Words and Music

[Lateralthinking1]

Thanks Anna - this does look good and an appropriate programme for Radio 3 - Lat

[Chris Newman]

Thank you for this reminder, Anna. I had forgotten how years ago (when I was a kid even!) this programme used to introduce the most wonderful music and poetry. Whenever I heard it I always wanted to explore unknown avenues or to look again on those I had neglected.

For years I have forgotten it existed. It should be the sort of programme I deliberately avoid as it features snippets from music that I love and that I do not know: exactly the sort of thing that Breakfast and Classic FM do to bring me out in fits of apoplexy. However, the combination of words and music (and the useful schedule available afterwards) makes it so useful. And the combinations of readers and readings is always so sensitive. The clever segue from Shostakovich 8th String Quartet to the War Requiem was made so natural by the Amir Gilboa/Dannie Abse verse and the reading of the Wilfred Owen. Besides, I have been in love with Sheila Hancock since I was about ten.

Not many swear words though, despite the warning: one "bugger" in Kit Wright's poem about Didcot Power Station hardly counts. Auntie is so sensitive these days.

[Anna]

This is one R3 programme has has made me think - Whoa! forget what you are doing and listen to 75 mins. Then I saw, it is a repeat from 2009. Really good though, recommend.

[Anna]

Words and Music 22 December

I'm listening to this now. It's a repeat from February of this year. Have I missed something terribly vital in the R3 schedules? Is this programme usually on at the Witching Hour and so that is why I have not heard it? It's marvellous and so enjoyable.

Tonight is about Money. Money makes the world go round. It also tends to bring out the worst in people, and a wealth of novels and poems have been written on and around the subject. The gentlemen in Jane Austen's novels usually have plenty of it, while the unfortunate Katerina Ivanovna in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment certainly does not. Defoe's Moll Flanders and F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby are on the make, while characters in Dickens and E Nesbit are in a ruinous state through losing their money. And Martin Amis's John Self thinks he's making money, later to find that he's actually losing it too.

Sylvestra Le Touzel and Dan Stevens read poems and texts which show the impact money, or lack of money has on literary characters' lives, with music by Beethoven, Puccini, Stravinsky and Abba (!)

[zola]

It used to be on at the witching hour on a Sunday night ( it would have been in February ) but since the September schedule changes its' regular time is now six thirty on Sunday evening after The Choir.

[Anna]

Oh thank you Zola. I guess being on a Sunday is why I missed it as I wasn't around. I shall look out for it in the New Year in the Sunday early evening schedule.

[niffo]

Words & Music - Haunting

Dear Friends

Words and Music is a delightful programme. Unfortunately I missed the Haunting (March broadcast) For quite personal reasons I really wish to hear it. Any ideas how I'd be able to do that?

Thanks!

[french frank]

Hello, niffo - welcome.

Well, all you can do is keep checking back to see if anyone can help ...

[ardcarp]

Words and Music

'Twas a lovely programme yesterday, on the theme of 'the rose'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01jxs5w

[underthecountertenor]

Words and Music: an inspired idea and a great series, but now in a completely inappropriate time slot. And am I right in thinking that they no longer put up playlists? I can't find one for the most recent programmes. If any series needs playlists, it's surely this one.

[Suffolkcoastal]

They usually do put up the playlists, but yesterdays' is absent, which is the 1st time that's happened for ages. Perhaps it represents another example of the 'can't be bothered' syndrome that seems to be endemic in those that look after the web site.

[underthecountertenor]

Ah yes: it is in fact only yesterday's that lacks a playlist. I was looking at next week's rather than last's. Thanks, Suffolkcoastal.

They might like to get on with it though....

[ardcarp]

but now in a completely inappropriate time slot.

Agreed. It was a perfect going-to-bed programme, and now I hardly ever catch it. OK I know there's i-player and all that, but Sunday afternoon when Aunty's (my Aunty, that is) munching cucumber sandwiches and slurping Earl Grey? I don't think so.

[Troublebob]

How appropriate, I thought, to have bells ringing as background to Alfred Lord Tennyson's Ring out, wild bells. But Ian Pearson was drowning them out! And even worse, the listing doesn't even mention them. What is the world coming to?

[Radio64]

Words and Music

Apologies if this has been discussed before, but....

Why oh why isn't Word and Music made left available on line for a period of over a week? A downloadable podcast would be ideal, but if that's not possible at least listenable for, say, a month....

This programme is so well made it seems a shame that individual programmes 'disappear' within a week.

Just a thought.