite from Yves Montand, to Vaughan Williams' atmospheric London Symphony and Elgar's grand Cockaigne Overture.

I selected music to complement the readings: TS Eliot reading from 'The Wasteland' with the spare music of Meredith Monk, Stefan Zweig's description of Paris as a city of youth with the exuberant music of Django Reinhardt, and Reich's Piano Phase which reflected the repetitive momentum of the London underground in Seamus Heaney's 'District and Circle'.

Jessica Isaacs (producer)

Oh, I listened to the latest Words and Music that follows man's development from infant joy to old age. It was breathtaking and so well-designed. I heard Pem in Alium for the very first time in the program and was in transport.

Also an Emily Dickinson I've not come across was read:

Experience is the angled Road
Preferred against the Mind
By -- Paraodox -- the Mind itself -
Presuming it to lead

Quite Opposite -- How complicate
The Discipline of Man -
Compelling Him to choose Himself
His Preapponted Pain

Reminds me a little of Alexander Pope....

Transfigured Night
Sunday 11 March 2007 22:15-0:00 (Radio 3)

An unpresented sequence of poetry and music that takes Richard Dehmel's poem Transfigured Night as a starting point for a theme around night and dreams.

Simon Russell Beale and Emma Fielding read a selection from Longfellow, Poe, Milton, Gerald Manley Hopkins with archive readings from Dylan Thomas and Michael Longley.

Music includes Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht, Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit and Takemitsu's Dreamtime.

Producer's note

This sequence starts and ends with Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht (Transfigured Night). Night becomes the thread for the programme which is at times a comfort (as in Longfellow's 'Hymn to the Night'), terrifying (Grave's 'A Child's Nightmare'), threatening ('Macbeth'), mysterious (Auden's 'This lunar beauty'). But it is also at night that the truth will out (Larkin's 'Lying in bed' and Richard Dehmel's poem 'Transfigured Night').

I selected music which for me complemented the poetry. Lawes' hymn-like fantasy seemed to match Longfellow's praise of night and the purity of Holborne's lullaby for cittern reflected William Blake's 'Cradle Song'. The menacing nature of night (Pushkin's 'Rememberance') and the "dark agents" of 'Macbeth' are reflected in Honneger's brooding third symphony. Restless sleep (as in Whitman's poem) seemed to lead naturally to the ebb and flow of Bach's solo violin sonata and the seductive poem of Auden, 'This lunar beauty', reminded me of Miles Davis' dark and smokey Round Midnight. Finally, I ended with the rich orchestral version of Verklaerte Nacht with Richard Dehmel's programme and you hear in words and music a man and woman walking off into the moonlight.

Jessica Isaacs (producer)

Details of Readings and Music
Times are from start of programme

00:00:00
SCHOENBERG
Verklaerte Nacht (string sextet version)
Members of Ensemble Intercontemporain
Pierre Boulez (director)
SONY SMK 48 465
Track 5

00:02:11
LAWES
Fantasy (Consort Sett a 6 in F major)
Concordia
Mark Levy (director)
METRONOME MET CD 1045
Track 1

00:02:28
HENRY LONGFELLOW
Hymn to the night
Simon Russell Beale (reader)

00:06:05
BERG
Nacht (7 early songs)
Brigitte Balleys (soprano)
German Symphony Orchestra Berlin
Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor)
DECCA 436 567-2
Track 1

00:09:40
WILLIAM BLAKE
Cradle Song
Emma Fielding (reader)

00:10:13
HOLBORNE
Lullaby
Dowland Consort
Jakob Lindberg (director)
BIS CD 469
Track 18

00:12:41
ARTIE SHAW
Nightmare
Artie Shaw and his Orchestra
NIMBUS NI 2008
Track 2

00:13:12
ROBERT GRAVES
A Child's nightmare
Simon Russell Beale (reader)

00:14:58
MESSIAEN
Canyon des etoiles (extract)
Orchestre Philharmonique de France
Myung-Whun Chung (conductor)
DG 471 617-2
Track 1

00:16:58
RACHMANINOV
Night is sorrowful (Op.26 No.12)
Joan Rodgers (soprano)
Howard Shelley (piano)
CHANDOS CHAN 9644
Track 17

00:19:18
PUSHKIN
Remembrance
Emma Fielding (reader)

00:20:26
SHAKESPEARE
Come seeling night.(extract from Arden edition of Macbeth)
Simon Russell Beale (reader)

00:21:01
HONEGGER
Symphony No.3 'Liturgique' (last movement)
Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra
Mario Klemens (conductor)
HARMONIA MUNDI PR 250 000
Track 7

00:30:41
CHOPIN
Nocturne in F major (Op.15 No.1)
Murray Perahia (piano)
SONY SK 64399
Track 7

00:31:30
POE
Dream within a dream
Emma Fielding (reader)

00:36:08
DYLAN THOMAS
In my craft and my art
Dylan Thomas (reader)

00:37:27
MILTON
Methought I saw
Simon Russell Beale (reader)

00:38:29
HANDEL
Oh Sleep why dost though leave me? (Semele, HWV 58)
Kathleen Battle (Semele)
English Chamber Orchestra
John Nelson (conductor)
DG 435 782-2
CD 2 Track 6

00:41:39
MICHAEL LONGLEY
Insomnia
Michael Longley (reader)

00:42:03
LIGETI
En suspens (Etudes pour piano)
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
SONY SK 62308
Track 11

00:43:10
WHITMAN
In midnight sleep
Emma Fielding (reader)

00:44:35
BACH
Adagio (Violin Sonata in C major, BWV.1005)
Thomas Zehetmair (violin)
TELDEC 9031 76138-2
CD 2 Track 6

00:48:07
SIDNEY
With how sad steps, O moon
Simon Russell Beale (reader)

00:49:06
SCHUBERT
An den Mond (D.259)
Matthias Goerne (baritone)
Andreas Haefliger (piano)
DECCA 452 917-2
Track 8

00:51:46
AUDEN
This lunar beauty
Emma Fielding (reader)

00:52:50
MILES DAVIS
Round Midnight (extract)
Miles Davis (trumpet)
John Coltrane (tenor saxophone)
Red Garland (piano)
Paul Chambers (bass)
Philly Joe Jones (drums)
PRESTIGE OJCCD 347-2
Track 3

00:54:53
BYRON
So, we'll go no more a roving
Simon Russell Beale (reader)

00:55:21
LAWES
Drink tonight on the moonshine
Hilliard Ensemble
HARMONIA MUNDI HMC 901153
Track 4

00:57:13
SHAKESPEARE
Sonnet 27
Simon Russell Beale (reader)

00:58:12
GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS
I wake and feel the fall of dark
Emma Fielding (reader)

00:59:30
IVES
The Unanswered Question
Michael Sachs (trumpet)
The Cleveland Orchestra
Christoph von Dohnanyi (conductor)
DECCA 443 172-2
Track 6

01:05:29
BRAHMS
Ballade in B major (Andante con moto) (Op.10 No.4)
Daniel Barenboim (piano)
ELATUS 0927 49562-2
Track 4

01:12:48
WORDSWORTH
The Prelude (extract)
Simon Russell Beale (reader)

01:14:02
MARGARET ATTWOOD
Night Poem
Emma Fielding (reader)

01:15:30
TAKEMITSU
Dreamtime (extract)
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Hiroyuki Iwaki (conductor)
ABC 8.77000 6
Track 1

01:18:57
RAVEL
Le Gibet (Gaspard de la nuit)
Artur Pizarro (piano)
LINN CKD 290
Track 3

01:25:55
COWARD
The Dream is over
Noel Coward (singer)
Carroll Gibbons (piano)
ASV CD AJA 5126
Track 5

01:29:30
LARKIN
Lying in bed
Emma Fielding (reader)

01:30:34
LORCA (trans. MERRYN WILLIAMS)
Ballad of the moon
Simon Russell Beale (reader)

01:32:02
SCHOENBERG
Verklaerte Nacht (arr. for string orchestra)
Norwegian Chamber Orchestra
Iona Brown (director)
CHANDOS CHAN 9616
Track 1

01:34:26
RICHARD DEHMEL (trans. DAVID GALLAGHER)
Transfigured Night
Simon Russell Beale (reader)

Words and music is rapidly becoming one of the most interesting programmes on Radio 3.

By the Sea
Sunday 18 March 2007 22:30-0:00 (Radio 3)

Fiona Shaw and Alex Jennings read a selection of poetry and prose on a sea theme from Elizabeth Bishop, Michael Longley, Charles Dickens, John Masefieldand Hugo Williams, with music inspired by the sea by Charles Trenet, Benjamin Britten, Mozart and Mendelssohn.

Producer's note

In putting together this sequence I began by thinking of the hymn 'Eternal Father Strong to Save'. When I was growing up in West Cornwall we sang this at school every time there was a disaster at sea - it's a song that's very familiar to any one who lives near the coast.

In the programme you'll hear Benjamin's Britten's interpretation in 'Noye's Fludd'. The different moods of the sea thread through the sequence - Rimsky Korsakov's 'Scheherazade' around readings from 'David Copperfield', John Adams' 'Harmonium' around Elizabeth Bishop's mystic poem 'At the Fishhouses', Charles Trenet's 'La Mer' with Billy Collins' poem about the joys of the sea, 'Walking the Atlantic' and John Surman's 'The Road to St Ives' with a recording of the Cornish poet Charles Causley reading 'Morwenstow'.

Fiona McLean (producer)

Details of Readings and Music
Times are from start of programme

00:00:00
HUGO WILLIAMS
The Sea
Alex Jennings (reader)

00:00:08
CHARLES TRENET
La Mer
The Extraordinary Garden
EMI CDP7944642
Track 20

00:01:07
BILLY COLLINS
Walking the Atlantic
Fiona Shaw (reader)

00:01:43
ARNOLD BAX
Mediterranean
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Bryden Thomson (conductor)
CHAN 8494

00:05:32
OGDEN NASH
Pretty Halcyon Days
Alex Jennings (reader)

00:07:10
STEPHEN SONDHEIM
By the Sea
Sweeney Todd - Original Cast
Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou
Disc 2 Track 3
RCA 33792RC

00:10:42
TORU TAKEMITSU
Toward the Sea: The Night
London Sinfonietta
Esa-Pekka Salonen
John Williams (guitar)
Sebastian Bell (alto flute)
Gareth Hulse (oboe d'amore)
SONY CLASSICAL SK 46720

00:12:39
TED HUGHES
Relic
Fiona Shaw (reader)

00:14:46
CHARLES IVES
A Sea Dirge
Complete Songs Volume IV
ALBANY TROY 080

00:16:57
ALICE OSWALD
Sea Sonnet
Fiona Shaw (reader)

00:17:04
PHILIP GLASS
Glassworks: Floe
Michael Riesman (conductor)
SONY CLASSICAL SMK87968

00:17:50
JOHN KEATS
On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer
Alex Jennings (reader)

00:17:39
MOZART
Cosi Fan Tutte: Soave sia il vento
Philharmonia Orchestra
Karl Bohm (conductor)
Elizabeth Schwarzkopf
EMI CMS 7 69330 2

00:21:43
JOHN SURMAN
Road To St Ives: Marazion
Track 11
ECM 1418 843 849-2

00:24:19
CHARLES CAUSLEY
Morwenstow
Alex Jennings (reader)

00:24:01
JOHN ADAMS
Harmonium: Wild Nights
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
Vance George (director)
NONESUCH 7559795492

00:30:58
ELIZABETHBISHOP
At the Fishhouses
Fiona Shaw (reader)

00:33:36
JOHN IRELAND
Songs: Sea Fever
Jonathan Lemalu (bass baritone)
Roger Vignoles (piano)
EMI 7243 575203 2

00:35:42
EWAN MacCOLL
Blow, Boys, Blow
Banks of Newfoundland
TRADITION TCD 1024

00:38:04
TOM PAULIN
Sea Wind
Alex Jennings (reader)

00:40:08
RIMSKY KORSAKOV
Scheherazade, Suite Symphonique
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Charles Mackerras (conductor)
Kees Hulsmann (solo violin)
TELARC CD-80208

00:40:15
CHARLES DICKENS
David Copperfield
Alex Jennings (reader)

00:50:23
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
Alex Jennings and Fiona Shaw (readers)

00:51:49
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
Noye's Fludd
English Opera Group Orchestra
Norman Del Mar
LONDON 436 397-2

00:54:38
SEAMUS HEANEY
Lovers on Aran
Fiona Shaw (reader)

00:53:19
FREDERICK KEEL
Trade Winds
Jonathan Lemalu (bass baritone)
Roger Vignoles (piano)
EMI 7243 5 75203 2

00:57:36
DEBUSSY
Preludes: Voiles
Krystian Zimerman (piano)
Deutsche Grammophon 435 773-2

01:01:58
WALT WHITMAN
The World Below the Brine
Fiona Shaw (reader)

01:03:07
DEBUSSY
The Nocturnes: Sirenes
The Cleveland Orchestra
Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor)
DECCA 467 428-2

01:13:06
JOHN MASEFIELD
Sea Fever
Alex Jennings (reader)

01:14:11
SIBELIUS
The Tempest
Suite No 2: Prospero
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Neeme Jarvi (conductor)
BIS CD 448

01:15:53
T.S. ELIOT
Four Quartets
Fiona Shaw (reader)

01:16:40
PETER MAXWELL DAVIES
Choral Works: Sea Runes
BBC Singers
Simon Joly (conductor)
COLLINS 14632

01:18:33
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Dover Beach
Alex Jennings (reader)

01:21:50
FRANK BRIDGE
The Sea - Suite for Orchestra
Seascape
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Charles Grove (conductor)
EMI 7243 566855 2

Slavery and Freedom
Sunday 25 March 2007 22:30-0:00 (Radio 3)

The poet and novelist Jackie Kay introduces a selection of poetry and prose on the theme of slavery and freedom including work by Langston Hughes, Fred D'Aguiar, Emily Dickinson, Robert Burns and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Including music inspired by slavery and freedom by Bessie Smith, Paul Robeson, Beethoven and The Blind Boys of Alabama.

Presenter's Note

In my edition of Poetry of the Negro, edited by Langston Hughes, there is a section entitled Poetry by Non-negroes. I liked the idea of that. I wanted to choose poems by black and white writers to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.
I've chosen Robert Burns, The Slave's Lament, and an extract from Walt Whitman's wonderful Song of Myself, as well as early brilliant black writers like James Weldon Johnson and Paul Laurence Dunbar. I chose African writers like Wole Soyinka - whose Telephone Conversation I remembering making a huge impact on me at school. I chose the American poet Audre Lorde who I was so excited to discover in the early eighties. I wanted a mixture of contemporary poets and poets from the past to carry us through these two hundred years. I chose the Kreutzner Sonata because it was originally written for a black violinist to play.
Music and poetry for me walk like twins through my life.
The music and poetry we love forms part of our own biographies. Someone else is singing your story. There's a mixture of blues and jazz as well as Scottish folk and African music here. Music is one way that we all can really value our freedom. We can lose ourselves and find ourselves again in the music. I like the sassiness of Nina Simone's Mississippi Goddam and the raw unplugged voice of Bessie Smith and the bringing it all together voice of Bob Marley with his moving Redemption Song. Ah. I was spoilt for choice.

Hi! I'm a new group member and fairly new BBC Radio 3 listener as well. I only got into it after Tom Paulin's William Blake article was featured in the Guardian, and it mentioned "The Essay" programme. Now I am truly hooked and "Words & Music" has fast become one of my favourites.

The last one I caught up on was the one on the sea and I truly enjoyed it, even though the poetry selection was a wee bit predictable. My favourite poetry selections were the Shakespeare, the Causley and the reading of the Masefield (of course). For music it was the Mozart and MacColl. I'm really looking forward to listening to the latest one.

I agree Amarate. The fusion of words and music is an inspired idea and appeals to the heart and brain. This series is rapidly becoming my one f my favourites.

Today's programme:

William Hope and Yolanda Vasquez read poetry and prose on a theme of Two Americas, North and South including work by Walt Whitman, TS Eliot, Robert Frost, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. With music inspired by the Americas from Villa-Lobos, Aaron Copland, Astor Piazzolla and Charles Ives.

The idea behind this edition of Words and Music is to show some of the faces - musical and poetic - of the two Americas, North and South.

I've chosen poems and prose which illuminate the beauty and the underside of the countries, the natural beauty of the landscape and the industrialised cities.

The sounds of the countries are very different - from Carlos Chavez's imagined Aztec music in 'Xochopilli', Aaron Copland's evocative 'Letter from Home', the chants and dances of Native Americans, Astor Piazzolla's Nuevo tangos, Randy Newman's 'Louisiana 1927' and Samuel Barber's 'Adajio for Strings'.

From the South you'll hear Pablo Neruda's beautiful love poem 'Every Day you Play' and Emma Sepulveda-Pulvirenti's 'September 11th 1973, Santiago Chile' and from the North Allen Ginsberg's 'Who Runs America?' alongside Walt Whitman's 'Prairie Sunset' and the closing passage of 'The Great Gatsby', F.Scott Fitzgerald's story of the disintegration of the American Dream.

Running Order

00:00:00
PABLO NERUDA
Discovers of Chile
Yolanda Vasquez (reader)

00:01:09
VILLA-LOBOS
Bachianas Brasileiras
Villa-Lobos Par Lui-Meme
Choeurs et Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion
Hector Villa-Lobos - conductor
EMI CZS 767229 2A

00:02:55
T.S. ELIOT
Virginia
William Hope (reader)

00:03:32
AARON COPLAND
Nature the Gentlest Mother
Barbara Hendricks - soprano
London Symphony Orchestra
Michael Tilson Thomas - conductor

00:07:44
CARLOS CHAVEZ
Xochipilli - An Imagined Aztec Music
La Camerata (Panamerican Chamber Players)
Eduardo Mata - conductor
DORIAN DOR90215

00:10:32
OCTAVIO PAZ
Sunstone
Yolanda Vasquez (reader)

00:13:54
THE FEARSOME BRAVE
Sacred Spirit - Heal the Soul
VIRGIN CDVX 2753

00:14:56
ALLEN GINSBERG
Who Runs America?
William Hope (reader)

00:16:12
LEONARD BERNSTEIN
America
West Side Story
New York Philharmonic Orchestra
Leonard Bernstein - conductor
COLUMBIA SK 60724

00:20:47
AUGUST KLEINZAHLER
Trolley
August Kleinzahler (reader)

00:21:46
STEVE REICH
Different Trains
America Before the War
Kronos Quartet
ELEKTRA/NONESUCH 7559791762

00:24:27
ee cummings
next to god america i
William Hope (reader)

00:25:14
RANDY NEWMAN
Louisiana 1927
Good Old Boys
REPRISE 927 214-2

00:28:08
MANUEL PONCE
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
Second Movement
Music Mexicana
Henryk Szeryng - violin
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Enrique Batiz - conductor
ASV CDDCA866

00:35:31
EMMA SEPULVEDA-PULVIRENTI
September 11th, 1973
Yolanda Vasquez (reader)

00:36:17
SAMUEL BARBER
Adajio for Strings
London Symphony Orchestra
Michael Tilson Thomas - conductor

00:44:44
THOM GUNN
The J Car
Thom Gunn (reader)

00:47:28
VILLA-LOBOS
Prelude in A-Minor
Julian Bream Plays Villa-Lobos
RCA 89813

00:52:53
PABLO NERUDA
Every Day You Play
William Hope (reader)

00:54:53
CARLOS CHAVEZ
Sinfonia Romantica
New York Stadium Symphony Orchestra
Carlos Chavez - conductor
PHILIPS 422 305-2

01:00:07
AARON COPLAND
Letter from Home
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin - conductor
EMI CDC-7 49766 2

01:00:18
WALT WHITMAN
A Prairie Sunset
William Hope (reader)

01:06:47
ROBERT FROST
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Yolanda Vasquez (reader)

01:07:20
CHARLES IVES
Fugue in Four Keys on 'The Shining Shore'
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin - conductor
RCA 09026-61222-2

01:10:59
VIRGINIA RODRIGUES
Raca Negra - Nos
HANNIBAL HNCD1448

01:14:40
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
New England
William Hope (reader)

01:15:24
ELLIOTT CARTER
Figment
Chamber Music
Arditti String Quartet
MONTAIGNE MO782091

01:20:29
OCTAVIO PAZ
Along Galeana Street
William Hope (reader)

01:21:15
HECTOR VILLA-LOBOS
Bachianas Brasileiras
Villa-Lobos Par Lui-Meme
Choeurs et Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion
Hector Villa-Lobos - conductor
EMI CZS 767229 2A

01:23:28
GABRIELA MISTRAL
Night
Yolanda Vasquez (reader)

01:24:03
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA
Milonga del Angel
Luna
The New Tango Sex-tet
HEMISPHERE
CDEMC3723

01:30:12
JOHN ADAMS
Tromba Lontana
BBC Symphony Orchestra
John Adams - conductor
BBCLJ30012

01:34:19
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Great Gatsby
William Hope (reader)

01:34:58
AARON COPLAND
Silent City
Mark Hill - English Horn
Neil Baum - Trumpet
New York Chamber Symphony
Gerard Schwarz - conductor
EMI CDC 7 49095

Tonight:

To tie in with the Sunday Feature on Akram Khan, Words and Music is an uninterrupted sequence of music, poetry and prose on the theme of dance. Including works by Thomas Moore, Laurence Binyon, Rainer Maria Rilke, Philip Larkin, Roger McGough and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and music by Johann Strauss, Claude Debussy and Louis Andriessen.

Dance is all embracing, and yet also a very personal affair. From the intimacy of Laurence Binyon's vignette, Little Dancers, to the sweaty, pulsating, grime of Alicia Oistriker's Saturday Night, the words and music included in this sequence trace a line starting with Thomas Moore's international celebration of dance and Lully's Grand March from Le Bourgois Gentilhomme, through the more esoteric spots of sunshine dancing on the water in Amy Lowell's Bath, to the horror of A Square Dance by Roger McGough.

The musical journey echoes that of the poems. Rather than literal interpretations of the words, or always using music written for dance, in many cases I've chosen music that conjures up the atmosphere created by the poetry. Philip Glass's hypnotic score to the film Koyaanisqatsi originally accompanied the movie's repeated patterns of motion. I've used it to create a lyricism of movement suggested by the poetry of Binyon and Larkin. Bach accompanies Yeats' girl dancing on the "leaf sown, new mown, smooth grass plot of the garden" where all is not as it seems, and it's the abject dance rhythms of Shostakovich's most inward looking and most personal of string quartets that lead towards the square dance of Roger McGough's Flanders Fields.

There are also literal interpretations however. It's remarkable how when placing Goethe's Dance of Death with Danse Macabre by Saint-Saens the two fit together like hand in glove. The Drum and Bass of Sub Focus and Saturday Night weave in and out of each other seamlessly, and the Italian Tarantella joins Rilke's Spanish Dancer bringing out the subtlety of the flaming colours in the fire.

Music, dance and poetry finally combine in Baudelaire's sensuous Evening Harmony and Arvo Part's Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror). The two create an almost motionless, introspective, melancholy waltz, bringing the sequence to a close.

Jeremy Evans (Producer)

To Music
Sunday 22 April 2007 22:45-0:00 (Radio 3)

Diana Rigg and Samuel West read a selection of poetry on the theme of music. Including Elizabeth Jennings's First Music, Andrew Marvell's The Empire of Music, DH Lawrence's Piano and TS Eliot's Four Quartets, and WB Yeats reading his poem The Fiddler of Donney.

Music includes Webern's arrangement of Bach's A Musical Offering, songs by Dowland and Schubert and Seamus Heaney's reading of The Given Note accompanied by piper Liam O'Flynn.

Producer's note

For this week's Words and Music, I have chosen poetry on the theme of music: starting with Richard Barnfield's poem which praises music and poetry, and ending with an extract from TS Eliot's Four Quartets about the word and music. The range includes Sarah Maguire's affectionate portrait of 'My father's piano', Siegfried Sassoon's description of a 'Concert party' at an Egyptian Base Camp where music is an escape, Larkin's tribute to a jazz legend, Sidney Bechet and Seamus Heaney's 'The Given Note' with music played by the piper, Liam O'Flynn.

I chose music to complement these poems. Beethoven's String Quartet Op.135 following Baudelaire's tribute to the composer, Auden's poem 'The composer' followed by Britten's setting of Auden in Hymn to St Cecilia and Messiaen's shimmering Vingt Regards reflecting the "music breathing of statues" in Rilke's poem - To Music.

Today:

Anthony Calf and Rebecca Saire read poems in an uninterrupted sequence of music, poetry and prose on the theme of the seasons. Including A Song of the Seasons by Alfred Perceval Graves, Thomas Hardy's During Wind and Rain, Philip Larkin's And now the leaves suddenly lose strength, and AE Housman's Loveliest of Trees. With music by Vivaldi, Astor Piazzolla, Tchaikovsky, Debussy and Benjamin Britten.

Taking spring as the starting point, this edition of Words and Music follows the changing seasons of the year. Beginning with On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring by Delius and ending with Vivaldi's Winter, the poetry and music are loosely tied together by movements from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. The programme traces a path from the birth of the year, through the still heat of the summer, the ochre of autumn, winter's dark days, and ending with a glimmer of hope and a hint of spring.

You'll hear a BBC recording of Ted Hughes reading Spring Nature Notes made in 1977. There's Housman's Loveliest of trees and Spring by Thomas Nashe, set by Benjamin Britten in his Spring Symphony.

Thomas Hardy's During wind and rain alludes to thecyclical nature of the renewal of the seasons whilst Amy Lowell's Dog-days talks ofa mutter of thunder in the summer air.

The thundering of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and the hubbub of Messiaen's birds in Chronochromie give way to the stillness of Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915. The autumnal North Wind on the Aeolian harp is complemented by Strauss' Four Last Songs, and the visceral energy of Harrison Birtwistle's Earth Dances takes us from Purcell through to Ives' Unanswered question and finally Vivaldi.

Jeremy Evans (Producer)

A Dante Sequence
Sunday 6 May 2007 22:15-0:00 (Radio 3)

Dante's journey from the infernal underworld to Paradise in The Divine Comedy has inspired writers and composers through the ages.

In this sequence, poems by WH Auden, Samuel Beckett, TS Eliot and Stevie Smith are interwoven with translations of the original by Benedict Flynn and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and music by Liszt, Messiaen and Salvatore Sciarrino.

A Dante Sequence
Readers: Heathcote Williams, Claire Higgins, John Shrapnel, Anton Lesser, and the late Bob Peck.

"Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them - there is no third." So wrote TS Eliot, for whom Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy was a life-long inspiration. The Florentine poet's masterpiece - a visionary journey from the infernal underworld of Hell to a paradise of universal harmony - was written in the early years of the 14th century, yet such is the power and timelessness of its poetry that its influence has permeated seven centuries of literature - much of it in the English language. Chaucer, Milton, Byron, Keats, Longfellow, the Brownings, Shelley, Tennyson, TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, Stevie Smith, Samuel Beckett and WH Auden are among the many great writers who have echoed, imitated, translated and been inspired by Dante.

This sequence offers a counterpoint of 'Words and Music' with The Divine Comedy as its focal point. Extracts from Benedict Flynn's recent translation - a vivid, contemporary account of Dante - are read by Heathcote Williams and intercut with a late 19th-century version by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Along with Geoffrey Chaucer (for whom medieval Italian poetry held a particular allure), one of the earliest English writers to be inspired by Dante was the anonymous author of the 14th-century dream sequence 'Pearl'. This is an account of a bereft parent who has lost a child - the 'Pearl' of the title - and who travels to another world, an intoxicating garden of mysterious marvels, in which he meets his dead daughter in the bliss of Paradise. The dream is, perhaps indirectly but nonetheless strongly, influenced by Dante's journey into the afterlife, his encounter with his deceased beloved, Beatrice, and their ascent together to Paradise. This 'Words and Music' sequence includes two vocal pieces roughly contemporary with 'Pearl' from the English manuscript known as 'Old Hall: 'Salve porta paradisi' and 'Qualis est dilectus', the ecstatic words and sonorous harmonies of which complement both medieval poets' vision of Paradise.

Over two centuries later, John Milton was introduced to the writing of Dante at school, where he learnt Italian, and later during his travels in Italy, where he met the great Dante scholar Bonmatthei. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, Milton'sexploration of man's Fall and his salvation, are full of Dantean echoes, notably the vivid descriptions of Hell and Heaven which draw directly on imagery from The Divine Comedy. Milton was a friend of the composer Henry Lawes, whose dark, brooding consort music is used in the sequence alongside readings from Paradise Lost. We also hear 'Possente spirto' - Orpheus's incantation to Charon, ferryman of the River Styx in Hades, from Monteverdi's Orfeo.

The Romantic period gave rise to a flood of Dante translations and imitations, among the less well-known of which is an eloquent and stylish version of Inferno by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. "Dante's poetry seems to come down in hail rather than in rain," she commented to her husband Robert, expressively suggesting the sharp and chilling power of Dante's descriptive writing.

Like the Brownings, Franz Liszt was an ardent Italophile and several of his works were directly inspired by his readings of both Dante and Petrarch. His so-called 'Dante Sonnet', which we hear near the beginning of the programme, is a piano transcription of a song by Hans von Bulow, setting one of Dante's love poems to Beatrice in La Vita nuova - 'Tanto gentile e tanto onesta'.

It was perhaps the 20th century that produced some of the greatest literary works inspired by Dante's grim picture of the underworld as well as his radiant vision of Paradise: TS Eliot's Little Gidding; Auden's In the Year of my Youth, Stevie Smith's Francesca in Winter and Ezra Pound's Cantos, extracts from all of which are included in the programme. The stark, gritty language of these poets seems best reflected in music by their contemporaries: Britten's third string quartet - an aptly visionary swan-song, itself inspired by Italy - flows naturally after the words of his close artistic collaborator WH Auden; while Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time - an exploration in sound of the end of time and the beginning of eternity - mirrors the apocalyptic and seraphic extremes of the Commedia.

Chamber and instrumental music by the contemporary Sicilian composer Salvatore Sciarrino evocatively suggests the ghostly sights and sounds which Dante and his guide Virgil encounter on their journey: sighs, shrieks and the exhalations of agonised breath as the tormented souls of Hell endeavour to speak of their pain; the breathy whispering of the murdered lovers, Paolo and Francesca, consigned to float forever in the air fanned by infernal flames; or the ghoulish cries of souls shaped as disfigured trees. Sciarrino seems to be haunted by Dante's images of the underworld: indeed, 700 years on, The Divine Comedy is still exerting its extraordinary and profound influence.

Running Order

22:15:00
READING
The Divine Comedy - Canto 1
Extracts translated by Benedict Flynn 1'40"
Read by Heathcote Williams
From CD: Naxos NA 431712

And trans. Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1'50
Read by Claire Higgins

22:18:30
MUSIC
Liszt: Dante Sonnet ('Tanto gentile e tanto onesta') 6'29
Leslie Howard (piano)
Hyperion CDA 67004

22:25:00
READING
Dante: The Divine Comedy - Inferno
Extracts translated by Benedict Flynn 2'30
Read by Heathcote Williams

22:27:30
MUSIC
Thomas Damett: Salve porta paradis (Old Hall MS) 1'48
Hilliard Ensemble
EMI CDC 7 54111-2 T 24

22:29:00
READING 2'20
Dante: The Divine Comedy - Inferno (3 extracts over music)
Extracts translated by Benedict Flynn
Read by Heathcote Williams

22:29:50
MUSIC
Salvatore Sciarrino: Lo spazio inverso 3'00

22:33:00
MUSIC
Monteverdi: Possente spirto (from Orfeo) 8'25
Anthony Rolfe Johnson (tenor)
English Baroque Soloists / John Eliot Gardiner
DG 419 251-2

22:41:10
READING
Milton: "Beyond this flood" from Paradise Lost 2'36
Read by Anton Lesser
Naxos NA 935012

22:43:40
William Lawes: Pavan in G minor 5'45
Rose Consort of Viols
Naxos 8.550601

22:43:20
READING 1'00
Dante: The Divine Comedy - Inferno
Extracts translated by Benedict Flynn
Read by Heathcote Williams

22:50:30
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time - 2nd mvt
Bell/Isserlis/Mustonen/Collins
Decca 452899-2 T 5 2'40

22:53:00
READING
Dante: The Divine Comedy - Inferno 4'07
Extracts translated by Benedict Flynn
Read by Heathcote Williams

22:57:00
Sciarrino: L'orizzone luminoso 3'47
Mario Caroli (flute) Srradivarius STR 33598 T6

22:59:00
READING:
Stevie Smith: Francesca in Winter 1'06
Read by Claire Higgins

23:01:00
READING
TS Eliot: Little Gidding (extract) 5'02
Read by John Shrapnel

23:06:00
Anon. (13th-century Italy) Lamento di Tristan (extract) 1'32
The Dufay Collective

23:07:40
READING
WH Auden: 'In the Year of my Youth' (extract)1'39
Read by John Shrapnel

23:09:10
Benjamin Britten: String Quartet no. 3 (last mvt)
Amadeus Quartet
London 425 715-2 T8 8'23

Segue
23:18:00
Sciarrino: Omaggio a Burri (extract)

23:18:05
READING
Dante: The Divine Comedy - Inferno Canto XIII 1'05
Extracts translated by Benedict Flynn
Read by Heathcote Williams

23:19:10
Sciarrino: Omaggio a Burri (extract, cont.)

23:19:30
READING
Robin Robertson: The Woods of Suicides (after Dante Inferno, Canto XIII) 2'14
Read by John Shrapnel

23:22:00
READING
Samuel Beckett: Alba
Read by Claire Higgins

23:23:00
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time (7th mvt)
Bell/Isserlis/Mustonen/Collins
Decca 452 899-2 Tr 11 6'50

23:29:40
READING
Milton: Paradise Lost - "At last the sacred influence of light" 1'17
Read by Anton Lesser

23:31:00
Nicholas Lanier: 'Like hermit poor' 3'14
Paul Agnew (tenor), Christopher Wilson (lute)

23:34:10
READING
Dante: The Divine Comedy - Inferno Canto XXXIV
Extracts translated by Benedict Flynn
Read by Heathcote Williams

23:35:30
READING:
Anon. (14th century): Pearl - "My soul forsook that spot in space"
Read by the late Bob Peck
BBC archive recording DAT OLN 814/98BB0923

23:36:50
Anon. De ce que fol pense (after Pierre des Molins) 2'44
Andrew Lawrence-King (harp)

23:39:30
Dante: The Divine Comedy - Paradise(extract) 1'50
Extracts translated by Benedict Flynn
Read by Heathcote Williams

23:41:30
Forest: Qualis est dilectus (Old Hall MS)
The Hilliard Ensemble

23:45:00
READING
Milton: Paradise Lost - "They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld of Paradise" 0'48"
Read by Anton Lesser

23:45:50
William Lawes: Consort set in A minor for viols 4'07
Rose Consort Naxos 8550601

23:48:50
Ezra Pound: Canto CXVII - "I have tried to write Paradise" 0'25"
Read by John Shrapnel

23:50:15
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time - last movement
Bell/Isserlis/Mustonen/Collins

Altitude
Sunday 13 May 2007 22:20-0:00 (Radio 3)

A sequence of poetry and music inspired by the world seen from a great height, the flight of birds and the romance of mountain tops.

Musical evocations of mountains by Sibelius, Richard Strauss and Liszt sit with poems by Shelley and Petrarch. Anton Lesser and Lesley Sharp read works by Ted Hughes, Pablo Neruda and EE Cummings which describe the world of birds in flight, and music by composers including Haydn, J.S. Bach and George Benjamin evokes the same subject.

Producer's Note

In this programme I wanted to explore the idea of altitude, the world of mountain tops, flying through the air and viewing the landscape from above. I have tried to make this a poetic journey upwards from terra firma (albeit a terra firma several thousand feet above sea level) through the atmosphere and into space.

So we begin with evocations of mountains: Strauss's wonderful, brooding beginning to his Alpine Symphony, and John Evelyn's awestruck response to an alpine walk above the cloudline; and move on to descriptions of clouds in poetry (Shelley) and music (Rimsky-Korsakov). Thereafter we ascend into the realm of birds, with two of the greatest poets of the avian, Ted Hughes and Pablo Neruda, painting contrasting pictures of birds on the wing: one all rapid movement and agility, the other far aloft and still.

We go still higher into the stratosphere with a pair of lyrics about powered flight: Thom Gunn's poem about a plane above Kansas, and Laurie Anderson's delightfully off-beat song set on a commercial airliner. The sequence closes with a trio of poems looking up into the heavens.

Many of my music choices have explicit links with the theme: Liszt and Strauss spent much time in the Alps and reflected this in their music, while the Sibelius symphony, although abstract in conception, was written on a mountainside and is - to me, at least - hugely evocative of the Finnish landscape.

George Benjamin's piece for solo flute, Flight, inspired by the sight of a bird swooping and gliding above the Swiss Alps, was an obvious foil for the Neruda poem of the same title. In other cases the character of the music suggested a connection with the poetry: on reading Ted Hughes's poem A Dove I was reminded of the helter-skelter virtuosity of Peter Racine Fricker's Badinerie, while the Mondonville and Messiaen seemed complementary to the poetry they accompany.

Other connections are more playful: the inclusion of a Bach fugue plays on the fact that the word "fugue" derives from the Italian fuga ("flight"). The final poem, Gerard Manley Hopkins's intimate "I am like a slip of comet", seemed in my mind to blend naturally into the opening bars of Holst's Neptune, whose female chorus fading away into oblivion provides a suitably celestial close.

Thomas Morris (Producer)

Lost in the City of Waters
Sunday 10 June 2007 22:15-0:00 (Radio 3)

Jeremy Irons and Anna Massey read poetry and prose on the theme of Venice.

Including works by Shelley, Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann, with music by Giovanni Gabrieli, Benjamin Britten and Faure.

This week's Words and Music explores Venice as it has captured the imagination of writers and composers. The city conjures up images of late Romantic decadence (Proust/Mann/James) as well as early Romantic revolt against the Napoleonic yoke (Platen/Wordsworth/Gounod/Shelley), Baroque persiflage (Galuppi/Vivaldi) and Renaissance grandeur (Gabrieli/Ruskin).

Running through the sequence are readings from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice which revels in the over-ripe voluptuousness of Venice, intoxicating the senses and threatening reason: the dark-underbelly beneath the glittering surface. This was a theme that inspired Benjamin Britten to write his final opera (2nd piece of music) and his final string quartet (last piece of music).

Salvatore Sciarrino composed his piano piece Lost in the Waters of Venice after he had been to visit the dying Venetian composer Luigi Nono. Death and Venice seem somehow inextricably linked in the imagination. Wagner, having earlier written much of the love music for Tristan in Venice, died there. Britten went on a valedictory last visit when he knew he was about to die.

Venice was also a place for Northern Europeans like Marcel Proust, Henry James and Thomas Mann to venture south in search of wider perspectives and broader horizons. The cliche of slightly-stiff northerners coming to terms with red-hot Italy is captured by the famous 1960s guidebook by J.G Links Venice for Pleasure; a tradition that stretches back to Gilbert and Sullivan (Gondoliers)

Composers wanting to represent La Serenissima in music had 2 "sound effects" to play with: bells and water. The programme starts with the great bell of St Marks. And you can hear it tolling in Schubert's part-song Gondelfahrer. Water is suggested in the lilting 6/8 rhythm of the barcarolles, the songs that the gondoliers supposedly sang as their oars plashed against the waters of the canal. As Gustav von Aschenbach, the narrator of Death in Venice, finally sinks back into the soft black cushions of his gondola, Faure's barcarolle conjures up the swaying motion of his boat. And there is more than one barcarolle in the programme: Faure, Hahn, Gounod and Offenbach. The penultimate piece of music, Le gatorigole is an original 18th century Canzone di Battello (in Venetian dialect) which would have been sung to an amorous couple during a nocturnal outing on the canal.

Today:

Town and Country
Sunday 17 June 2007 22:15-0:00 (Radio 3)

This week's programme explores the theme of Town and Country. The music includes works by Handel, Copland and Vaughan Williams, and Samantha Bond and Tim McInnerny are the readers in poems by (among others) T S Eliot, Wordsworth and John Clare.

This week's Words and Music explores the contrasts between the worlds of town and country, and looks at the ways in which they can meet and intertwine.

Oddly, while poets seem to dislike the town - Wordsworth's hymn to London and its river was one of the relatively few wholly positive poems I could find - composers seem to be happier among its sounds and moods, as shown by Charles Ives's atmospheric Central Park in the Dark, Steve Reich's vibrant City Life, or Richard Rodney Bennett's song Let's Go and Live in the Country (which, despite its title, comes down firmly in favour of purely urban comforts). Yet there is a warm sense of nostalgic romance in Sean O'Brien's 'The Park by the Railway', while Andrew Fusek Peters's 'Last Night I Saw the City Breathing' captures a childish excitement at the way a city's very buildings can appear to come to life when viewed with the right kind of imagination.

Peaens to the country life are easier to come across. John Clare's 'In Hilly-Wood' and Duke Senior's speech from As You Like It both celebrate its qualities as a refuge from noise and bustle, while John Ireland's Amberley Wild Brooks, Ralph Vaughan Williams's A Pastoral Symphony and Aaron Copland's New England Countryside are all musical landscapes of the most affectionate kind. Elsewhere, Clare's poem 'The Flitting' and a passage from nature-writer WH Hudson's autobiographical Far Away and Long Ago both look back on their departure from the rural life as a time of severance with their truer, happier selves.

In their role as link between town and country, railways make several appearances: Edward Thomas recalls a brief ear-opening moment when a train stops at a country halt; John Betjeman's 'Parliament Hill Fields' is a classic celebration of Metroland; Tom Waits observes a down-at-heel world from 'the yellow windows of the evening train', and Scottish poet WS Graham records his breathless arrival at Euston before making encounters with some of the city's great literary ghosts.

Finally, there are poems which examine how town and country can be in conflict while at the same time co-existing. Miriam Waddington sets the characteristics of various North American cities against the 'beautiful green grain elevator' that is Manitoba, Italo Calvino proposes the cosmos as the ideal model for a modern city, and FL Lucas even looks forward to nature's ultimate triumph. But the last word goes to William Carlos Willams's bleak suggestion that 'the country will bring us no peace'.

Transfigured Night
Sunday 24 June 2007 22:15-0:00 (Radio 3)

A sequence of poetry and music taking Richard Dehmel's poem Transfigured Night as a starting point for a theme around night and dreams.

Simon Russell Beale and Emma Fielding read a selection from Longfellow, Poe, Milton, Gerald Manley Hopkins with archive readings from Dylan Thomas and Michael Longley. Music includes Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht, Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit and Takemitsu's Dreamtime.

This sequence starts and ends with Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht (Transfigured Night). Night becomes the thread for the programme which is at times a comfort (as in Longfellow's 'Hymn to the Night'), terrifying (Grave's 'A Child's Nightmare'), threatening ('Macbeth'), mysterious (Auden's 'This lunar beauty'). But it is also at night that the truth will out (Larkin's 'Lying in bed' and Richard Dehmel's poem 'Transfigured Night').

I selected music which for me complemented the poetry. Lawes' hymn-like fantasy seemed to match Longfellow's praise of night and the purity of Holborne's lullaby for cittern reflected Blake's 'Cradle Song'. The menacing nature of night (Pushkin's 'Rememberance') and the "dark agents" of 'Macbeth' are reflected in Honneger's brooding third symphony. Restless sleep (as in Whitman's poem) seemed to lead naturally to the ebb and flow of Bach's solo violin sonata and the seductive poem of Auden, 'This lunar beauty', reminded me of Miles Davis' dark and smokey Round Midnight. Finally, I ended with the rich orchestral version of Verklaerte Nacht with Richard Dehmel's programme and you hear in words and music a man and woman walking off into the moonlight.

The theme of childhood continues:

Dancing in the Wind
Sunday 22 July 2007 22:15-0:00 (Radio 3)

Sara Kestelman and Rory Kinnear read poetry and prose on the theme of childhood. Including Prayer before Birth by Louis MacNeice; Morning Song by Sylvia Plath; Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney; and Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Music includes Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, Rufus Wainwright's The Art Teacher, John Tavener's To a child dancing in the wind, Schumann's Kinderszenen and Hans Kraas' Brundibar.

Childhood has always been a rich source of inspiration for writers and composers - the possibilities are endless. This Words and Music takes a journey through childhood beginning with a child in the womb and closing with the end of childhood. Many of the poems present an adult's view of the child - Ted Hughes with his young daughter in 'Full Moon and Little Frieda', a mother playing the piano to her son in Rainer Maria Rilke's 'From a Childhood' and Robert Browning's 'Rhyme for a child viewing a naked Venus in a painting of 'the Judgement of Paris'. The music around these poems reflects this - Debussy's 'The Snow is Dancing' evoking the lightness and brightness in Sharon Olds' poem about a baby in the womb and John Tavener's beautiful setting of Yeats' 'To a child dancing in the wind'. But some of the poems are the voice of the child themselves and these are much darker. In Louis MacNeice's 'Prayer before birth' a child prays for safety and inveighs against the harshness and ruthlessness of the modern world. Seamus Heaney reads his own poem 'Mid-term Break' in which he remembers being taken home from school after his little brother's death and, in John Burnside's powerful 'Catch-kiss' a young girl remembers the abuse she suffered at the age of six. The music is darker too with Schubert's song 'Erlkonig' telling the story of the death of a child attacked by a supernatural being, in Mahler's 'Kindertotenlieder' and Kurtag's enigmatic 'Mad Girl with the Flaxen Hair'. The programme ends with the final loss of innocence in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies'.

The Beast Within
Sunday 29 July 2007 22:20-0:00

Actress Fiona Shaw introduces a selection of poetry and prose on the theme of animals, including work by Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, William Golding, Les Murray, Lewis Carroll and Paul Durcan. With music by Sibelius, Schumann, Schubert, John Tavener and Poulenc.

Duration:
1 hour 40 minutes

The Beast Within

"Animals began to play a bigger part in my life this year. In April I went to the Galapagos Islands with the artist Dorothy Cross whose work often reflects the power and the mystery of animals in her photographs of beached whales and her video work on jelly fish: this trip was inspired by her research on Darwin and the notion of evolution and language. My role was to provide poems that cut across the quietude that forms the big divide between man and beast. I was stunned by what I saw: the connection between sea lions and tortoises, the way in which animals reflect back to us our own origins and the difference between their unconscious fight for survival and our worrying self consciousness.

I returned refilled with the notion that our survival as humans and as creatures with art in our core is dependent on the animal world and that their preservation is intrinsic to our own. The poems chosen reflect this relationship - the sensuality of John Montague hunting a trout, Gwyneth Lewis' delight in her dog and the reverse anthropomorphism of Paul Durcan imagining himself as a snail in his prime lying in the famous neolithic grave at Newgrange with mud in his ears. But perhaps most inspirational is the great Ted Hughes who takes the beasts of our collective memory and with deft modernism makes Ovid's poems come to life: in Actaeon we see the hunter transformed into a deer and savaged by his own hounds when a curse falls upon him for spying on Diana the goddess. Alongside the poems you'll hear Ravel's 'Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune', James Macmillan's wonderfully expressive organ concerto A Scotch Bestiary which explores the connections between man and beast and Elvis Costello's balletic adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Il Sogno. All explore the world we must share". Fiona Shaw

A Song of the Seasons
Sunday 5 August 2007 22:30-0:00 (Radio 3)

Anthony Calf and Rebecca Saire read poems in an uninterrupted sequence of music, poetry and prose on the theme of the seasons. Including A Song of the Seasons by Alfred Perceval Graves, Thomas Hardy's During Wind and Rain, Philip Larkin's And now the leaves suddenly lose strength, and AE Housman's Loveliest of Trees. With music by Vivaldi, Astor Piazzolla, Tchaikovsky, Debussy and Britten.

Taking spring as the starting point, this edition of Words and Music follows the changing seasons of the year. Beginning with On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring by Delius and ending with Vivaldi's Winter, the poetry and music are loosely tied together by movements from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. The programme traces a path from the birth of the year, through the still heat of the summer, the ochre of autumn, winter's dark days, and ending with a glimmer of hope and a hint of spring.

You'll hear a BBC recording of Ted Hughes reading Spring Nature Notes made in 1977. There's Housman's Loveliest of trees and Spring by Thomas Nashe, set by Benjamin Britten in his Spring Symphony.

Thomas Hardy's During wind and rain alludes to thecyclical nature of the renewal of the seasons whilst Amy Lowell's Dog-days talks ofa mutter of thunder in the summer air.

The thundering of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and the hubbub of Messiaen's birds in Chronochromie give way to the stillness of Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915. The autumnal North Wind on the Aeolian harp is complemented by Strauss' Four Last Songs, and the visceral energy of Harrison Birtwistle's Earth Dances takes us from Purcell through to Ives' Unanswered question and finally Vivaldi.

Magic
Sunday 12 August 2007 22:25-0:00 (Radio 3)

Linked to the Shakespeare theme of this year's Proms, Nicholas Farrell and Miriam Margolyes conjure up words on magic by Shakespeare, Pushkin, Martin Feinstein, Chaucer, Derek Walcott and Keats. These are accompanied by the music of Wagner, Mendelssohn and Tippett, among others.

This week's Words and Music explores magic in its many shades, light and dark. Shakespeare, featured in this year's Proms season, is the starting point and the programme includes readings from 'The Tempest', 'Macbeth' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Ariel's Songs, or 'spells', punctuate the programme and are accompanied by the song settings of Locke, Purcell and Tippett.

The overall sequence forms an arch as the words and music darken towards the core of the programme where Shakespeare's 3 witches concoct a poisonous brew to the deathly beats of Birtwistle's Earth Dances. As the programme lightens towards its end, Oberon is joined on the 'bank where the wild thyme blows' by a shimmering chorus from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

At the beginning and end of the programme, the mysterious words used in magic practice float above Ligeti's Atmospheres: abbazabba, alkazam, kedavra and, more familiarly, abracadabra, the meaning of which is contemplated in Ambrose Bierce's poem.

Magic has the power to transform being, like the Cheshire cat in Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' and Martin Feinstein's poem, 'The conjuror'. Gubaidulina's quirky 'Magic Circles' from Musical Toys links the two texts together while Messiaen's angels from La Nativite du Seigneur picks up on the sinister final turn taken by Feinstein's conjuror.

Two dramatic texts about the darker side of magic flank Shakespeare's 3 plotting witches: Christopher Marlowe's 'Faust' making his pact with the devil and Derek Walcott's Odysseus slowly being lured by a potion into seductress Circe's grip to the hypnotic strains of Stockhausen's Stimmung.

There are the magic people too, like Orpheus, who tunes his lyre, or rather Cowell's Aeolian harp, at the beginning of Joseph Addison's 'Epilogue to British Enchanters' and Gilbert and Sullivan's sorcerer, who makes magic out of word play. Pushkin presents a magical 'Talisman' while Chaucer's Clerk from 'The Franklin's Tale' shows his magical powers to Salzedo's sparkling Jeux d'eau for solo harp.

The programme ends with Browning's 'The Natural Magic' before slipping back into echoes of magic words floating around Ligeti's Atmospheres.

Authority
Sunday 19 August 2007 22:15-0:00 (Radio 3)

Writer and broadcaster Armando Iannucci selects poetry, prose and music around the theme of authority, spanning gods, kings, the state and parents, and encompassing anarchy, rebellion and disobedience.

Including Pope's Essay on Man and excerpts from Milton's Paradise Lost, Primo Levi's If This Is A Man and Orwell's Shooting an Elephant, with music by Britten, Respighi, Joni Mitchell and Copland's Lincoln Portrait narrated by Margaret Thatcher.

Wild Wood
Sunday 2 September 2007 22:40-0:00 (Radio 3)

The Wild Wood is where you find Dante and Winnie the Pooh. It's where you shelter from the storm and where you're stalked by nameless terror. It's a place for monkish retreat and contemplation, and a place where, according to Vaughan Williams, an amorous Sir John Falstaff can be found prancing around with antlers on his head. Readers Emma Fielding and John Rowe take you into this beguiling and bewildering space, with the musical help of Wagner, and Schubert.

What could be more unsettling than the darkness seeping like sump oil from beneath the branches of a pine forest? What's more likely to give imagination wings than a big wind catching at the green sails of a huge chestnut grove? The Wild Wood bewitches as it bewilders.

This was the starting point for me when I began to think about this evening's edition of Words and Music. I wanted to give a sense of both. I also wanted to suggest how the wild wood is with us from the very beginning, from the time when we listen, rapt, to a bed time story such as Wind in the Willows to that moment in anxious adulthood when, like Dante, we look back and wonder how we came to be lost in the dark wood of our lives.

The programme is a kind of journey, beginning with Mole's first encounter with untamed nature and ending with his rescue. The way in which his youthful confidence gives way to speculation and inquiry is reflected in the path the programme takes - where and how did the woods come into being, what gives them their power.

I have included part of the Gaelic poet, Sorley Maclean's wonderful elegy to the woods of Raasay, the island of his birth, as well as Boris Pasternak's perfect lyric on pine trees. The terror of the forest is also there in Messaien's piano portrait of the tawny owl just as the forest's sense of carnival and riot is there in the Wild Rumpus scene from Oliver Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are.

As you would expect there are many moods in between, Sylvia Plath reading her poem about the insidious, spooky power of mushrooms, the hushed flowering of Gyorgy Kurtag's miniatures next to Edward Thomas's meditations on mortality, as well as Vaughan Williams' portrait of the amorous Falstaff stumbling about in Windsor Forest. Something for everyone, I hope.

Zahid Warley - producer

Villains
Sunday 16 September 2007 22:15-0:00 (Radio 3)

A sequence of music and poetry reflecting on villainy, from the Emperor Nero to Billy the Kid. With music by Mozart, Bartok and Stephen Sondheim, and poems by writers including Oscar Wilde, Shelley and Sylvia Plath. Readers: Patience Tomlinson and Jonathan Keeble.

This programme is a counterweight to last week's sequence of poems and music about Heroes. In tone it is inevitably somewhat darker, although there are several characters sufficiently complex and ambiguous to have been included in either programme. There are, in fact, several connections between the two, most notably the inclusion in both of Napoleon (a more subtle connection is Liszt, whose Transcendental Studies provided me with both a hero and a villain).

The villains of this programme are a miscellany of the historical, the mythical and the literary. The sequence begins and ends with musical portraits of the Russian historical figure Ivan Mazeppa, a favourite of the Romantics, who in real life may have been far less villainous than in his poetic depiction by Pushkin, Hugo and others. The richest seam of villainy in music is undoubtedly opera, and it was difficult not to turn the programme into a medley of favourite operatic scoundrels; though I resisted this urge, it proved impossible to omit Scarpia, Don Giovanni and Bluebeard, particularly when there were literary connections I could exploit. Some musical choices (the Scriabin) suggested themselves by mood rather than explicit connection with the subject matter; others (for instance the Shostakovich, described by the composer in his memoirs as "a portrait of Stalin, more or less") have a connection which may not be obvious.

In choosing the poetry for this programme I have aimed at a diversity of voice and period - I have included a few works which may well be familiar, such as Browning's superb and dark My Last Duchess, but also several which were, to me, discoveries, like Cavafy's wonderfully sardonic poem Nero's Term. It would be easy to compile a programme on this theme with a rather unremittingly dark tone - so I have included a few rather lighter poems (Stevie Smith's Lord Barenstock, for instance) which I hope leaven the mood somewhat.

To Byzantium

Sunday 14 October 2007 22:15-0:00

W B Yeats' poem Sailing to Byzantium is the starting point for a theme about the journey of man and the vision of eternal life. Andrew Lincoln and Deborah Findlay read a selection of poetry and prose including John Keats, Longfellow, John Masefield and Adrian Mitchell. With related music by John Tavener, Messiaenand Gesualdo.

This edition takes as a starting point Yeats' poem Sailing to Byzantium for a meditation on immortality and the journey of the soul. The calls of "phos"/light in John Tavener's Ikon of Light hint of the world to come suggested in Yeats' poem. Charles Causley's poem I am the song and the reading of Traherne are a meditation on mans' existence matched with Biber's extraordinary Mystery sonatas in the vibrant recording by Monica Huggett. It is Pierre Boulez' electroacoustic piece Repons, that takes the listener deep into the impenetrable tomb in Anthony Thwaite's Monologue in the Valley of the Kings. The mysteries of life and death lead to Beethoven's monumental Appassionata sonata in a new recording by Paul Lewis.

There are also lighter moments to life's journey with Adrian Mitchell's affectionate poem Elephant Eternity and the nobel prize winner, Wislawa Szymborska's wry poem Utopia accompanied by the shimmering strings of Stanley Black and his orchestra. But, there is also a sinister tone in TS Eliot's Whispers of immortality followed by the brooding darkness of Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem. The journey from life to death is distilled in Emily Dickinson's poem Chariot with the pulsating rhythms of Reich's Music for mallet instruments, voice and organ and in Don Paterson's new translation of Rilke's poem Parting. The programmes ends with Yeats' Byzantium written three years after Sailing to Byzantium and exploring perfection of the human soul in a city of eternal art.

Words and Music 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long). Wild Wood. The Wild Wood is where to find Danteand Winnie the Pooh. It's where to shelter from the storm and where one is stalked by nameless terror. It's a place for monkish retreat and contemplation, and a place where, according to Vaughan Williams, an amorous Sir John Falstaff can be found prancing around with antlers on his head. Readers Emma Fielding and John Rowe visit this beguiling and bewildering space, with the musical help of Wagner, Schubert, and John Coltrane.

Sunday 9th November 2008 (starting this evening). Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long). War and Peace.

On a theme of the eternal struggle between conflict and concord, Joanna David and Paul McGann read poems by Emily Dickinson, George Herbert, John Milton, Wilfred Owen, Edith Sitwell and Walt Whitman. Including music by Bartok, Dowland, William Lawes, Monteverdi and Purcell.

Sunday 16th November 2008 (starting this evening). Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Bridge Passage.

A selection of poetry, prose and music inspired by bridges, with readings by Lindsay Duncan and Adam Godley. Featuring poetry and prose by Friedrich Holderlin, Edmund Blunden, Longfellow, Dickens, Kafka, Nabokov and Nobel Prize-winning Bosnian writer Ivo Andric. The music includes works by Stravinsky, Leo Ferre, Handel, Kodaly, Finzi and Gubaidulina.

Sunday 23rd November 2008 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

With Alison Steadman and Timothy West reading a selection of verse on the theme of food and drink, including Moules a la mariniere by Elizabeth Garrett, Since by WH Auden and Chocs by Carol Ann Duffy as well as Tony Harrison's A Kumquat for John Keats, Hillaire Belloc's On Food and Elizabeth Bishop's The Fish. Interwoven with the poetry is Schubert's Trout Quintet, Feast of the Pheasant by Binchois and Fats Waller performing Hold Tight Want Some Seafood Mama.

Sunday 30th November 2008 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:25 to 23:30 (1 hour and 5 minutes long)

Winter.

A sequence of music and poetry on the theme of winter, with readings by Struan Rodger and Cheryl Campbell. Including works by John Clare, Thomas Campion, Sarah Maguire, Emily Dickinson, Mark Doty and Wallace Stevens, and music by Tchaikovsky, James MacMillan, Jean Redpath, Debussy, Schubert and John Cage.

Sunday 14th December 2008 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Monsters.

A selection of poetry and music on the theme of monsters, with readings by Don Warrington and Carolyn Pickles. Including works by Jack Mapanje, Christina Rossetti, Seamus Heaney, Yeats, Hans Christian Andersen, Robert Browning, Sylvia Plath, Brian Patten, Carol Ann Duffy, Tennyson and Ted Hughes, and music including Grieg, Knussen and Schubert.

“The sleep of reason calls forth monsters” – Goya’s famous words – hover over this week’s Words and Music, which explores the Monster in all its contradictory incarnations, both benign and destructive. Shades of darkness and glimmers of hope haunt the programme.

Sibelius’ overture from The Tempest draws us into the watery world of the Kraken. In Hans Christian Andersen the Little Mermaid braves the monstrous Sea-Witch’s lair to plead for a potion to make her human, and gains her legs only in exchange for a lifetime of pain. Unrequited love and the search for acceptance are part of what it means to be a monster – whether in Handel’s evocation of the one eyed Polyphemus in Acis and Galatea, or the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood’s poem about Medusa.

The Monster, as a seducer, flickers through Mozart’s Don Giovanni. As a victim, in Browning’s Caliban, he enlists our sympathy. The arrival of the monster doesn’t always herald disaster. In Roald Dahl’s Red Riding Hood the heroine produces a pistol from her knickers and vanquishes the Big Bad Wolf.

With monsters from Grieg, Mussorgsky and Schubert, the monstrous hordes in turn lay waste, cajole and entice.

Performer: Lahti Symphony Orchestra, cond. Osmo Vanska
The Tempest, Overture
Composer: Jean Sibelius
Theatre Music – The Sibelius Edition
CD3 Track 3

Tennyson
The Kraken
From The New Dragon Book of Verse
Reader: Don Warrington

Margaret Atwood
Siren Song
Margaret Atwood Poems (Virago Press 1981)
Reader: Carolyn Pickles

Tim Buckley
Song to the Siren
Composer: Tim Buckley
Acoustic Love
CD2 Track 16

Hans Christian Andersen
Extract from Little Mermaid
From Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales (Penguin 2004)
Tiina Nunnally
Reader: Carolyn Pickles

Alexei Lubimov, piano
Fur Alina
Arvo Part
Post-avant-garde Piano Music from the ex-Soviet Union
Track 3

Performer: Burrowes/Johnson/Hill/White/Cond. John Eliot Gardiner
Acis and Galatea
Handel
Acis and Galatea
CD2 Track 1

W.B. Yeats
Leda and the Swan
By Heart: 101 Poems to Remember, and
Reader: Don Warrington

Playlist
Philarmonia Orchestra & Chorus, Carlo Maria Giulini
Don Giovanni
W.A. Mozart
Fromt Mozart: Don Giovanni
CDC 747260/62 2 EMI
CD 3 Track 10 & 11

Bram Stoker
Dracula (extract)
Reader: Carolyn Pickles

New York Chamber Symphony, cond. Gerard Schwarz
The Minotaur
Eliot Carter
Eliot Carter The Minotaur, Piano Sonata, Two Songs
Track on CD: 11, 12, 13

John Stallworthy
The Trap
The New Dragon Book of Verse
Reader: Don Warrington

M83
Gone
Nicolas Fromageau and Anthony Gonzales
From Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts
Track 11

Jack Mapanje
Beasts of Nalunga (verse I)
From: Beasts of Nalunga (Bloodaxe 2007)
Reader: Don Warrington

Beowulf
From: BBC Sound Archive
Translator: Seamus Heaney
Reader: Seamus Heaney

Bryn Terfel
Erlkonig
Franz Schubert
An Die Musik – Favourite Schubert Songs
Track 11

Christina Rosetti
Goblin Market (extract)
Christina Rossetti, The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics 2001)
Reader: Carolyn Pickles

Florian Henschel
March of the Dwarfs
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg Lyric Pieces
CD2 track 3

Author of poem: unknown
Gawain and the Green Knight
Gawain and the Green Knight (Faber and Faber 2007)
Translator: Simon Armitage
Reader: Don Warrington

London Sinfonietta, cond. Oliver Knussen
The Wild Rumpus from Where the Wild Things Are
Oliver Knussen
Higgledy Pigglety Pop! & Where the Wild Things Are
CD2 Track 10

Playlist
Carol Ann Duffy
Medusa
The World’s Wife (Picador/ MacMillan 1999)
Reader: Carolyn Pickles

Portishead
Glory Box
G Barrow/ B Gibbons/ A Utley/ I Hayes
Dummy

Ted Hughes
Snail of the Moon
The New Dragon Book of Verse
Reader: Don Warrington

Anatol Ugorsky, piano
IX. La Cabane sur des pattes de poule (The Hut of Baba Yaga)
Composer: Modest Mussorgsky
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition
Track 15

Robert Browning
Caliban upon Setebos
Robert Browning The Poems Volume One (Penguin Classics 1981, 96)
Reader: Don Warrington

Lahti Symphony Orchestra, cond. Osmo Vanska
The Tempest, Caliban’s Song
Jean Sibelius
Theatre Music – The Sibelius Edition
CD3 Track 15

Edwin Morgan
Loch Ness Monster’s Song
BBC Sound Archive
Reader: Edwin Morgan

Roald Dahl
Little Red Riding Hood and The Wolf
Revolting Rhymes (Jonathan Cape 1982)
Reader: Don Warrington

Cat Power
Werewolf
Written by Michael Hurley (string arrangement David Campbell)
Cat Power You Are Free
Track 5

Hans Christian Andersen
Little Mermaid (extract)
Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales (Penguin 2004)
Tiina Nunnally
Reader: Carolyn Pickles

Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Cond. Igor Stravinsky
The Firebird
Igor Stravinsky
Columbia Symphony Orchestra: The Firebird/ Stravinsky
Sony Vlassical SM3K46291
Track 19-22

Sunday 21st December 2008 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 00:00 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Birdsong.

Claire Skinner and Hugh Bonneville are the readers in a celebration of nature's musicians. The poems include Milton's Nightingale, Hardy's Darkling Thrush and Tennyson's Blackbird, and the music includes Saint-Saens's Cuckoo, Rameau's Hen and Sibelius's Swan of Tuonela.

Sunday 28th December 2008 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Ancient Greece.

Actors Tim McMullan and Clare Higgins read poems and prose by Shakespeare, Keats, Byron, Auden, Homer and Euripides on the subject of Ancient Greece. With music by Schubert, Tippett, Bernstein, Stravinsky, Vaughan-Williams and Ravel.

Sunday 4th January 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Year.

Andrew Lincoln and Emma Fielding read a selection of poetry on the subject of the changing seasons. Featuring Ted Hughes's Season Songs interspersed with poems which complement these themes - by Thomas Hardy (The Darkling Thrush), Robert Frost (Prayer to Spring), Wordsworth, Tennyson, William Blake and Kahlil Gibran. With music ranging from Michael Tippett's opera New Year, Piazzolla's vibrant response to the seasons through tango, Mahler's delight in a spring morning in Fruhlingsmorgen and the autumnal Brahms Ballades.

Sunday 11th January 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Through the Looking Glass.

A selection of poetry, prose and music on the theme of mirrors and reflections, with readings by Derek Jacobi and Lesley Manville. With works by Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Jorge Luis Borges interspersed with music by Rachmaninov, Ravel, Clara Schumann and Cole Porter.

Sunday 18th January 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Femmes Fatales.

A programme of poetry and music on the theme of the femme fatale, an idea exemplified in some of the most passionate artistic creations, including Medusa, Delilah, Carmen and Lady Macbeth. Jeremy Northam and Harriet Walter read works by Keats, Spenser, Shakespeare, Wilde, Carol Anne Duffy and Angela Carter, alongside music by Handel, Massenet, Saint-Saens, Richard Strauss, Bizet and Gershwin.

Sunday 25th January 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

In the House of God.

Hugo Thurston and Pookie Quesnel read poetry and prose on the theme of places of worship including work by Philip Larkin, Emily Dickinson and Thomas Hardy, with music by Bach, Britten and Monteverdi.

Sunday 1st February 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:35 to 23:30 (55 minutes long)

We Must Love One Another or Die.

Sian Thomas and Nicholas Farrell read poetry and prose from the 1930s by Louis MacNeice, Sylvia Townsend Warner, John Steinbeck, George Orwell, Dylan Thomas and WH Auden, with music by Britten, Barber, Robeson, Bela Bartok and Noel Coward.

Sunday 22nd February 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:25 to 23:30 (1 hour and 5 minutes long)

Harold Pinter.

A special of the programme devoted to Harold Pinter, who died in December 2008, featuring archive recordings of the playwright and actor himself reading poems by Thomas Hardy, Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet and his own poetry. The programme also includes new readings by Michael Gambon and Penelope Wilton. Gambon reads the passage from No Man's Land he read at Pinter's request at the playwright's funeral, a passage from Proust's Time Regained, a poem by WS Graham, a poet much admired by Pinter and an unpublished poem heard for the first time, To My Wife, dedicated to Antonia Fraser. Penelope Wilton's readings include a passage from Old Times and, with Michael Gambon, she reads the passage from TS Eliot's Little Gidding chosen by Pinter for her to read at his funeral. There are also some of the late playwright's favourite music, by Miles Davis, Bach, Thelonius Monk, Schubert (played by his friend Mitsuko Uchida) and Beethoven, alongside music from one of the films he wrote - The French Lieutenant's Woman.

Sunday 8th March 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Insects.

Poetry, prose and music devoted to the world of insects, and the beauty and variation to be found within, with readings by Ewan Bailey and Rachel Atkings. Including Thom Gunn's poem Considering the Snail, DH Lawrence's The Mosquito and Robert Burns' To A Louse, as well as music by Josquin, Roussel, Bela Bartok and Martin Carthy.

Yuck. Insects. ;-)
Has anyone, by chance, recorded "Femmes Fatales" in January? Or the "American Landscape" of last week? I've been wrapped up in real life and haven't checked the radio listings (or this group)...

No answer to your request Girlfrom - but these programmes will probably be repeated at some point.

Today:

Sunday 22nd March 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Words and Music - Years Of Wonders.

Juliet Stevenson and Kenneth Cranham read prose and poetry describing the momentous times that the composer Henry Purcell would have witnessed. He was a baby at the Restoration of Charles II to the throne, but would have known the Great Plague and Great Fire of London. In adulthood,he would have seen both the accession and the forced abdication of James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as well as the coronation of James's daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. Readings include excerpts from Pepys, Evelyn, Dryden, Aphra Behn and Defoe, while the music includes Purcell and his contemporaries alongside works from the 20th century.

Sunday 29th March 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Young and Easy.

Readings of poetry and prose, interspersed with music. A programme of words and music exploring the intensity of youth and its transience. Hattie Morahan and Sam West read poetry and prose by Wordsworth, Rimbaud, Dylan Thomas, Thom Gunn, AE Houseman, Evelyn Waugh, Sylvia Plath, Jane Austen and Caroline Bird. The music of youth includes Debussy, Schumann, George Butterworth, Prokofiev, Thomas Morley, Britten and Bernstein.

Sunday 5th April 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Correspondence.

A selection of poetry, prose and music centring on correspondence - between poets, musicians, lovers and friends. With writings by Kafka, Ovid and Mary Wollstonecraft interspersed with music from Arthur Honegger, Steve Reich, Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington.

Sunday 26th April 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Food For Thought.

A selection of poetry, prose and music on the subject of food, with readings by Samantha Bond and Robert Powell. Including stories from the Bible, poetry by Robert Frost and Carol Anne Duffy as well as writings by Jane Grigson, Marcel Proust, Samuel Pepys and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Music includes Chabrier, John Cage, Schubert, Stravinsky and Bach.

Sunday 10th May 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:30 to 23:30 (1 hour long)

The Faerie World.

A selection of poetry, prose and music on the theme of the fairy tradition, with readings by Stella Gonet and Robert Glenister. With works by Keats, Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, Christina Rossetti and Yeats interspersed with music by Stravinsky, Judith Weir, Schubert, Purcell and Kathryn Tickell.

Sunday 24th May 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Do Not Go Gentle.

Barbara Jefford and Neville Jason explore the adventure of entering our 'third age', and the challenges and consolations of old age. With readings from Shakespeare, Yeats, Browning, Dylan Thomas, Roger McGough and Dannie Abse, and music including Verdi, Mahler, Strauss, Beethoven, Ravel and Jerome Kern.

Sunday 31st May 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 23:00 to 00:00 (1 hour long)

Illumination.

Poetry, prose and music on the theme of illumination, with readings by Sian Thomas and Jamie Glover. Including works by Rimbaud, Jo Shapcott and Margaret Atwood with accompanying music by Thomas Ades, Arvo Part and Franz Schubert.

Sunday 7th June 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:25 to 23:30 (1 hour and 5 minutes long)

Man and Beast.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music examining the relationship between humans and animals, with readings by Hermione Norris and Jim Norton. Including works by John Donne, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, WH Hudson and Samuel Taylor Coleridge among others, interspersed with music from Barber, Vivaldi, Haydn, Britten, Noel Coward, Tom Waits and Johnny Cash among others.

Sunday 14th June 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Best Days of Our Lives.

Sarah Lancashire and Paul Copley read poetry and prose about the experience of going to school. Including writings by Laurie Lee, DH Lawrence, Muriel Spark, Roger McGough and Carol Ann Duffy, as well as music by Malcolm Arnold, Frank Loesser and Alice Cooper.

Sunday 21st June 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Ideas of Wilderness.

Jenny Agutter and Anton Lesser explore ideas of wilderness from all corners of the globe, reading works by W H Auden, eco-writer Jeffers Robinson, the Australian Elizabeth Brown, Shackleton and the Taoist wilderness literature of Ancient China. Music includes excerpts from Messiaen's Des Canyons aux Etoiles, Redolfi's Mare Teno, Purcell's Solitude and Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet.

Sunday 5th July 2009 (starting in 1 day)
Time: 22:30 to 23:30 (1 hour long)

Cheryl Campbell and Douglas Hodge explore the world of science in poetry and prose with work by Miroslav Holub, Mary Shelley, Thomas Hardy, Fleur Adcock and Emily Dickinson and music by Philip Glass, Dvorak, Takemitsu and Bach.

Sunday 12th July 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 23:45 (1 hour long)

The Soft Machine.

A sequence of poems read by Anna Maxwell Martin and John Rowe interspersed with music, all on the theme of the body. The programme features writings by Walt Whitman, Homer and Auden along with music from Tchaikovsky, Monteverdi and Charles Mingus.

Sunday 19th July 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

As part of the BBC Poetry Season, a selection of poems recommended by BBC Radio 3 presenters. Including work by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Keats, WH Auden, Emily Dickinson, Edna St Vincent Millay and Maya Angelou, and music by Strauss, Bach, Shostakovich, Haydn and Yasmin Levy. The choices include Jez Nelson on Langston Hughes's The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Sara Mohr-Pietsch on Gerard Manley Hopkins's Peace, Suzy Klein on On First Looking into Chapman's Homer by Keats, and Iain Burnside on I Heard a Fly Buzz by Emily Dickinson. The readers are Tamsin Greig and Alex Jenning.

Saturday 1st August 2009 (Already shown)
Time: 18:00 to 19:30 (1 hour and 30 minutes long)

Italian Fantasy.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music inspired by travellers to Italy. Actors Emily Bruni and Benedict Cumberbatch read poetry, including works by Byron, arch-Italophile Robert Browning and EE Cummings, who depicts numberless hordes of tourists to Italy clutching cameras. With prose from Henry James, explaining Wordsworth's enthusiasm for a particular Italian pine tree, cookery writer Elizabeth David on white truffles and American writer Eleanor Clark, who found the fountains of Rome surprisingly shocking. The music includes Berlioz's Harold in Italy inspired by Byron, Bob Dylan's When I paint my masterpiece, Respighi's depictions of the pines and fountains of Rome and the vocal sound of the Italian trallalero team Vagabondo.

Sunday 2nd August 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:30 to 23:35 (1 hour and 5 minutes long)

The Double.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music exploring the disturbing world of shadows and ghostly doubles, with readings by Janie Dee and Nicholas Farrell. With works by Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dostoevsky, Heine, Wilde, Robert Lowell and Khalil Ghibran, interspersed with music by Bach, Boulez, Schubert and Steve Reich.

I'm just browsing this thread after being away travelling for a while. I'm very grateful to antimuzak for keeping us posted - the notes are at least as good as the R3 official emails and I'm about to take advantage of some of these programmes while I work. Thank you!

#40. > Yuck. Insects. ;-). GirlFromIpanema. Hahahaha! This struck me though... what is wrong with insects? They do so many useful things and on top of all that are (OK, cockroaches, botfly and mosquitoes excepted) beautiful! Sorry, I can't help getting enthused by insects - seeing a breathtakingly beautiful butterfly sail by, for me, surpasses any human work of art. Just curious...

Chris, I was just looking for something semi-witty to say ;-). That being said, I have been battling white flies and aphids on my balcony today (with "sticky cards" and soapy water, plus brushing them off MY tomatos and MY chillies. These bastards have no reason to live --or at least not off MY vegetables! *grrr*

Yes, I sort of agree GirlFrom. I had an infestation of my gooseberry bushes this year - rampant caterpillers that rapidly feasted on the leaves. I tried liquid detergent and water, they fell off and then just climbed back up and I was only able to squish a few. They were so destructive! Eventually, I resorted to commercial killing spray that assures me that fruit is able to be eaten only a few hours after spraying.

But, what do we expect? We create these super fruits and at the same time kill off all alternative food sources. The insects have as much right to this as we do. The problem is that we now have the ability to zap these things out of existence to satisfy our own needs to overpopulate the planet. How do we get off of this road to destruction?

Not sure how this relates to radio 3?

Hmm... GFI, sounds like not enough ladybirds / lacewings to me! Sorry, I shouldn't have side-tracked. I've searched, but I can't find anything on R3 to justify it either. Surely someone must be making music based on insect sounds....

Something more here for you Chris!

Sunday 9th August 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 00:00 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

To Strive, to Seek, to Find and Not to Yield.

In a programme celebrating the work of Tennyson, Beth Goddard and Michael Pennington read poetry from Tennyson himself and others on the theme of destiny, alongside with music inspired by, and reflecting the texts. The poetry is represented by excerpts from favourites such as The Lady of Shalott and Ulysses. With works by Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, Andrew Marvell, Dylan Thomas and TS Eliot, as well as music from Vaughan Williams, Britten, Hubert Parry, Richard Strauss and Arthus Bliss among others.

Wonderful! Dylan Thomas, VW, Britten and Parry to boot! Thank you!

Saturday 15th August 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:00 to 19:30 (1 hour and 30 minutes long)

The Geography of a Home.

Belinda Lang and David Bamber read poems on the theme of houses and homes. With poetry by WH Auden, Philip Larkin and Ivor Gurney interspersed with music by Sibelius, Chopin and The Beatles.

Sunday 30th August 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:30 to 23:30 (1 hour long)

Russian Dreams.

A journey to Russia, as imagined by poets and musicians: natives, exiles and foreigners. Music by French composer Tournemire conjures up the bells of Moscow, while verses by Marina Tsvetaeva give a Russian literary slant on the same subject. Stravinsky depicts his homeland from the perspective of both resident and emigre, one in an unabashedly Russian vein, the other unmistakably coloured by his exposure to American jazz. Including poems by Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Lermontov and Osip Mandelstam, and music by Borodin, John Field and Schnittke. Readings by Andrew Sachs and Siobhan Redmond.

Sunday 6th September 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:30 to 23:30 (1 hour long)

Warriors.

An exploration of the warrior in poetry and music, from classical heroes to contemporary soldiers. Deborah Findlay and Don Warrington read poetry and prose on the theme of warriors, from Beowulf and Gawain to Tennyson and Shakespeare's Henry V, alongside music ranging from Stravinsky to June Tabor.

Saturday 12th September 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:00 to 19:30 (1 hour and 30 minutes long)

Ballad of the Northern Lights.

Douglas Hodge and Stella Gonet read poetry and prose on the theme of the North - from Ted Hughes, Katrina Porteous, Philip Larkin and Kathleen Jamie. Music includes Sibelius's Symphony No 4, Delius's North Country Sketches, Holst's A Moorside Suite and Ewan MacColl's The Shoals of Herring.

Argh! *scrambles to record last week's broadcast* Thanks for the reminder(s), antimuzak.

And another one on Sunday evening:

Sunday 13th September 2009
Time: 22:45 to 23:45 (60 minutes long)

In the Park.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mm0lw
A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of public parks, with readings from Greta Scacchi and Henry Goodman.

Including writing by Ted Hughes, DH Lawrence, Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Gwen Harwood and Sara Teasdale, as well as music from Handel, Saint-Saens, Debussy, Phyllis Tate and Nina Simone.

Thanks Girlfrom, I always look forward to this mix of words and music which produce interesting and often surprising illuminations. One of the best programmes on radio.

Sunday 20th September 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Ark.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music centring on the perennially fascinating story of Noah and the Ark, with readings from Claire Skinner and Andrew Scott. Writings by Chaucer, Blake and Milton jostle with comedians Bill Cosby and Stanley Holloway among others. Music is by Britten, Saint Saens, Bruch and Rossini.

Sunday 27th September 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

An American Landscape.

Actors Ian Barford and Jeff Perry, from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, read works on the theme of the American landscape. With prose by John Steinbeck and Henry James, plus poetry by Robert Frost and John Ashbery interwoven with music by Charles Ives, Woodie Guthrie, Samuel Barber and Irving Berlin.

Yay! American Landscape! (see my message #40. Now if they would repeat Femmes Fatales --I'd die a happy woman.)
:-)

Hope you caught if GirlFrom. Femmes Fatales in American Landscapes ............. Interesting

Sunday 11th October 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Power.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of power, with readings by Sheila Hancock and Tom Hollander. With poems from Percy Shelley, Ted Hughes, Rudyard Kipling and Margaret Atwood, archive readings from Philip Larkin and Edith Sitwell, as well as music by Prokofiev, Steve Reich and Vivaldi.

Sunday 18th October 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 23:00 to 00:00 (1 hour long)

Walkers, Wanderers and Wayfarers.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of walking, featuring readings by Clare Higgins and Ian McDiarmid. With excerpts of writing by Thoreau, Edward Thomas, WH Davies, William Wordsworth and Alfred Wainwright, as well as music by Mussorgsky, Elgar, Richard Strauss, Vaughan Williams and Lou Reed.

Sunday 1st November 2009 (starting in 1 day)
Time: 22:35 to 23:35 (1 hour long)

Illumination.

Poetry, prose and music on the theme of illumination, with readings by Sian Thomas and Jamie Glover. Including works by Rimbaud, Jo Shapcott and Margaret Atwood with accompanying music by Thomas Ades, Arvo Part and Schubert.

Sunday 8th November 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Berlin.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music evoking the history of the city of Berlin, with readings by Henry Goodman and Liz Sutherland. Including music by Richard Strauss, Felix Mendelssohn and Schoenberg as well as Eisler and Weill, plus performances from Otto Klemperer among others. With texts by Alfred Doblin, Joseph Roth, Bertolt Brecht and Gunter Grass as well as Anna Funder and Emine Sevgi Ozdamar.

Sunday 15th November 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Solitude.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music exploring the theme of solitude, with readings by Paul McGann and Kirsty Besterman. With works from Alexandre Dumas, William Wordsworth, Philip Larkin, Emily Dickinson and Maya Angelou as well as music from J S Bach, Delius, Richard Strauss, Scriabin and Thelonius Monk.

Sunday 29th November 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 23:45 (1 hour long)

The Metaphysical Soul.

Anna Massey and Derek Jacobi read a selection of poems by metaphysical poets John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Thomas Carew and Andrew Marvell. These are interspersed with the five sections of Burnt Norton, the first of the four Quartets by TS Eliot. Including music by Mahler, Takemitsu, Britten, William Byrd and Beethoven.

Sunday 13th December 2009 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 23:45 (1 hour long)

Hope and Despair.

Romola Garai and Tim McMullan read poetry and prose on the theme of hope and despair. With poetry from TS Eliot, Tennessee Williams and Emily Dickinson. With readings from the works of George Orwell and Roald Dahl, and music by Shostakovich, Biber and George Crumb.

There are eleven episodes of Words and Music episodes being broadcast or repeated over the Holidays, beginning with two "musical" episodes on Händel and Purcell. Note the earlier schedule times for most of them!

21 Dec 2009 17:00–18:15
Handel Week - Handel's Divas
Music and poems with extracts from journals and newspapers about Handel's opera singers.

22 Dec 2009 17:00–18:15
Years of Wonders
A programme of words and music spanning the turbulent period of Purcell's lifetime.

The full listing can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006x35f/episodes/upcoming

And -yay!- "Femmes fatales" (which I missed earlier this year) is being repeated, too!
(I just hope my software recorder doesn't conk out again --as it did yesterday, when I wanted it to record "In the Park").

Thanks for this information GiirlFrom - unfortunately, I missed them all because I've been away.

This evening, though:

Borders.

Poetry, prose and music examining the idea of borders - those that are voluntary, those we use to define ourselves, those that baffle us and those we simply have to cross. With works ranging from Kafka's parable about the construction of the Great Wall of China to Marilynne Robinson's watery meditations on memory and loss; and from Chopin's dramatic exploration of the frontiers between major and minor keys to Ligeti's experiment to create the musical equivalent of a decomposing body. With readings by Samuel West and Penelope Wilton.

Sunday 10th January 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 23:45 (1 hour long)

Atonement.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of atonement, with readings by Simon Russell Beale and Adjoa Andoh. Featuring works by John Milton, Emily Dickinson, Anton Chekhov, CS Lewis, Antjie Krog and Kit Wright, accompanied by the music of Samuel Barber, Max Bruch, Benjamin Wallfisch, Dario Marianelli and Barry Adamson.

Sunday 17th January 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Best Days of Our Lives.

Sarah Lancashire and Paul Copley read poetry and prose about the experience of going to school. Including writings by Laurie Lee, DH Lawrence, Muriel Spark, Roger McGough and Carol Ann Duffy, as well as music by Malcolm Arnold, Frank Loesser and Alice Cooper.

Sunday 24th January 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 23:45 (1 hour long)

Sons of Russia.

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Anton Chekhov's birth, actors Mackenzie Crook and Jason Isaacs explore male fragility in Russian literature. The tensions between generations and classes are revealed with readings from Gogol, Turgenev and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, while adulterous love infuses his short story The Lady with the Dog. Why do these men have such an attachment to their Motherland and why do they place country above everything else, even God? With music by Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Schnittke.

Sunday 7th February 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Song For Ireland.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music exploring the identity of the Irish through the landscape, with readings from Irish actors Lorcan Cranitch and Orla Charlton. Literature includes some of the best-loved Irish poets - Seamus Heaney, PJ Kavanagh, Derek Mahon and Paul Durcan. Music includes Bax's Moy Mell, John Cage's Roaratorio, plus Liam O' Flynn on Uillean pipes and flute player Michael McGoldrick.

Sunday 21st February 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Insects.

Poetry, prose and music devoted to the world of insects, and the beauty and variation to be found within, with readings by Ewan Bailey and Rachel Atkins. Including Thom Gunn's poem Considering the Snail, DH Lawrence's The Mosquito and Robert Burns' To A Louse, as well as music by Josquin, Roussel, Bartok and Martin Carthy.

Sunday 28th February 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A sequence of poetry, prose and music exploring Scottish landscape and history. Jimmy Yuill and Stella Gonet read poems and prose by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sorley MacLean, Edwin Muir, Muriel Spark, John Burnside, Jackie Kay and Robert Crawford. The music reflects Scotland's rich heritage with work from Scottish composers and musicians, including James MacMillan, Judith Weir, Tommy Smith, Thea Musgrave, Aly Bain and Jean Redpath as well as from the many composers such as Mendelssohn, Arvo Part and Max Bruch who have been inspired by Scotland.

Sunday 7th March 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 23:00 to 00:00 (1 hour long)

The Thrill of the Chase.

Poetry and music on the theme of hunting and chasing, with readings by Nicholas Farrell and Deborah Finlay. Includes poems by Thomas Wyatt and Charles Causley and music by Birtwistle and Kronos Quartet.

This week's Words and Music explores this music and poetry inspired by hunting. Deborah Findlay and Nicholas Farrell read Adrienne Rich's 'Abnegation', and extracts from Moby Dick and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; the full spectrum of opinion is here, with music by Harrison Birtwistle, Clement Janequin and Franz Schubert.

But although hunting brings to mind the thunder of horses' hooves, it also describes a very human ritual - the lover's chase. With readings from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and poetry by Sir Thomas Wyatt, this programme will touch on a very different sort of chase, and the desire for love, not death.

You’ll hear Adrienne Rich’s evocation of the experience of a fox in the dusk, Charles Causley’s humorous but pointed ballad, ‘I Saw A Jolly Hunter’ and Roger Scruton on how hunting shaped our psyche. Music by Kreisler, Janequin and Harrison Birtwistle celebrates the energetic joy of the chase, while John Burnside’s ‘The Hunt In The Forest’ and music from Schubert and the Kronos Quartet offer reflection on the darker side of hunting.

Hunting is now a pursuit which is the subject of considerable controversy but in the past whaling used to provide income for hundreds of thousands of families across the planet, and was seen as a noble and brave pursuit, as demonstrated in the extract from Moby Dick, and the folk song from Mawkin:Causley.

And finally, the lover’s chase is a hunt of an entirely different order – although the language of the hunt illustrates the pursuit of love well – with poetry from Sir Thomas Wyatt, an extract from a Midsummer Night’s Dream, and music from Sir Michael Tippett and Kreisler.

Sunday 14th March 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Healing.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the subject of healing, with readings by Celia Imrie and Bill Paterson. Texts range from Jesus's healing miracles in the gospels of the New Testatment to Florence Nightingale's advice on nursing. Doctors and nurses feature in works by HG Wells, Louisa M Alcott and Richard Gordon. Then there is spiritual, emotional and political healing as described by authors as diverse as Dorothy Parker, Robert Burns, Carol Ann Duffy and Nelson Mandela, interwoven with music by Wagner, John Adams, Durufle and Sting.

Sunday 21st March 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 23:45 (1 hour long)

Intimate Letters.

Christopher Eccleston and Olivia Hallinan read from a selection of love letters - both real and fictional - by Shakespeare, Edith Wharton, Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes, Keats and Oscar Wilde. Including music by Couperin, Richard Wagner, Kurt Weill and Mozart.

Sunday 28th March 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 23:45 (1 hour long)

The South Country.

Sequence of music, poetry and prose inspired by the recent republication of Edward Thomas's essay collection The South Country, celebrating the landscape of southern England - in particular three counties in which the poet loved to walk: Sussex, Hampshire and Wiltshire. Tamsin Greig and Neil Pearson read prose by fellow observer-wanderers Gilbert White, William Cobbett and Richard Jefferies, and poetry by such lovers of the south as Flora Thompson, Andrew Young, Hilaire Belloc, Molly Holden and Edward Thomas himself. Music includes orchestral music and songs by John Ireland, Michael Tippett, The Copper Family and the English Acoustic Collective among others.

Sunday 4th April 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Doors of Perception.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music centring on altered states and visions, with readings by Jim Broadbent and Miranda Richardson. Featuring writings by Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire, Coleridge, Julian of Norwich, Sylvia Plath, William Blake, Christopher Reid and Aldous Huxley. Plus music ranging from Bach to Zappa, by way of Mahler, Ravel, Debussy, Messiaen, George Crumb and Cage.

Sunday 11th April 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Malady.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music focusing on sickness, with readings by Rory Kinnear and Anna Maxwell Martin. Music ranges from the famous musical sneeze in Kodaly's Hary Janos suite to Bach's cantata Ich habe genug; from Pinter's description of electroconvulsive therapy and to John Evelyn's eyewitness account of the removal of a bladder stone.

Hi all,

Apologies for the interruption in the flow - not sure if anyone can see my message (?) - I have recently become a Words & Music acolyte and have been recording the shows. Perfect listening for long stressful car journeys

I haven;t been too well this week so have managed to miss The Doors of Perception epsiode - does anyone have recorded who can share with me ?

Best to all !

Phil

No interruption Phil. Comments and dicussion are welcome here, I wish we had more of it. Sorry, though, I didn't record that episode, although I am in the habit of recording Radio 3 programmes and listening in the car. I use re-recordable cd's and then record over them after use.

Sunday 18th April 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:20 to 23:35 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Finishing the Hat.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music all inspired by painting, with readings from Alex Jennings and Carolyn Pickles. Featuring writing by William Carlos Williams, Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, EM Forster, Carol Ann Duffy and Thom Gunn, as well as music by Ned Rorem, Debussy, Morton Feldman, Mussorgsky, Respighi and Stephen Sondheim.

Thanks AntiMuzak, I too ennjoy recording R3 shows for the car - particularly W&M. I only discovered the show in November 09 since when I have all the shows - just disappointed I missed this week's

I download a dozen or so onto an SD card for the car. Great to unwind on long journeys !

Sunday 25th April 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Rebel.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of the rebel, with readings from David Bamber and Gillian Bevan. Including texts by William Blake, WB Yeats, Maya Angelou and Albert Camus, as well as music by Mahler, Chopin, Arnold Bax, Leonard Cohen and Anna Marly.

I just found this group today, as I was browsing LT...I had never even heard of radio 3 before (I'm American), but the passion of this group seemed so promising, and I checked out this episode. I'm listening to 'The Rebel', and its...so utterly fantastic. Really, really well put together. It's like an experience, an event almost. The bit with Malcolm X made me tear up a bit. Just beautifully done.

Yes, I agree ZanKnits. Words and Music is a gem, interlacing words and text in unexpected ways around a theme that is always imaginative and thought provoking. One of my favourite programmes.

Sunday 2nd May 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

May Day.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of May Day, with readings by Sarah Alexander and Julian Rhind-Tutt. With texts by Milton, Chaucer, Robert Herrick and Richmal Crompton, plus music including Benjamin Britten, Debussy, Michael Berkeley and The Rolling Stones.

Sunday 9th May 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Take Me to the River.

A sequence of music, poetry and prose inspired by rivers, with readings by Juliet Stevenson and Jamie Glover. Including works by Wordsworth, UA Fanthorpe, Ezra Pound, John Clare and Elizabeth Jennings, as well as music by Tippett, Delius, Duke Ellington, Gorecki and Talking Heads.

Sunday 16th May 2010 (starting in 2 days)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Art of Friendship.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music exploring the art of friendship, with readings by Robert Lindsay and Diana Quick. Including texts from Plutarch, Francis Bacon, Ogden Nash, Auden, TS Eliot, Dorothy L Sayers, Edward Thomas and others.

Sunday 23rd May 2010 (starting in 1 day)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Moonstruck.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music exploring our longstanding fascination with the moon, with readings by Art Malik and Alexandra Gilbreath. Including Texts by Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, Charles Baudelaire, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, and music from Felix Mendelssohn, Debussy, Robert Schumann, Judy Garland and Radiohead.

Sunday 30th May 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Man Made.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music celebrating the relationship between man, nature and machines, with readings by Caroline Catz and Anthony Flanagan. With excerpts from works by Karl Marx, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Carl Sandburg, Philip K Dick, Kenneth Grahame and Philip Larkin, interspersed with music from Bach, The Beach Boys, Offenbach and Messiaen.

Sunday 20th June 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Miniatures.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music focusing on miniatures, with readings by John Rowe and Lia Williams. With music from Webern, Billy Mayerl and Delius, plus texts from Herbert, EE Cummings and Gertrude Stein among others.

We live in a time of instant gratification, instant communication but also almost instantaneous oblivion. So what makes something last? Does it have to be long, large, loud and luminous or is there room for something small and subtle, even discreet? It seems like only yesterday that we coveted tiny transistors and tiny phones. Now I suppose some of us like tiny cars but otherwise the macro seems to hold sway over the micro. To redress the balance, this week’s Words and Music is a tribute to the miniature…small moments when sublime contrivance stops the flow of hours, minutes and seconds to allow us a moment of contemplation and delight.

One man’s miniature is another’s epic, so Summer Nights on the River is a miniature for Delius but would be an epic for Webern whose Cello Sonata lasts less than half as long. The elasticity of the notion is borne out by the inclusion of pieces by Stravinsky, Sidney Bechet and Gyorgy Kurtag amongst others as well as in short, short stories such as Slawomir Mrozek’s comical I want to be a Horse or The Fish by Lydia Davis. The programme, as you might expect, includes a few haiku but there are surprises too, such as the entry from W.N.P. Barbellion’s Journal of a Disappointed Man – a brilliant shard of writing about the way we can be ambushed by happiness.

Author of text: Emily Dickinson
Name of text: A word is dead when it is said
From Book: Complete poems of Emily Dickinson
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’12

Performer: Clemens Hagen and Oleg Maisenberg
Name of piece: Cello Sonata
Composer: Anton Webern
Name of CD: Complete Webern
CD Code: DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 4576372
Track on CD: Track 12 CD 6
Dur: 01’47

Author of text: Ian Hamilton
Name of text: The Storm
From Book: Sixty Poems
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 00’41

Performer: Brigitte Balleys, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Vladimir Ashkenazy
Name of piece: Schneesturm from Five Alternberg Songs, op.4
Composer: Alban Berg
Name of CD: Altenbergerlieder/7 fruhe lieder etc.
CD Code: DECCA 4365672
Track on CD: 11
Dur: 03’14

Author of text: Ben Jonson
Name of text: A Fragment from Petronius - John
From Book: The Oxford Book of Short Poems
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 00’41

Performer: Royal Ballet Sinfonia
Name of piece: Air (Distressed Innocence)
Composer: Henry Purcell arranged by Sir Arthur Bliss)
Name of CD: British String Miniatures 2
CD Code: WHITE LINE CDWHL2136
Track on CD: 2
Dur: 02’13

Author of text: Rihaku
Name of text: The Jewel Stairs Grievance
From Book: One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems
Translator: Arthur Waley
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’26

Performer: Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell
Name of piece: El Corazon
Composer: Don Cherry
Name of CD: El Corazon
CD Code: ECM 8291992
Track on CD: 5
Dur: 03’11

Author of text: William Blake
Name of text: Ah Sunflower
From Book: The Complete Poems of William Blake
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’30

Performer: Sidney Bechet
Name of piece: Petite Fleur
Composer: Sidney Bechet
Name of CD: Petite Fleur ( The Entertainers)
LP Code: ENTLP 13027
Track on LP: 1
Dur: 03’19

Author of text: e.e. cummings
Name of text: Buffalo Bill is defunct
From Book: Selected poems 1923-1958
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’28

Performer: Michel Lethiec Sextet
Name of piece: The third of the three Miniatures for Clarinet and Piano
Composer: Krzysztof Penderecki
Name of CD: Penderecki: Sextet. Clarinet Quartet
CD Code: Naxos 8557052
Track on CD: 9
Dur: 01’13

Author of text: Randall Jarrell
Name of text: Death of a Ball Turret Gunner
From Book: The Oxford Book of Short Poems
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 00’28

Performer: Modern Sinfonietta cond. Thomas Wilbrandt
Name of piece: Number Three(Gymnopedie)
Composer: Erik Satie arranged by Thomas Wilbrandt
Name of CD: Alone for a Second
CD Code: DECCA 4252262
Track on CD: 12
Dur: 05’05

Author of text: Ezra Pound
Name of text: Lake Isle
From Book: The Oxford Book of Short Poems
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 00’53

Performer: The Bournemouth Sinfonietta
Name of piece: Summer Night on the River
Composer: Delius
Name of CD: Delius Miniatures
CD Code: CHANDOS CHAN8372
Track on CD: 2
Dur: 07’19

Author of text: W.N.P. Barbellion
Name of text: One of the entries from Journal of a Disappointed Man
From Book: Journal of a Disappointed Man
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 00’58

Performer: The Alberni String Quartet
Name of piece: Cavatina Drobnosti Op.75a for two Violins and Viola
Composer: Dvorak
Name of CD: Hausmusik
CD Code: CRD 3457
Track on CD: 7
Dur: 03’55

Author of text: Marianne Moore
Name of text: Jellyfish
From Book: Collected Poems
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 00’28

Performer: Geoffrey Richardson
Name of piece: The Light House
Composer: Geoffrey Richardson
Name of CD: Miniatures 2 edited by Morgan fisher
CD Code: CDBRED361
Track on CD: 41
Dur: 01’03

Author of text: Ogden Nash
Name of text: The Shrimp
From Book: Collected Verse
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’17

Performer: Dame Janet Baker and London Symphony Orchestra cond. Sir John Barbirolli
Name of piece: In Haven (Capri)
Composer: Elgar
Name of CD: Cello Concerto. Sea Pictures
CD Code: EMI 7243
Track on CD: 6
Dur: 02’07

Author of text: Lydia Davis
Name of text: The Fish
From Book: The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’58

Performer: Keller Quartett
Name of piece: Ligatura – Message to Frances-Marie
Composer: Gyorgy Kurtag
Name of CD: Musik fur Streichinstrumente
CD Code: ECM 4532582
Track on CD: 3
Dur: 03’40

Author of text: Francis Ponge
Name of text: Bread
From Book: 20th Century French Poems edited by Stephen Romer
Translator: C.K.Williams
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 01’09

Performer: Bob Cobbing and Henri Chopin
Name of piece: Refreshment Break
Composer: Bob Cobbing and Henri Chopin
Name of CD: Miniatures 1 edited by Morgan fisher
CD Code: CDBRED361
Track on CD: 8
Dur: 00’57

Author of text: William Carlos Williams
Name of text: This is just to say
From Book: Selected Poems
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 00’14

Performer: Ensemble InterContemporain cond. Pierre Boulez
Name of piece: One of Stravinsky’s 8 Instrumental Miniatures for 15 players - Moderato
Composer: Igor Stravinsky
Name of CD: Berg: Kammerkonzert. Stravinsky: Ebony concerto
CD Code: DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 4474052
Track on CD: 7
Dur: 00’50

Author of text: Ben Jonson
Name of text: To Celia
From Book: The Oxford Book of Short Poems
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’49

Performer: Martha Argerich
Name of piece: Prelude No 7 in A Major – from Op.28
Composer: Frederic Chopin
Name of CD: 26 Preludes
CD Code: DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 415 836 2
Track on CD: 7
Dur: 00’44

Author of text: Samuel Menashe
Name of text: Autumn
From Book: New and Selected Poems
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’17

Performer: Sainikho Namtchylak
Name of piece: Last Christmas
Composer: Sainikho Namtchylak
Name of CD: Miniatures 2 edited by Morgan fisher
CD Code: CDBRED361
Track on CD: 14
Dur: 01’07

Author of text: Edward Thomas
Name of text: By the ford
From Book: The Oxford Book of Short Poems
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 00’25

Performer: Eric Parkin
Name of piece: Dancing Horse
Composer: Billy Mayerl
Name of CD: The Piano Music of Billy Mayerl
CD Code: CHANDOS CHAN103243x
Track on CD: CD 3 13
Dur: 02’18

Author of text: Slawomir Mrozek
Name of text: I Want to be a Horse
From Book: The Elephant
Translator: Konrad Syrop
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 01’20

Performer: Kolbeinn Bjarnason, Valgerour Andresdottir
Name of piece: Miniature 4 for flute and piano
Composer: Brian Ferneyhough
Name of CD: Music for Flute
CD Code: BRIDGE BRIDGE9120
Track on CD: 4
Dur: 01’38

Author of text: Basho
Name of text: A few of the haiku from On Love and Barley
From Book: On Love and Barley: The Haiku of Basho
Translator: Lucien Stryk
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’36

Performer: Emerson String Quartet
Name of piece: 1st of three pieces for String Quartet
Composer: Anton Webern
Name of CD: Complete Webern
CD Code: DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 4576372
Track on CD: 16
Dur: 01’10

Author of text: Gertrude Stein
Name of text: A Seltzer Bottle
From Book: Tender Buttons
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 01’11

Performer: Emerson String Quartet
Name of piece: 2nd of three pieces for String Quartet
Composer: Anton Webern
Name of CD: Complete Webern
CD Code: DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 4576372
Track on CD: 17
Dur: 00’21

Author of text: Daniil Kharms
Name of text: The Red haired Man
From Book: Incidences
Translator: Neil Cornwell
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’44

Performer: Emerson String Quartet
Name of piece: 3rd of three pieces for String Quartet
Composer: Anton Webern
Name of CD: Complete Webern
CD Code: DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 4576372
Track on CD: 18
Dur: 01’10

Author of text: W.H.Auden
Name of text: Gare du Midi
From Book: The Oxford Book of Short Poems
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’40

Performer: Django Reinhardt
Name of piece: Tears
Composer: Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli
Name of CD: Django Reinhardt
CD Code: PATHE MARCONI 7465012
Track on CD: 10
Dur: 02’48
Author of text: George Herbert
Name of text: Bitter Sweet
From Book: The Oxford Book of Short Poems
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 00’29

Performer: Komitas Vardapet
Name of piece: Gutun Yerg
Composer: Traditional arr by Komitas
Name of CD: Miniatures 2 edited by Morgan Fisher
CD Code: CDBRED361
Track on CD: 50
Dur: 01’08

Author of text: Michael Longley
Name of text: A Prayer
From Book: The Weather in Japan
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’28

Performer: Mamadou Doumbia
Name of piece: Qui Sait
Composer: Mamadou Doumbia
Name of CD: Miniatures 2 edited by Morgan Fisher
CD Code: CDBRED361
Track on CD: 31
Dur: 01’11

Author of text: Raymond Carver
Name of text: A Fragment
From Book: (check)
Reader: Lia Williams
Dur: 00’24

Performer: Pablo Casals
Name of piece: Cant d’Ocells
Composer: traditional
Name of LP: In memoriam Pablo Casals
LP Code: CBS 77363
Track on LP: Record 2 side 2 track 2
Dur: 03’21

Author of text: John Cage
Name of text: Number 86 of the Indeterminacy Stories
From Book: From the web - http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/
Reader: John Rowe
Dur: 01’11

Sunday 27th June 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 23:00 to 00:00 (1 hour long)

Awake!

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of awakenings, with readings by Peter Marinker and Hattie Morahan. Including texts by Mary Shelley, AE Housman, Edward Thomas, Anne Bronte and Percy Shelley, as well as music by Handel, J S Bach, Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten.

Sunday 4th July 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Clowns.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music focusing on clowns, with readings by Alison Steadman and Andrew Sachs. With writing from Aesop to Stephen King and John Clare to Holub, plus music by Stravinsky, Robert Schumann and Charles Chaplin.

Sunday 11th July 2010 (starting in 1 day)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Through the Looking Glass.

A selection of poetry, prose and music on the theme of mirrors and reflections, with readings by Derek Jacobi and Lesley Manville. With works by Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Jorge Luis Borges interspersed with music by Rachmaninov, Ravel, Clara Schumann and Cole Porter.

Saturday 17th July 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:05 to 20:05 (1 hour long)

The Metaphysical Soul.

Anna Massey and Derek Jacobi read a selection of poems by metaphysical poets John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Thomas Carew and Andrew Marvell. These are interspersed with the five sections of Burnt Norton, the first of the four Quartets by TS Eliot. Including music by Mahler, Takemitsu, Britten, Byrd and Beethoven.

Saturday 24th July 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:00 to 19:30 (1 hour and 30 minutes long)

Altitude.

A sequence of poetry and music inspired by the world seen from a great height, the flight of birds and the romance of mountain tops. Musical evocations of mountains by Sibelius, Richard Strauss and Liszt sit with poems by Shelley and John Evelyn. Anton Lesser and Lesley Sharp read works by Ted Hughes, Pablo Neruda and JA Baker which describe the world of birds in flight, and music by composers including Haydn, Honegger and Richard Strauss evokes the same subject.

Sunday 25th July 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A Beat in Time.

Actors Greta Scacchi and Greg Wise read poems on the subject of Time. With poems and prose by Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot, Sylvia Plath and Shakespeare and music by Haydn, Ravel, John Cage, J S Bach and Philip Glass.

Saturday 31st July 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:00 to 19:30 (1 hour and 30 minutes long)

Book of Hours.

Amanda Root and Rory Kinnear take an imaginative journey around the clock over the course of 24 hours with poems and prose by Fleur Adcock, John Clare, Shakespeare, Byron, Walt Whitman and Carol Ann Duffy, and music by Sibelius, Debussy, Elvis Costello, Copland and Falla.

Sunday 22nd August 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:30 to 23:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Enemies.

Poetry and music on the theme of enemies and what we have to fear from those who wish us harm. Struan Rodger and Siobhan Redmond read works by William Blake, Dorothy Parker, Charles Baudelaire, Elizabeth Barlett and Naomi Shihab Nye, with music from Bach, William Walton, Nick Cave and Shirley Bassey.

Sunday 29th August 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:30 to 23:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of the afterlife, with readings by Sophie Okonedo and Paul Copley. Including excerpts from Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost and Alice Seebold's The Lovely Bones, plus poems by Wilfred Owen, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. With accompanying music by Britten, Ives, George Crumb, Scriabin, Copland and Franz Liszt.

Sunday 5th September 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:30 to 23:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A sequence of poetry, prose and music exploring the theme of exile, with readings by Frances Barber and Greg Hicks. The texts address differing reactions to being away from home and its effects, or thinking that home should be somewhere other than it is. Including Shakespeare, Du Maurier, Italo Calvino, WB Yeats, AE Housman, Browning, Shelley, Clare, Lear and Emily Dickinson, as well as music from Chabrier, Byrd, Bach and Bob Marley.

Exile and being away from home are the themes for this edition of Words and Music, with Greg Hicks and Frances Barber. Our journey begins with the extraordinary 10th century Anglo-Saxon “The Seafarer” about a man who is most at home away from home on the high seas. The Jumblies voyage is transformative: granted, their heads stay green and their hands blue, but in the end they return home taller.

Psalm 137 describes the Jews’ exile in Babylon and is the text of Byrd’s Latin “Quomodo cantibus”; it’s read in the King James translation and followed by Bob Marley’s Rastafarian “Africa Unite” with its biblical imagery. The storm from Britten’s “Peter Grimes” provides the backdrop for King Lear’s broken-hearted ravings, left homeless by two of his daughters.

WB Yeats imagines a better place to be while he stands on the “pavements grey”, as does Italo Calvino’s Marcovaldo when he’s woken by a nocturnal procession of cows on their way to mountain pastures.

An English sequence begins, including wistful musings from expats: Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Robert Browning. Shelley breaks the spell with his bitterly impassioned “England in 1819”, written in his self-imposed Italian exile.

John Cage and Emily Dickinson are followed by Stravinsky’s Hollywood take on The Star-Spangled Banner, which serves as a suitably patriotic introduction to recent immigrant Hyman Kaplan’s (albeit well-intentioned) mangling of the English language.

Two prisoners provide the final texts: Primo Levi, drained of his humanity in Auschwitz, and John Clare trying to make sense of his past and present in the mental asylum; to end there is hope with the “Agnus Dei” and “Dona nobis pacem” from Bach’s B minor Mass.

David Papp, producer

Offset: 00:00:00
Title: Anon., Anglo Saxon
Speech: The Seafarer, Greg Hicks

Offset: 00:00:50
Composer: Arnold Bax
Title: Tintagel excerpt
Performer: London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli
Label: EMI CDC 7 47984 2
Track: Tr5

Offset: 00:06:53
Composer: Mons Leidvin Takle
Title: Festmusikk
Performer: Christopher Herrick (organ)
Label: Hyperion CDA67577
Track: 10

Offset: 00:07:11
Title: Edward Lear
Speech: The Jumblies, Frances Barber

Offset: 00:10:38
Composer: William Byrd
Title: Quomodo cantibus excerpt
Performer: The Cardinall’s Musik, directed by Andrew Carwood
Label: ASV CD GAU 179
Track: Tr15

Offset: 00:15:05
Title: Anon. from The Bible
Speech: Psalm 137, Frances Barber

Offset: 00:15:53
Composer: Bob Marley
Title: Africa Unite
Performer: Bob Marley and the Wailers
Label: Tuff Gong TGXBX1
Track: CD4, Tr1

Offset: 00:18:36
Composer: Benjamin Britten
Title: Storm Interlude from Peter Grimes
Performer: London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Steuart Bedford
Label: Collins 10192
Track: Tr14

Offset: 00:18:50
Title: William Shakespeare
Speech: Storm scene from King Lear, Greg Hicks

Offset: 00:23:01
Title: WB Yeats
Speech: The Lake-Isle of Innisfree, Frances Barber

Offset: 00:23:49
Composer: Antonín Dvo?ák
Title: Andante con moto from Serenade in D minor, Op. 44
Performer: Linos Ensemble
Label: Capriccio 10 559
Track: Tr3

Offset: 00:32:42
Title: Italo Calvino translated by William Weaver
Speech: A Journey with the Cows from “Marcovaldo”, Frances Barber

Offset: 00:33:34
Composer: Emmauel Chabrier
Title: Idylle from Dix pieces pittoresques
Performer: Alain Planès (piano)
Label: Harmonia Mundi HMA 1951465
Track: Tr6

Offset: 00:37:02
Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams
Title: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis excerpt
Performer: London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink
Label: EMI CDC 7 49394 2
Track: Tr5

Offset: 00:37:58
Title: Daphne du Maurier
Speech: Rebecca excerpt, Frances Barber

Offset: 00:40’58
Title: AE Housman
Speech: Yon Far Country from “A Shropshire Lad”, Frances Barber

Offset: 00:43:45
Composer: Frederick Delius
Title: A Song of Summer excerpt
Performer: Hallé Orchestra, conducted by Vernon Handley
Label: EMI CD-CPF 4568
Track: Tr4

Offset: 00:44:09
Title: Robert Browning
Speech: Home-Thoughts, from Abroad, Greg Hicks

Offset: 00:45:28
Composer: Dmitri Shostakovich
Title: Serenade from String Quartet No. 15 excerpt
Performer: Borodin String Quartet
Label: BMG 74321 40717 2
Track: Tr5

Offset: 00:45:36
Title: Percy Bysshe Shelley
Speech: England in 1819, Greg Hicks

Offset: 00.47:23
Composer: John Cage
Title: Sonata III
Performer: Boris Berman (prepared piano)
Label: BMG 74321 40717 2
Track: Tr5

Offset: 00:48:29
Title: Emily Dickinson
Speech: Away from Home, Frances Barber

Offset: 00:49:47
Composer: John Stafford Smith arr. Igor Stravinsky
Title: The Star-Spangled Banner
Performer: Gregg Smith Singers, conducted by Robert Craft
Label: MusicMasters 01612-67113-2
Track: Tr4

Offset: 00:51:22
Title: Leo Rosten
Speech: The Education of Hyman Kaplan excerpt, Greg Hicks

Offset: 0052:59
Composer: John Philip Sousa
Title: The Stars and Stripes Forever
Performer: Detroit Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Neeme Järvi
Label: Chandos CHAN 9227
Track: Tr15

Offset: 00:56:14
Title: Primo Levi
Speech: If This is a Man excerpt, Greg Hicks

Offset: 00:57’35
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Title: Cavatina from String Quartet in B flat major, Op. 130
Performer: Takács Quartet
Label: Decca 470 849-2
Track: CD 3, Tr9

Offset: 01:05:50
Title: John Clare
Speech: I Am, Greg Hicks

Offset: 01:06:28
Composer: JS Bach
Title: Agnus Dei & Dona nobis pacem
Performer: Dunedi Consort & Players, directed by John Butt
Label: Linn CDK 354
Track: CD2, Trs14 & 15

Saturday 11th September 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:00 to 19:30 (1 hour and 30 minutes long)

The Sky Smiles Down.

A sequence of poems, prose and music on the theme of summer, with readings by Fiona Shaw and Robert Glenister. The programme includes poems by John Clare, Seamus Heaney, Emily Dickinson, Carol Ann Duffy interspersed with music by Gershwin, Delius, Sondheim, Jean Redpath, Suk and Messiaen.

Sunday 12th September 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 23:45 (1 hour long)

Poetry, prose and music recording and evoking the movement of a city day, with readings by Emilia Fox and Richard Armitage. The sequence takes as its departure point the silent 'city symphony' documentaries of the 1920s, from Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City to Dziga Vertov's The Man with a Movie Camera, which were among the first documentaries to take the city as both character and subject. The beauty, the energy, and the strange terror of city life, are evoked here by poets and authors across time, from Jonathan Swift, Dickens and Wordsworth to TS Eliot, Virginia Woolf and William Carlos Williams. Music includes Gershwin, Varese, William Byrd, Steve Reich and Charles Ives.

Oh. Missed this (on broadcast). Richard Armitage. Love his voice. I got Richardson's Clarissa with him as Robert Lovelace.
OK, my harddisc is about to burst, lets see if I can find a corner for another bit of Words and Music...

Pleased you caught this GirlFrom. You could always burn files to cd and then delete them from your computer....

Today:

Sunday 3rd October 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Locomotion.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music about getting from A to B, with readings by Claire Rushbrook and Andrew Wincott. Including texts by Andrew Marvell, Edward Lear, Patrick Leigh Fermor and E Nesbit, as well as music from Wagner, Ellington, Mayfield, Eno and Schubert.

Sunday 10th October 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 23:45 (1 hour long)

A sequence of poetry, prose and and music on the theme of fame and celebrity, with readings by Imogen Stubbs and Michael Maloney. With texts by Rita Dove, Boris Pasternak, John Clare, Geoffrey Hill, Charles Simic and Emily Dickinson accompanied by the music of Handel, John Tavener, Stephen Sondheim and Michael Jackson.

BBC Radio Three
Date: Sunday 17th October 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A sequence of poetry, prose and music exploring Scottish landscape and history. Jimmy Yuill and Stella Gonet read poems and prose by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sorley MacLean, Edwin Muir, Muriel Spark, John Burnside, Jackie Kay and Robert Crawford. The music reflects Scotland's rich heritage with work from Scottish composers and musicians, including James MacMillan, Judith Weir, Tommy Smith, Thea Musgrave, Aly Bain and Jean Redpath as well as from the many composers such as Mendelssohn, Arvo Part and Max Bruch who have been inspired by Scotland.

Sunday 31st October 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A sequence of poetry, prose and music about witches and sorcerers, with readings by Juliet Stevenson and Henry Goodman. Including excerpts from Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus, L Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, Goethe's The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Shakespeare's The Tempest. Music includes Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain, Nina Simone's classic Put a Spell on You, Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Thomas Ades's The Tempest.

Sunday 14th November 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Hallelujah!

A sequence of music, poetry and prose celebrating the many facets of joy, with readings from Jane Horrocks and Rory Kinnear. Including writing by Thomas Hardy, Rabindranath Tagore and Friedrich Schiller among others, as well as music ranging from Handel to Leonard Cohen, and from Mozart to Randall Thompson to Judy Garland.

Sunday 21st November 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Paul McGann and Kirsty Besterman read works on the theme of solitude by Alexander Dumas, Wordsworth, Whitman, Dickinson and Larkin. With music from Bach, Delius, Scriabin and Thelonious Monk.

Sunday 28th November 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Sport.

A programme exploring the fascination for writers and composers of the world of sport, with readings by Ioan Meredith and Angela Wynter. Including writing on subjects from cricket and rugby to the more esoteric, such as hang-gliding and rock climbing. Featuring works from Ian McMillan to Jean Binta Breeze, interspersed with music from Henry VIII, Britten and Holst.

Sunday 5th December 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Take Me to the River.

A sequence of music, poetry and prose inspired by rivers, with readings by Juliet Stevenson and Jamie Glover. Including works by Wordsworth, UA Fanthorpe, Ezra Pound, John Clare and Elizabeth Jennings, as well as music by Tippett, Delius, Duke Ellington, Gorecki and Talking Heads.

Sunday 12th December 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:25 to 23:40 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Tailor-Made.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music about clothing and what it means, with readings by Maxine Peake and Ralf Little. Includng compositions by John Tavener, Puccini, Miles Davis and The Coasters, as well texts by Robert Herrick and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Sunday 19th December 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A sequence of poetry, prose and music exploring the theme of monarchs with readings by Samantha Bond and Simon Chandler. Including excerpts from Shakespeare's Henry V and IV, Schiller's Queen Elizabeth I and Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts as well as selections from Handel's Zadok the Priest, Walton's Crown Imperial, Donizetti and Schumann.

Sunday 26th December 2010 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:45 to 23:45 (1 hour long)

Gifts.

Sheila Hancock and Scott Handy read poems and prose on the festive theme of giving and receiving gifts. Through the words of writers from Robert Herrick to O Henry, and from Edward Lear to Walt Whitman, Sheila Hancock and Scott Handy unwrap simple gifts of friendship and lavish gifts of love, and explore the desire of gifts and the rejection of friendships. Music includes Siegfried Idyll by Richard Wagner, which was composed as a birthday present for his wife Cosima, and Colleen's Musical Boxes.

Sunday 2nd January 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:30 to 23:30 (1 hour long)

Mozart - An Inspiration.

Sequence of poetry, prose and music focusing on the writers inspired by Mozart to a new creativity of their own, with readings by Michael Pennington and Olivia Williams. Including works by Eduard Morike, Sara Teasdale, Thomas Hardy, Goethe and Wallace Stevens, and are accompanied by some of Mozart's finest music.

Sunday 16th January 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Travellers' Tales.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music about travellers, with readings by Stella Gonet and Nicholas Farrell. Including works by John Mandeville, Tennyson and Margaret Atwood, as well as music from Debussy, Telemann, Rimsky-Korsakov and the Tiger Lillies.

Sunday 30th January 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Last Things.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music focusing on endings, with readings by Tim Pigott-Smith and Katherine Parkinson. With music including Schubert's String Quintet, Mozart's Requiem and The Doors's The End, along with texts by John Updike, Paul Auster and Michael Herr.

Sunday 6th February 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Nocturne.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music inspired by the night, with readings by Sian Thomas and William Hope. Including texts by Neruda, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, John Burnside, Jackie Kay, AE Housman and Rachel Carson, plus music by Mozart, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Schumann, John Adams and Samuel Barber.

Sunday 13th February 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Opium of the People.

Sequence of poetry, prose and music on the subject of faith and atheism, with readings by John Sessions and Claire Harry. Including texts by Nietzsche, Philip Larkin, Lucretius, Karl Marx and Charles Darwin, as well as music by Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Janacek, Byrd and Mahler.

Sunday 3rd April 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A sequence of poetry, prose and music inspired by the 1940s, with readings by David Haig and Deborah Findlay. Including work by Cecil Day-Lewis, John Betjeman, WH Auden, Dannie Abse, Simone de Beauvoir, Louis Aragon and Freya Stark, with music by Prokofiev, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Django Reinhardt and Peggy Lee.

Sunday 1st May 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Self-Improvement.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the subject of self-improvement, with readings by Anna Maxwell Martin and Matthew Macfadyen. Including writing by Confucius, Kant, Tennyson, Charlotte Bronte and Alan Bennett, together with music by Elgar, Clementi, Rimsky-Korsakov and Bob Dylan.

Sunday 8th May 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of theatre and showbusiness, with readings by Henry Goodman and Samantha Bond. Readings from work by Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, John Dryden, TS Eliot and Dorothy Parker are accompanied by the music of Puccini, Irving Berlin, Purcell, Sondheim and Thomas Ades.

Sunday 22nd May 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of the gothic. With works by Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Coleridge, Keats and Oscar Wilde, as well as music by Perotin, Bach, Berlioz, Paganini and Rachmaninov.

Sunday 5th June 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:25 to 23:40 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Turning Points.

Helena Bonham Carter and Hugh Bonneville feature in a sequence of poetry, prose and music exploring some of life's turning points. With excerpts from writing by Shakespeare, Coleridge, George Eliot, Carol Ann Duffy, Alan Bennett, Erasmus Darwin, William Blake, Hilaire Belloc, Julia Child and Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst. Music is by Bach, Beethoven, Janacek, Rachmaninov, Vaughan Williams and Erma Franklin, among others.

Sunday 3rd July 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:30 to 23:30 (1 hour long)

The South Country.

Sequence of music, poetry and prose inspired by the recent republication of Edward Thomas's essay collection The South Country, celebrating the landscape of southern England and, in particular, three counties in which the poet loved to walk: Sussex, Hampshire and Wiltshire. Tamsin Greig and Neil Pearson read prose by fellow observer-wanderers Gilbert White, William Cobbett and Richard Jefferies, and poetry by such lovers of the south as Flora Thompson, Andrew Young, Hilaire Belloc, Molly Holden and Thomas himself. Music includes orchestral music and songs by John Ireland, Michael Tippett, the Copper Family and the English Acoustic Collective.

Only one more day left for last Sunday's excellent programme. The pastoral English musical and literary selections are worth savouring, though I have to admit to having a particularly soft spot for Edward Thomas. I'm currently working my way through working my through Edna Longley's new (for me - pub. 2008), comprehensively annotated edition of his poems published by Bloodaxe. It's an inspiring, poignant, life-affirming read.

A continuation of the pastoral theme, epitomised by the poetry of Edward Thomas, today Chris.

Sunday 10th July 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:20 to 23:30 (1 hour and 10 minutes long)

Apples.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music inspired by apples, with readings by Olivia Williams and Oliver Ford. Including texts by Keats, Kafka and Christina Rossetti, and music by Schumann, Purcell and Janacek.

Sunday 7th August 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Make The Mark.

Peter Capaldi and Emily Bruni read poetry and prose on the theme of music, from the metaphysical to the everyday. The programme explores the wide-ranging facets and inescapable power of music: the mystical concept of the music of the spheres, the power of music in childhood and everyday life, music as a psychological tormentor and the beauty of music in performance. With poems by Siegfried Sassoon, Walt Whitman, Thomas Hardy and Pablo Neruda, and prose by Nick Hornby and Louis de Bernieres. Music to compliment the readings includes works by Messiaen, Purcell, Pergolesi, Charles Mingus, Neil Young and Philip Glass.

Sunday 21st August 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:30 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Eternal City.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music about everyday life in ancient Rome, with readings by Sian Phillips and Peter Marinker. Including texts by Pliny, Juvenal, Dickens, Henry James, Mark Twain, WH Auden and Kipling, plus music by Richard Wagner, Orff, Rota, Sondheim, John Williams, Respighi, Allegri, Berlioz, Benjamin Britten and Puccini.

Sunday 18th September 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Nine Lives.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of cats, with readings by Juliet Stevenson and Kenneth Cranham. Including poetry and prose from Rudyard Kipling, TS Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Ruth Padel and Grace Nichols, as well as music from Saint-Saens, Rossini, Telemann, John Tavener, Ravel and Tchaikovsky.

Sunday 9th October 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Word Girl.

From Mary to Maeve, Lydia to Laura, and Oriana all the way to a boy named Sue, the weekly sequence of music and verse makes play with the words we use to name the female sex. Readings by Romola Garai and John Shrapnel include verse by Petrarch, Lorca, DH Lawrence, Mervyn Peake and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, plus the odd limerick or two.

Sunday 16th October 2011 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 18:30 (1 hour and 30 minutes long)

The Parish Priest.

a sequence of poetry, prose and music about the day to day life of the parish priest, with readings by Celia Imrie and Michael Kitchen. Including writings by Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, RS Thomas, John Donne, Chaucer, Charlotte Bronte and Thomas Hardy, plus music by Wagner, Bach, William Harris and Elgar.

Sunday 30th October 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Empire Building.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on theme of Empire, with readings by Sian Thomas and Timothy West. With texts by Rudyard Kipling, EM Forster, Derek Walcott, Langston Hughes, Thomas Hardy and Siegfried Sasson, as well as music by Elgar, Debussy and Britten.

Antonia Quirke enjoys a mysterious merging of things literary and musical.
Sweet dreams

Words and Music
Radio 3

Radio 3's late-afternoon programme Words and Music (Sundays, 6.30pm) is a phenomenon. "A sequence of music, mixed with well-loved and less familiar poems and prose", goes the official online pitch for the show - modestly omitting to mention the hefty 75-minute running time (some episodes are even longer, at 90 minutes). Devoting over an hour, with such elegant lines of movement, to any one particular theme - recently, "constraint" and "empire" - is no small feat for the lone producers who construct each programme in less than six days.

As there is no presenter - the readings by actors merely break up the music - you are never told what you are listening to, which turns the experience into a guessing game, as though you have just come across a coverless mix-tape in a drawer, once made by a lover with a comfortable Upper Second in books and a nice record collection, but which somehow never builds into a careful pyramid of one's own ignorance, even when you fail to guess a single extract or piece of music correctly or suspect that you are wrong to the tune of 180 years and three continents, which, for the competitive, is the equivalent of buying a loaf of white and finding a dead mouse inside.

Or you can just let the show wash over you dreamily. Yes, best just do that. A few weeks ago, the theme was the life of the parish priest and the episode included Dickens, Nina Simone, Malcolm Arnold, Wynton Marsalis and an extract from a diary entry written by a priest who recalled going to sit in sympathy with a family whose daughter had died in a freak accident - a car had rolled backwards over the child in a driveway. The priest did not say whether he had been asked to visit or even if he was welcome when he got there but said that he had merely gone to represent, if only momentarily, "another broken life" - that of Christ.

I have never heard that particular sentiment so modestly and sorrowfully expressed. I would not have heard it at all, had the producer not been married to a vicar and had that kind of literature at her fingertips. But if that edition was exceptionally deep and felt, it was not unusual. Five years old next February, Words and Music remains the best recurring series on the wire.

6.30pm.

Readers Stella Gonet and Nicholas Farrell set sail on a sea of tall tales told by travellers. Since the ancient Greek poet Homer hailed the exploits of Odysseus there has been an appetite for the true, almost true and downright fabricated stories of travellers: their adventures, the strange sights they saw and the creatures they sometimes loved and left behind. These tales are reflected in music by Debussy, Telemann, Rimsky-Korsakov and the Tiger Lillies, with words by John Mandeville, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Margaret Atwood.

Sunday 4th December 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Four Temperaments.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of the Four Temperaments, with readings by Joe Dunlop and Joanna Tope. Including Wordsworth, John Donne, Dylan Thomas, Milton and Chaucer, as well as music by Dowland, Holst, Britten and Bruckner.

Sunday 11th December 2011 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Tendrilled Avenues.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music about our complex relationship with alcohol, with readings by Sally Dexter and Jon Strickland. With texts by Pliny the Elder, Dickens, Lowry, Colette, Shakespeare, Martin Amis, Herman Melville, Annie Proulx and DH Lawrence, plus music by Verdi, Warlock, Ravel, Copland, Milhaud and Tom Waits.

Gillian Renolds in The Telegraph:

Your shoulders ache. Your head aches worse. You can’t stop sneezing. This is only a cold, you say, and take to your bed. Of course, you bring the radio with you but choose your company carefully. No shouty phone-ins, no news, no X Factor winners, no sport. Pick programmes that have been made with the kind of care you wish to lavish upon yourself.
I chose Words and Music (Radio 3, Sunday) and it did me the world of good. This edition was called Tendrilled Avenues, a mysterious title which, it became apparent, led to intoxications. If you aren’t a Words and Music regular you won’t know it has no presenter, so either you recognise the words and music or you travel wherever the programme sends you. There’s a running order on the Radio 3 website but I prefer the “ghost train” experience, not quite knowing what comes next.
On Sunday there were drinking songs, Hemingwayish mentions of beer, more drinking songs. Aha, there was that brilliant bit from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour drama these past two weeks) in which the alcoholic has never been better portrayed. Here’s Malcolm Lowry in a Mexican cantina, there goes Shakespeare and, oh boy, welcome Tom Waits and The Piano Has Been Drinking. Thank you Philip Tagney, a producer who can lead you from a waltz with Ravel to Sinatra propping up a bar. I can’t think when I’ve had a better time without a drop taken. There are five days left to listen again.

Sunday 8th January 2012 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of epiphany, with readings by Joanna David and Bertie Carvel. With writing by TS Eliot, Carol Ann Duffy and Wole Soyinka, as well as music by Bach, Menotti and Lennox Berkeley.

This week Words and Music takes you into the darkened, turreted recesses of The Gothic. From the surreal, macabre beginnings of the genre in Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto to the tortured wanderings of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; the gothic literary world is one of dark passions and ominous thrills. Work by Coleridge and Keats shows the romantic impulse which was extended and darkened by later gothic writing, arriving in the late nineteenth century at Oscar Wilde's haunting Picture of Dorian Gray. Musically, we venture back to the 12th century with the work of Pérotin who composed amidst the gothic splendour of Notre Dame cathedral, as well as pieces by Bach, Berlioz, Paganini and Rachmaninov.

The creeping, menacing, darkness of Verdi’s Prelude to Macbeth raises the curtain on the entrancing, unsettling world of The Gothic. Born of the twin eighteenth century literary fascinations of romanticism and the sublime, gothic literature took readers to cliff top castles, on Byronic journeys through unnatural tempests and into the more disturbing realms of imagination.

This was a genre designed to deliver a pleasurable thrill of terror and it gave rise to great literature. As ever, Shakespeare looms large - his Lady Macbeth was arguably the first gothic heroine and her chilling demand for supernatural powers to ‘unsex me now’ starts our shadowy journey. Mary Shelley’s entry in an 1816 story telling competition bestowed upon the world a spine chilling monster of a book which has lurked in the public consciousness ever since.

The name Frankenstein has become a metaphor in its own right. In the programme you’ll hear the poignant moment when Frankenstein’s monster suffers the painfully human sensation of remorse after the murder of his creator. Nineteenth century gothic revivalism in architecture revelled in the macabre, gargoyle-encrusted grandeur of medieval religious buildings.

We step inside Ernest Walsh’s Cathedral accompanied by the echoing enormity of Poulenc’s concerto for organ, strings and timpani. The unearthly music of Perotin, one of the twelfth century composers who served their apprenticeship amidst the gothic splendour of Notre Dame, evokes the ethereal majesty of a cathedral space with his Beata Viscera. Gregory Lewis’ The Monk takes gothic religiosity in a slightly more eccentric direction.

This tale of a lustful man of the cloth trying to overcome his demons has all the elements of gothic- gone-mad: we hear the moment when a devilish preacher with Pride!Lust!Inhumanity! written on his forehead lunges at an alter-bound virgin; an ideal introduction to Carl Orff’s demonic O Fortuna. While the gothic in music and literature is most often associated with darkness and fear; some of its defining principles come from the light infused excitement of romantic writing.

Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, with its rapturous paean to the haunting power of nature, shows us the roots of the gothic preoccupation with ever heightened sensation. We finally arrive at another iconic gothic location at the close of the programme. Léonie Adams’ pealing evocation of a Bell Tower is musically matched by Tallis’ O Nata Lux, allowing us to step momentarily out of the shadows and into the light.

Sunday 29th January 2012 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Outsider.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of outsiders, from eccentrics to psychopaths, with readings by Lesley Manville and Tom Goodman-Hill. With texts by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Clare, Mary Shelley, Albert Camus, George Orwell, Maya Angelou and Jeanette Winterson, plus music by Gesualdo, Strauss, Ligeti and Alban Berg.

Sunday, February 5th, 2012 on
BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of railways, with readings by Jonathan Pryce and Eleanor Bron. With texts by Zola, Hawthorne, Dickens, Wilfred Owen, Hardy, Larkin, Tolstoy and Primo Levi, interspersed with 'train' music from Honegger, Grainger, Rossini, Offenbach, Villa-Lobos, Glinka, Ives, Britten, Langgaard, Bainbridge, Meade 'Lux' Lewis and Elvis Presley.

Sunday 11th March 2012 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Haunting.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music focusing on the theme of haunting, with readings by Emilia Fox and Jamie Glover. With texts by Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, DH Lawrence, Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Mann and Tennyson, as well as music by Berlioz and Arnold Bax.

Sunday 18th March 2012 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Education.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music exploring the theme of education, with readings by Richard Wilson and Celia Imrie. With texts by Keats, Dickens and Mary Shelley interspersed with music from Barber, Schumann, Britten, Bartok, Leopold Mozart, Rufus Wainwright and Brahms.

Sunday 15th April 2012 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

The Opium of the People.

Sequence of poetry, prose and music on the subject of faith and atheism, with readings by John Sessions and Claire Harry. Including texts by Nietzsche, Philip Larkin, Lucretius, Karl Marx and Charles Darwin, as well as music by Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Janacek, William Byrd and Mahler.

Here is a link to a brief CBS news (USA) report from late March 2012 on lost music from Wolfgang Mozart recently found in a Salzburg, Austria attic; it is played in this video clip on the harpsichord in the Mozart Museum:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=_dsPMAWYMgs

It is 84 bars long, Mozart wrote it at the age of 11, and the page titles are by someone unknown (a tutor??), not Mozart's father. Click on the upper left box in the video clip frame to play this report. My question for BBC Radio 3 is, can this newly found Mozart piece be played on your show sometime?

Fascinating IndyBooks. Why not go to the Radio 3 website and ask this question there?

OK, I did just that, on their blog. (Thanks for the suggestion!)

Sunday 29th April 2012 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Beauty.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of beauty, with readings by Eve Best and Don Warrington. Including writings by Baudelaire, Sara Teasdale and Oscar Wilde, as well as music from Mendelssohn, Delius and Wagner.

Sunday 6th May 2012 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

May Day.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of May Day, with readings by Sarah Alexander and Julian Rhind-Tutt. With texts by Milton, Chaucer, Herrick and Richmal Crompton, plus music including Britten, Debussy, Michael Berkeley and The Rolling Stones.

Sunday 27th May 2012 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Fighting Spirit.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of fighting spirit, with readings by Alison Steadman and Peter Egan. With texts from Larkin, Carroll, Kipling and Shakespeare, interspersed with music by Raymond Scott, Schubert, Wagner, Irving Berlin and Queen.

Sunday, June 10th, 2012 on
BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

The Full Montaigne.


A sequence of texts and music in which Jim Broadbent plays French writer Michel de Montaigne. With music including Bach, Ligeti, Mendelssohn and Randy Newman. Jim Broadbent plays Michel de Montaigne, whose 'Essays' entertainingly ponder sex, marriage, animals, memory, and cruelty in an attempt to answer one question: 'How to live?'

Introduction
In this edition of Words & Music, Jim Broadbent plays the French sixteenth-century essayist, Michel de Montaigne.

In his celebrated Essays, Montaigne drew on a lifetime of experience and observation to try to answer one essential question: ‘How to live?’ But far from inscrutable musings, the Essays are often earthy and direct, at once scatological and astute, philosophical and witty, playful and profound.

The Essays were first published in 1580 and are positively Shakespearian, both in their range and their humanism. But unlike Shakespeare in his plays, Montaigne speaks as himself, and he says the most heretical things. For instance, that human beings are on a par with the animals and just a tiny part of Nature, all of which deserve equal respect; that death is just the end of life, and it is life which the important thing.

In 1676, almost a century after his death, the Vatican caught up with Montaigne and the Essays were put on its index of prohibited books, where they stayed until 1854. But the Essays have been continuously available (if not at the Vatican bookshop) for the last four and a half centuries, not only because they are engaging and entertaining, but because they so often ignite the spark self-recognition. ‘Yes! That’s how it is! That’s how I feel!’ is a familiar sensation for Essay readers.

‘The Full Montaigne’ is a cheeky title for a programme featuring 30 minutes of (albeit wonderfully performed) readings from a book of over a thousand pages. But I hope seasoned Montaignistes will find themselves recognising an old friend, and those coming to the Essays for the first time will find a new one.

For anyone who is interested in finding out more about Montaigne and the Essays, a great starting-point (and the one which inspired this programme), is Sarah Bakewells book ‘How to Live, or A life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer’.

David Papp (producer)
Producer Note
To begin the programme, Montaigne sets out the aim and method of his Essays. He continually observes himself to find out about the world because ‘each man bears the entire form of man’s estate’. But nothing is certain and ‘all contradictions may be found in me by some twist and in some fashion’. The hardest of all things is ‘how to live this life well and naturally’. Here to accompany his reflections is another difficult thing made to sound easy and natural, a stately but unassuming sarabande by Bach.

What did Montaigne look like? He tells us, with the help of Randy Newman, that he is short and doesn’t like it; otherwise strong and healthy ‘until well along in years’. He has little talent for sport and dancing and none for music. But it seems unlikely that he ‘cannot even write so I can read it’ nor ‘read much better’. Nothing worries him but the need for health and life. ‘Extremely idle, extremely independent, both by nature and by art’ – a cue for Beethoven at his most easy-going and for Montaigne to tell us that the only ability he has needed is to ‘content himself with his lot’. Suspense and deliberation are worrisome; much better to be driven ‘at a single bound directly into suffering’.

There is no proto-Proustian cup of tea and madeleine for Montaigne. His experience will be familiar to many: the more he tries to remember something, the more elusive it becomes. And it is the same with dreams. He knows he wants to remember them even while he dreams; when he wakes, the more he strains to remember them, the more they are plunged into oblivion. Post-dream Fauré follows.

The power – or rather powerlessness – of the will comes next, especially when it comes to the male member, ‘obtruding so importunately when we have no use for it, and failing so importunately when we have the most use for it’. Montaigne imagines himself pleading the cause of the ‘honourable member’ and defending it against other parts of the body which are envious ‘of the importance and pleasure of the use of him’ but just as guilty of defying the will. But, come to think about it, isn’t the will just as capricious?

The unruly member still prominent, a fandango by Boccherini launches Montaigne on Sex. For Montaigne, sex for its own sake, or without mutual pleasure for both parties, or without reciprocated affection becomes tantamount to two very unsavoury episodes from the ancient world. And, in any case, not all sex is good sex: some ‘enjoyments are meagre and languid’; sometimes the ladies ‘go to it with only one buttock’. And ‘what if she eats your bread with the sauce of a more agreeable imagination?’ Moreover, what has good sex got to do with marriage? Not much, agrees Nina Simone: ‘One husband/One wife/Whaddaya got?/A sentence for life!’

The spirited eight-way musical conversation from the last movement of Mendelssohn’s Octet echoes Montaigne’s view that ‘The most fruitful and natural exercise of our mind… is discussion.’ With the right person, ‘Rivalry, glory, competition push me and lift me above myself.’ But beware ‘association and frequentation with mean and sickly minds’ – although impatience with stupidity is itself ‘another sort of malady which is scarcely less troublesome than stupidity.’

Two extraordinary passages follow, ones that seem to make the centuries between Montaigne and us roll away.

The first begins ‘I cruelly hate cruelty’. Here is a man, living at a time when violence and cruelty were woven into the fabric of everyday life, who can’t ‘see a chicken’s neck wrung without distress,’ let alone witness the violence of one man against another. ‘There is a certain respect, and a general duty of humanity, that attaches us not only to animals, who have life and feeling, but even to trees and plants.’ Tallis’s jewel-like setting of ‘If ye love me’ is the only music in the programme contemporary with Montaigne.

The second, with its famous (and perfectly reasonable) question ‘When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?’ builds towards the heretical conclusion that ‘We are neither above nor below the rest: all that is under heaven… incurs the same law and the same fortune, all things are bound by their own chains of fate’. Rautavaara’s ‘Cantus Arcticus,’ with its recorded wild bird calls, emphasises Montaigne’s parting shot: those who recognise that a whole kingdom is nothing more than a tiny dot in the in the great picture of Nature, are those who estimate ‘things according to their true proportions.’

In the next pair of extracts we are very much back in Montaigne’s sixteenth century. He was a top-level negotiator during the bloody civil war that divided France through much of his life and here he tells us that he ‘would rather fail in my mission than fail to be true to myself’. He says that he looks ‘upon our kings simply with a loyal and civic affection.’ One imagines that people must have been hanged for saying less.

In the programme’s penultimate passage, Montaigne describes the arrival of the plague at his estate and the accommodation with death that he witnessed among the peasants, some of whom dug their own graves: ‘one of my labourers, with his hands and feet, pulled the earth over him as he was dying.’ Once again, a heretical thought: ‘It seems to me that death is indeed the end, but not therefore the goal, of life… Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself.’ Bach would have been shocked, I think – but this arrangement of his celebrated violin Chaconne with its funerary hymns seems to fit.

The end of the ‘Essays’ provides the final text of the programme, a celebration of ordinariness: ‘The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity.’ Montaigne signs off by commending old age to ‘that god who is the protector of health and wisdom, but gay and sociable wisdom,’ a cue for some gay and sociable Chabrier.

David Papp (producer)

Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
Introduction – ‘The World always looks straight ahead…’
18:30

Johann Sebastian Bach
Sarabande (from Partita No. 1 in B flat, BWV 825)
Performer: Murray Perahia (piano)
Sony 88697565602, Tr. 4

Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
General philosophy – ‘I take the first subject chance offers…’
Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
‘I set forth a humble and inglorious life…’
Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
‘All contradictions may be found in me...’
Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
‘If others examined themselves, as I do…’
Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
‘Relaxation and affability…’
Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
On shortness – ‘I’m a little below medium height…’
18:36

Randy Newman
Short People
Performer: Randy Newman (vocals & piano)
Warner bros 256404, Tr. 1

Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
General characteristics – ‘For the rest, I have a strong, thickset body…’
18:40

Ludwig van Beethoven
Rondino, WoO 25
Performer: Sabine Meyer Wind Ensemble
EMI 5 56817 2, Tr. 5

Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
‘The only ability I have needed…’
Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
‘The most painful situation for me…’
Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
On memory – ‘I am displeased with my mind…’
Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
On the unruly member – ‘Married people…’
18:54

Luigi Boccherini
Quintet No. 4 in D major, G. 341 (3rd mvt: Fandango)
Performer: Le concert des nations & Jordi Savall
Allia vox AVSA 9845, Tr. 3

Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
On sex – ‘Love is nothing but the thirst for sexual enjoyment…’
Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
‘Women are not wrong…’
Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
On marriage – ‘I see no marriages that sooner are troubled and fail…’
19:02

Leon Carr/Earl Shuman
Marriage is for Old Folks
Performer: Nina Simone (vocals) Performer: Orchestra arranged and conducted by Hal Mooney
Verve 0624 9846775, Tr. 16

Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
On conversation – ‘The most fruitful and natural exercise of our mind…’
19:04

Felix Mendelssohn
Octet - 4th Mvt (Presto)
Performer: Daniel Hope (violin) & Soloists of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe
DG 477 6634, Tr. 7

Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
On cruelty – ‘I cruelly hate cruelty…’
19:12

Thomas Tallis
If ye love me
Performer: Tallis Scholars & Peter Phillips (director)
Gimell DCGMB450, CD 3 Tr. 1

Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
On animals – ‘Presumption is our natural and original malady…’
19:17

Einojuhani Rautavaara
Cantus Arcticus mvt 1 – The Bog
Performer: Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra & Leif Segerstam (conductor)
Ondine ODE 1014 1, Tr. 5
19:21

Jean-Philippe Rameau
Chaconne (Quatrième Entrée: Les Sauvages)
Performer: Les Musiciens Du Louvre & Marc Minkowski (director)
Deutche Grammophon SACD 4775578, Tr. 17

Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
On negotiation – ‘In what little negotiating I have had to do between our princes…’
Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
On plague – ‘I doubt if I can decently admit…’
19:28

György Ligeti
Requiem - De die judicii sequentia
Performer: Caroline Stein (soprano) Performer: London Voices Performer: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Performer: Jonathan Nott (conductor)
Teldec 8573 88263 2, Tr. 13
19:29

J. S. Bach (arr. Helga Thoerne)
Chaconne from Paritita in D minor (BWV 1004)
Performer: Christoph Poppen (violin) Performer: The Hilliard Ensemble
ECM 461 895-2, Tr. 21

Michel de Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame
Ending – ‘It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine…’
19:37

Alexis Emmanuel Chabrier
10 Pièces pittoresques - Paysage
Performer: Kathryn Stott (piano)
Unicorn-Kanchana DKP(CD)9158, Tr. 1

Today:

Poems, prose and music on the theme of the Rose. Ruby petals, emerald stems: the rose speaks love. Its language is beauty, tenderness and eternity; its colour is passion. But the rose also speaks a less familiar language, that of peace, nationalism and revolution, the strangeness of mysticism and the finality of death. This hymn plucks rare and wild roses for its verses with music by Britten, Delius and Bridge and words by Charles Tomlinson, Dorothy Parker and WB Yeats, read by Lindsay Duncan and Iwan Rheon.

Sunday, June 24th, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

London

A sequence of poetry, prose and music celebrating London, with readings by Eileen Atkins and David Jason. With writing by Daniel Defoe, John Evelyn, Dickens, Orwell, Eliot and Keats, as well as music from by composers including Handel, Haydn, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Britten and Elgar.

Sunday 8th July 2012 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Words and Music on the Theme of the Exotic.

Readings by Greta Scacchi and Simon Woods. Coleridge's Xanadu and Byron's Childe Harolde wander in lushly described landscapes. Musical and literary experiences of exoticism are often about western artists seduced by a vision of otherness which is little more than a mirage: from Mozart's typically eighteenth century take on a Turkish harem to Kipling's colonial representations of India. Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Debussy: Pagodes, Flaubert: Salammbo and Shakespeare's Cleopatra offer visions of exotic womanhood; the goddess who commands adulation and fear in equal measure - like the distant corners of the earth from which she comes.

Saturday, July 21st, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:00pm to 7:30pm

This edition of Words and Music explores the theme of monarchs. Kings and Queens have long possessed the imaginations and financed the careers of poets, playwrights and composers. Readers Samantha Bond and Simon Chandler play a host of historical kings and queens, from Shakespeare's Henry V and IV to Schiller's Queen Elizabeth I and Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts. Handel's Zadok the Priest and Walton's Crown Imperial provided the soundtracks to the coronations of George II and VI respectively; and we hear Samuel Pepys relate the incredible sight of '24 violins' at the coronation of Charles II in 1661. The predicament of kingship was one of Shakespeare's most enduring fascinations, his Henry IV and V soliloquise in some of his greatest verse on the isolation of the ruler's plight, an isolation that may have been understood only too well by Shakespeare's great patron: Elizabeth I. Music by Donizetti and Schumann, and drama by Schiller capture the tragedy of Elizabeth's relationship with her passionate cousin Mary, Queen of Scots; whose last letter we hear, written on the eve of her execution.

Saturday, July 28th, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:00pm to 7:30pm

The Parish Priest.

a sequence of poetry, prose and music about the day to day life of the parish priest, with readings by Celia Imrie and Michael Kitchen. Including writings by Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, RS Thomas, John Donne, Chaucer, Charlotte Bronte and Thomas Hardy, plus music by Wagner, Bach, William Harris and Elgar.

Sunday, August 19th, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:30pm

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of evil, with readings by Ann Mitchell and Andrew Wincott. Including the Bible, Milton, Beowulf, Crowley, Marlowe, William Blake, Dante, Swinburne and Baudelaire, plus music from Alban Berg, Benjamin Britten and Black Sabbath

Sunday, September 23rd, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Tom Goodman-Hill and Emma Fielding are the readers of poems and prose about the celebration of men, the great and the not so noble.

From the Greek and Trojan kings, to the tyrants of the twentieth century via Einstein and the paeans sung by artists to their mentors and heroes. Seamus Heaney mourns Robert Lowell whilst Philip Larkin utters an unalloyed yes to Sidney Bechet.

There's music from Britten, written especially for the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and an elegy for Philip Sidney by WIlliam Byrd as well as music by John Adams, Mozart and Berlioz.

Producer’s Note:

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Hector, Priam, Achilles, Stalin, Jay Gatsby, Casanova, Shakespeare, Einstein and J Robert Oppenheimer: warriors, kings, hucksters, lovers, artists and thinkers – the great and the terrifying.

Literature, music and history is brimming with stories of great and powerful men. The tales are rarely straightforward paeans to the good and glorious: violence, lust and folly muddle the pure heroic trajectory.

In this programme the truly great and inspirational jostle with the infamous and the terrible whilst the representatives of lives a little more ordinary tug against the idea that only the voices of the strong are remembered.

Along the way there are encounters with an unrepentant Casanova relishing the memory of his love of “strong flavours”, an enchanting Gatsby and the grim lesson of Ozymandias. Philip Larkin shrugs off the gloom and utters an unencumbered “yes” to the jazz clarinettist Sidney Bechet; Mstislav Rostropovich plays music composed especially for him by an admiring Benjamin Britten whilst Carol Ann Duffy imagines a less mean interpretation of William Shakespeare’s legacy to his widow of his “second best bed”.

Sunday, October 7th, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

A sequence of music, poetry and prose on the theme of nuns, with readings by Sheila Hancock and Ellie Kendrick. With excerpts from writings including Charlotte Bronte's Villette, Chaucer's Canterbury's Tales, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, and Rumer Godden's Black Narcissus. Music includes Puccini's Suor Angelica, Poulenc's Les dialogues des Carmelites and Rossini's Count Ory, plus chants by Hildegard von Bingen and instrumental music by Vivaldi.

Sunday, October 14th, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

Louise Jameson and Joshua Richards with poetry, prose and music celebrating the piano.

The piano inspires a kaleidoscope of musical styles, but packs an emotional punch as well. Join actors Louise Jameson and Joshua Richards for poetry and prose that celebrates love, loss, nostalgia, grim determination and joy, all inspired by the piano. With music to match, of course.

Producer's Note

“This curious beast with its enormous moonlit smile” is how American poet Billy Collins describes the piano. And it’s a beast that takes a lot of taming, as any parent of piano-learning offspring can attest.

In this edition of Words and Music I have included the hopes, failings and triumphs of learners of all ages and abilities – Donald Justice’s conscientious Czerny-wielding child, Billy Collins’ exasperated adult learner, Roy Helton’s harassed woman trying to teach herself from a primer, Rachel Cusk’s Thomas, who has given up his job for a year to play the piano and finds himself trying to impress his piano teacher with some hard-won Beethoven, and – I have waited to get this on Radio 3 for years - Sparky , blatantly cheating with his magic piano. Finally there is Linda Pastan’s moving poem about a man who after years of childhood practice, has reached the longed-for point of playing for himself, because he can and because he wants to.

Of course anyone can play chopsticks, including Marilyn Monroe, and rather more smoothly, Liberace, but who can resist Ogden Nash’s curse upon the man who composed it.

Along the way I have included poems of piano-induced nostalgia, provoking remembrance of past times for D H Lawrence, and Siegfried Sassoon’s elegiac account of a distant concert party in Egypt in 1918. Randall Jarrell’s revisiting of the past comes from the memory of a player-piano, playing remotely, playing itself, not quite connecting with the music, as a grown woman doesn’t quite connect with her own early life.

The piano has long been an instrument for flirtation, and so I have included the passage in “Emma” where the seemingly decorous Jane Fairfax and the slightly trying-too-hard Frank Churchill endeavour not to let on that they are in love. I have given them a Mozart duet at the end of this reading, which I’m sure Frank would have liked to have attempted to play with Jane. And Shakespeare, whose love-lorn Sonnet 128 is the source of the phrase “tickling the ivories” although he rather predates the piano proper.

Then there is Christopher Morley’s sardonic take on his young female neighbour bashing the lights out her piano in an attempt to impress her suitor. She (and he) might have appreciated the fiery playing of Liszt, Glenn Gould, or indeed the apparently literally combustible Jerry Lee Lewis.

So here is a celebration of the piano, which for all its challenges, helps us, as Robert Frost says, to “get some color and music out of life”.

Elizabeth Funning (producer)

Sunday, November 4th, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

n a special edition from the 2012 Free Thinking Festival in St Mary's Heritage Centre, opposite The Sage Gateshead, Sian Thomas and Ron Cook read poetry and prose on the theme of this year's festival: 'them and us'. Music is provided by the Aronowitz Ensemble, soprano Sarah-Jane Lewis and the NASUWT Riverside Band with conductor Ray Farr. Including an excerpt from Arthur C Clarke's sci-fi classic Childhood's End, poetry by Fleur Adcock, Hilaire Belloc and Wilfred Owen, and prose from Jane Austen and George Orwell. With music including Mars from Holst's The Planets, Thomas Ades's Darknesse Visible and Poulenc's Voyage a Paris.

Sunday, November 11th, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

Mariah Gale and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith are the readers in a sequence of poetry, prose and music celebrating the mythical musician Orpheus. With writing by Rilke, Virgil, Goethe and Carol Ann Duffy, as well as music by Monteverdi, Handel, Beethoven, Gluck and Birtwistle.

Sunday, November 18th, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

Poetry and prose exploring all aspects of shopping and trade, with readings by Phil Davis and Raquel Cassidy. Including excerpts from Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, the Bible and Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Sunday, November 25th, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

Revenge

This week's edition of Words and Music satiates itself on the cold dish of revenge. It's an act of passion meted out on our foes, ourselves, love, old age, the sun....So many subjects have been the focus of humankind's ire. Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus opens the programme with a threat to the foul offender who shall quake at the feet of revenge. And we hear music composed for some of literature's most famous revenge scenes: Romeo's revenge on Tybalt for murdering Mercutio; Diana's revenge upon Actaeon for espying her naked; or the chilling revenge of the Pied Piper upon the citizens of Hamelin. With music by Prokofiev, Mendelssohn and Janacek; and words by Carol Ann Duffy, Ted Hughes and Charles Dickens. The readers and Samantha Bond and Kenneth Cranham.

Sunday, December 2nd, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

Words and music on the theme of Greece, from classical antiquity to modern day austerity, with readings by Sian Phillips and Timothy West. Including music by Schubert, Mikis Theodorakis, Strauss, Monteverdi and Stravinsky, plus words by Euripides, Homer, George Seferis, Gerald Durrell, Louis de Bernieres, Stamatis Poelnakis

Sunday, December 23rd, 2012 on BBC Radio Three from 6:30pm to 7:45pm

Abundance.

Music and poetry on the theme of plenty, excess and enough. Hayley Carmichael and Nicholas Farrell read poems by Ted Hughes, Louis MacNeice and Thomas Campion, with music by Prokofiev, Dutilleux and Tallis.

Sunday 30th December 2012 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Perchance to Dream.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the subject of dreams, with readings by Sophie Thompson and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Including excerpts from Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Charlotte Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure and Thackeray's Vanity Fair, plus music by Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Stravinsky and Handel.

Sunday 6th January 2013 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:30 (1 hour long)

Beginnings.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of beginnings, with readings by Geraldine James and Neil Pearson. Including works by Tennyson, Denise Levertov, Dylan Thomas, Thom Gunn, Sylvia Plath, Philip Larkin and AE Housman, plus music by Haydn and Copland.

Sunday 27th January 2013 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Metamorphosis.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of metamorphosis, with readings by Meera Syal and Harry Hadden-Paton. With writings by Ovid, Shakespeare, Kafka, Roald Dahl and Jo Shapcott, as well as the music of Britten, Stravinsky, Mendelssohn, Handel and Lerner and Loewe.

Sunday 3rd February 2013 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

I Am a Camera.

Sequence of poetry and prose and music evoking Germany.

Joseph Haydn
Symphony No. 6 in D Major
Performer: Nicholas Ward; Northern Chamber Orchestra
NAXOS 8.503400, CD2 tr1

Christopher Isherwood
Goodbye to Berlin, Lisa Dillon

Bertolt Brecht / Lesley Lendrum
Of Swimming in Lakes and Rivers, Patrick Kennedy and Lisa Dillon
18:34

Carl Orff
Carmina Burana
Performer: James Levine; Chicago Symphony Chorus; Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Deutsche Grammophon 415 136-2, tr15
18:38

Felix Mendelssohn
Lieder ohne Worte op.53 No. 1 in A flat major
Performer: Daniel Barenboim
Deutsche Grammophon 4239312, CD1 tr19
18:41

Richard Wetz
Traumsommernacht op.14
Performer: Ulf Wallin; Markus Köhler; Kammerchor der Musikkochule Augsburg; Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz; Werner Andreas Albert
CPO 9999332, tr5

Found
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lisa Dillon
18:47

Max Reger
Wiegenlied, op.79
Performer: Pieter Wispelwey; Paolo Giacometti
Channel Classics CCS 9596, tr14
Bertolt Brecht / David Constantine
Thoughts of a Gramophone Owner, Patrick Kennedy
18:51

Harald Genzmer
Konzert für Klavier und Orchester (1948)
Performer: Oliver Triendl; Bamberger Symphoniker; Werner Andreas Albert
Thorofon CTH 2494, tr10

Stephen Spender
The Temple, Lisa Dillon
18:55

Georg Philipp Telemann
Concerto in F minor
Performer: Heinz Holliger; Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields; Iona Brown
PHILIPS 412 879 2, tr14
Gunter Grass
The Tin Drum, Patrick Kennedy
18:57

Hollaender
Gesetzt den Fall
Performer: Ute Lemper
DECCA 452 601-2, tr11

Bertolt Brecht / Derek Mahon
White Cloud from Adaptations, Lisa Dillon
19:03

Robert Schumann
Kind im Einschlummern
Performer: Angela Hewitt
Hyperion CDA 67780, tr12
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wearily Romantic, Patrick Kennedy
19:06

Johann Sebastian Bach
Prelude in C Minor
Performer: Richard Egarr
Harmonia Mundi, CD1 tr1
Rupert Brook
In Freiburg Station
19:10

Bernard Herrmann
Daydreams
Performer: Michael Nowak; Roger Wilkie; Dave Walther; Andrew Shulman
Relativity Music Group RMG 10061, tr6

Peter Porter
May 1945, Lisa Dillon
19:12

Anton Bruckner
Symphony No.8 in C minor
Performer: Orchestre de las Suisse Romande; Marek Janowski
PenaTone classics 518637, tr1

Sunday 3rd March 2013 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

As part of Radio 3's Baroque Spring season, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Zoe Waites read poems and prose about and by Baroque composers. Including excerpts from Couperin's The Art of Playing the Harpsichord and Charles Avison's An Essay on Musical Expression, and poetry by Gerald Manley Hopkins and William Shentone. With music by Bach, Purcell, Rameau and other composers of the baroque era.

Sunday 31st March 2013 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Tears, Idle Tears.

A sequence of music, poetry and prose on the theme of tears, with readings by Samuel Barnett. Including Tennyson, Donne and F Scott Fitzgerald, as well as music by Purcell, Dowland and Bach.

Sunday 7th April 2013 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

A Legend of Good Women.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music on the theme of good women, with readings by Oliver Dimsdale and Sian Thomas. With poetry by Tennyson, Carol Ann Duffy and Robert Browning, interspersed with music by Gluck, Sibelius, Handel and Stravinsky.

Sunday 28th April 2013 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Four Medieval Mystic Masters Across Religions.

A sequence interweaving music with mystic Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist poetry from the Middle Ages, from Christian Hildegard of Bingen, Judah Halevi, Rumi and Milarepa. The readers are Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack.

Sunday 12th May 2013 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

I Love No Leafless Land.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music inspired by trees, with reading by Lucy Briers and Gerard Murphy. Including works by Cecil Day Lewis, DH Lawrence, Gerard Manley Hopkins, WH Davies, Shakespeare, James Thompson and CS Lewis, as well as music by Respighi, Butterworth, Madeleine Dring and Takemitsu.

Taking its title from words by A E Housman, this edition of Words and Music is inspired by trees.

There are individual real trees such as Sassoon's "Blunden's Oak", or a spectacularly "dissolving" storm-battered beech, and trees that are symbolic - C. Day Lewis's Christmas Tree, and the trees that mark the passing of the year.

With poetry on the relationships between people and trees, the pleasure and pain of being solitary (Walt Whitman) , and the struggle for survival (D H Lawrence) , insistence on the need for trees (Gerard Manley Hopkins "Binsey Poplars, felled") and meditations on long life and ageing (W H Davies).

There are also celebrations of the sheer beauty and abundance of trees. Trees have spirits, so the Green Man makes his appearance, as do the dryads and hamadryads of mythology. (Shakespeare, James Thomson, C S Lewis)

The words are interleaved seamlessly with music, including Respighi's Pines, song settings by Butterworth and Madeleine Dring, an atmospheric evocation of acacias by Toru Takemitsu and some music generated by the wood of the trees themselves, using electronics and a modified turntable.

Sunday 19th May 2013 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:30 to 19:45 (1 hour and 15 minutes long)

Wagner 200 - Transformations and Transfigurations.

Juliet Stevenson and Michael Pennington are the readers in a sequence of poetry, prose and music evoking the spirit and art of Richard Wagner. With Verlaine, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Eliot, Lawrence, Wilde, Judith Gautier, Nietzsche and Wagner's wife, Cosima. Music includes excerpts from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, Lohengrin, The Mastersingers and The Ring.