Historical BBC Home Service playlists?

[Guest]

Hi - My mother was born in England in 1937, and her earliest memories of music come from "BBC Home Service over the radio". For Christmas, I would love to give her a recording of the pieces on any BBC Classical playlists from 1942-1956. Does anyone know if such playlists exist? I tried to contact BBC Radio 3 directly through the website, but couldn't get to a place to leave a message.
My ideal would be to use the pieces which were played on April 17, 1947, her 10th birthday.
Many thanks to anyone who can give me a lead!

[johnb]

I believe that the main source of information would be the weekly listings magazine "Radio Times" which contained (and still does contain) all the BBC radio TV programmes. I believe that the BBC have been digitising the Radio Times archives so that they can be available online but it doesn't appear to be available as yet.

One possibility would be to see if the British Library could supply you with a copy of the page(s) for the date you are interested in. Perhaps someone who uses the BL could advise.

http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?ct=facet&fctN=facet_creationdate&fctV=[-999999999+TO+1962]&dscnt=0&indx=1&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1321288147740&vl%28freeText0%29=radio%20times&fn=search&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic

[french frank]

The British Library does have a postal photocopying service, so you could write to them and ask for a copy for that date of the pages for Radio 3's predecessor, the Third Programme - then just over 6 months old - and for the Home Service which also played music.

The Third Programme was only broadcasting for about 6 hours a day at that time, and usually only about 2 hours would have been music, so it could be supplemented by whatever the Home Service was playing.

[french frank]

Patricia

I'm sending you a Private Message with further information - go to the very top of the page and click on Notifications.

[John Wright]

Patricia,

You can access a Third Programme playlist from 1946 w/c Sept 29th, here,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/thirdprogramme/gallery/gallery.shtml?1

right at the bottom of the page there is a box link NEXT which takes you through the RT edition and evenually you get to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/thirdprogramme/gallery/gallery.shtml?4

which is the Third Proghramme schedule for Sunday Sept 29th.

carry on to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/thirdprogramme/gallery/gallery.shtml?8

which is Monday etc.

Schedule then ran only from 6pm-midnight. On some days there was NOT a lot of music!

[Patricia]

Hi John W -- I tried following the link you recommended, and I clicked next through to the end; it got me to Oct 5, 1946, so I can certainly use these if I can't find Apr 17. Thank you!
Patricia

[John Wright]

That's good. Actually you might have noticed the 'Home Service' station (later became Radio 4) was playing as much, or more, classical music than 'Third Programme', and you did say your mum remembered the 'Home Service'.

[Patricia]

Hi johnb and the rest of this list -- you are all so wonderful for replying so promptly!!! I've now sent a request through the British Library; hopefully I did it right.
I'll post again when I hear from the BL... thank you again.
Patricia