Do3 Messiaen and the Birds

[eighthobstruction]

....https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0028208 .I didn't get on with this at all....I had a lot of trouble with hearing any sound sculpture, the actors voices,. The words and structure didn't make an impression....I found Michael Symonds Roberts repetitive , vague , thin, though his soundtrack was very clear....I cannot really recommend i....

However the programme before it on Sunday evening Michael Minghella and Music was most enjoyable https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0028206 esp due to IOW connection....

[french frank]

....https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0028208 .I didn't get on with this at all....I had a lot of trouble with hearing any sound sculpture, the actors voices,. The words and structure didn't make an impression....I found Michael Symonds Roberts repetitive , vague , thin, though his soundtrack was very clear....I cannot really recommend i....

It sounds superficially like a 'very R3' subject - but for a play? MSR's 'creative pilgrimage'? The proof of the pudding is in the listening but it wouldn't tempt me back to listening to Do3.

[AuntDaisy]

It sounds superficially like a 'very R3' subject - but for a play? MSR's 'creative pilgrimage'? The proof of the pudding is in the listening but it wouldn't tempt me back to listening to Do3.

A "Docudrama" at most, dreary at worst. I gave it a quick go.
I hadn't realised that Dukas was Scottish (~10:55 in), or that Yvonne Loriod had a Northern accent - why, oh why?

At least next week's Drama on 3, Hamlet, has a decent story and real Actors (from 1971 & probably lightly trimmed).

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks everyone for the ! Saves me a lot of time!

[french frank]

As Symmons Roberts is a distinguished poet by reputation, I didn't want my ignorance to get in the way of exploring a little further. I found this article by him relating to another of his works, inspired by Vingt Regards, with one of the poems. In short, this R3 production sounds like what the Old R3 might have commissioned, but I wonder how many of those who might have appreciated it are still listening to R3. It seems completely out of sync with what R3 is now doing. Perhaps: "We commissioned this new work by a distinguished poet and scarcely anyone listened to it. So we're dropping drama ..."

https://theartsdesk.com/classical-music/first-person-poems-messiaen

[AuntDaisy]

As Symmons Roberts is a distinguished poet by reputation, I didn't want my ignorance to get in the way of exploring a little further. I found this article by him relating to another of his works, inspired by Vingt Regards, with one of the poems. In short, this R3 production sounds like what the Old R3 might have commissioned, but I wonder how many of those who might have appreciated it are still listening to R3. It seems completely out of sync with what R3 is now doing. Perhaps: "We commissioned this new work by a distinguished poet and scarcely anyone listened to it. So we're dropping drama ..."
https://theartsdesk.com/classical-mu...poems-messiaen

He might be distinguished, but he's not the most lively of narrators and effectively hogged this "drama" - which would have been perfect for a "Sunday Feature" or "Between the Ears".
Or, perhaps an Olivier AI recreation (Larry or Messy) would have been better... Possibly with a Doctor Who actor to get the ratings

Stephen Spender was also not that lively, but he made Eliot interesting with Alec Guinness' help... I can remember being enthralled by "Old Possum and the Wasteland" in 1988 (& still am).

[smittims]

There was an article in the Musical Times many years go with a similar, if not the same, title. It cast doubt on the idea that Messiaen transcibed birdsong with any realistic accuracy. Muh birdsong is to high in pitch to be of musical use. I have no difficulty in accepting that Messiaen's birdsong music is his own musical use of the original, i.e he used the birdsong as his strarting point for his invention.

[eighthobstruction]

As Symmons Roberts is a distinguished poet by reputation, I didn't want my ignorance to get in the way of exploring a little further. I found this article by him relating to another of his works, inspired by Vingt Regards, with one of the poems. In short, this R3 production sounds like what the Old R3 might have commissioned, but I wonder how many of those who might have appreciated it are still listening to R3. It seems completely out of sync with what R3 is now doing. Perhaps: "We commissioned this new work by a distinguished poet and scarcely anyone listened to it. So we're dropping drama ..."

https://theartsdesk.com/classical-music/first-person-poems-messiaen

....a smooth, buttery poem to end that article. Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I could complain (with my febrile uber iconoclastic tendrils ready to strike)....plenty of food for parody and analysis (even a Phd) in that article alone....or a shorter series of poems entitled : My Weekend in Paris.....No no no I mustn't get carried away on my bourgeoise conjoined comaraderie art and/or curating rant....otherwise the day will be lost in ire and bile. Hmmm perhaps : My Afternoon and Process as I go to Aldi....

[AuntDaisy]

....a smooth, buttery poem to end that article. Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I could complain (with my febrile uber iconoclastic tendrils ready to strike)....plenty of food for parody and analysis (even a Phd) in that article alone....or a shorter series of poems entitled : My Weekend in Paris.....No no no I mustn't get carried away on my bourgeoise conjoined comaraderie art and/or curating rant....otherwise the day will be lost in ire and bile. Hmmm perhaps : My Afternoon and Process as I go to Aldi....

Peanut butter? Reminds me of the old joke - "What has a hazelnut in every bite?" & it involves squirrels...

Looking forward to your "the middle isle" metre / rhyme...
"And up and down the people go / Gazing where the Lidls blow / Round an aisle and there below / The aisles of Shop-a-lot."

The more I think about, the more suspicious I am that this was actually a perfectly respectable "Sunday Feature" and they've just bunged it in Drama on 3.

[eighthobstruction]

Shopping list : soap on a rope, cheese string....

wiki << Joe Soaps family was passively secular, but in his early teens he became a thoroughgoing atheist. When he gained a place at Oxford, this led him to change his course to Theology and philosophy, and his college to a Christian one, simply so that he could talk believers out of their faith. But things did not go according to plan: "As university went on I got deeply into philosophy — and the philosophy completely undermined my atheism, by making me realize that there was no overarching objectivity, no Dawkinsian bedrock of common sense if you strip everything away. I realized that atheism was just as culturally conditioned as being a Catholic."^[1]

The Oxford way of teaching, with its deconstructing, analytical approach, proved fatal, he says, to his assumption as "a naively dogmatic young atheist ... that atheism is exactly the same as 'common sense' or objectivity. I'm not saying that in psychological terms we can't be objective. I just mean that there is no framework of thought that can be completely objective. I have exactly the same problem with unquestioning religious dogmatism."^[1]

A convert to Roman Catholicism,Joe Soaps has been described by Jeanette Winterson as "a religious poet for a secular age", and by Les Murray as "a poet for the new chastened, unenforcing age of faith that has just dawned". Miguel Cullen described his " millimetric adjective, the air-tight, wool-swaddled image, and that child's forensic perception, (that) he never grew out of".^[2] Alan Brownjohn wrote that his "religious poems ... seem designed for an age of doubt and DNA".^[3] Although rooted in the English lyric tradition, his work draws on the language of science (especially genetics and genomics), theology and philosophy.

[french frank]

The more I think about, the more suspicious I am that this was actually a perfectly respectable "Sunday Feature" and they've just bunged it in Drama on 3.

Yes, it would be more expensive to produce than a 3-hour snippets sequence, but cheaper than a (newly commissioned) drama. Looks very respectable on paper if the bosses don't have a clue what you're on about. But a dramatised poem (like Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis) would be no less expensive than a full-length drama and much more appropriate as a Do3.

[Serial_Apologist]

" [...] the new chastened, unenforcing age of faith that has just dawned".

That observation must have been written at least a couple of months ago - the American version having since benefitted from a massive booster jab administration.

[eighthobstruction]

That observation must have been written at least a couple of months ago - the American version having since benefitted from a massive booster jab administration.

....I have no idea what any of this means ....I just write this stuff....

[french frank]

....I have no idea what any of this means ....I just write this stuff....

Me neither . As for this Drama on 3 - a typical BBC production: "And I’m standing here in Károlyi utca, outside the legendary Central Grand Café, where the Hungarian dramatist Ferenc Molnár …

[vinteuil]

....I have no idea what any of this means ....I just write this stuff....

... I think wiki wrote most of your # 10 of 13:52 hrs -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Symmons_Roberts