Music and the mind - Start the Week, R4 13/5/13

[Flosshilde]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01sd3jq

First 15 - 20 minutes Carrie Cracknell talks to Jonathan Freedland about her new production of Berg's opera, Wozzeck, and the descent of the central character into madness and despair. The pianist Jonathan Biss looks at whether Schumann's later music reflects the troubled state of his mind.

[Serial_Apologist]

Quite interesting

[ardcarp]

Very interesting...not so much for insights into Berg, but there was a most sensible psychiatrist questioning the diagnosis and over-medication of mental illness. Someone (I forget who) on the programme was mildly chastised for attributing Buchner's original play Woyzeck to 'the early part of the 19th century'. Since Buchner died in 1837 (leaving the play unfinished) I don't think it was far out.

[Flosshilde]

I thought that the comparison of the problems of Wozzeck in the play/opera with the difficulties modern soldiers have re-integrating with family & society in general after leaving the army was interesting.

[Thropplenoggin]

The title led me to believe this would be yet more spurious neuroscience...

Today I purchased Oliver Sacks's 'Musicophilia - Tales of Music and the Brain' for the princely sum of three quid.

[DracoM]

One thing: why isn't this on R3?

[Sir Velo]

One thing: why isn't this on R3?

Well: Radio 4 has a remit to cover music as part of its portfolio of coverage of the Arts under the broadly based "arts and culture" heading. Moreover, we should be glad that classical music is not just ghettoised to Radio 3; having programmes like this on R4 gives an opportunity for it to be heard by an audience which would not otherwise be exposed to it.

Having said that, a few more decent music-based documentaries other than the ubiquitous, and past its sell by date, Composer of the Week, or the equally sorry, in its present format, Discovering Music on Radio 3 would not go amiss.

[Flosshilde]

One thing: why isn't this on R3?

Mainly because it's 'Start the Week', R4's regular Monday morning programme, & the guests are usually there to plug - sorry, discuss issues around - books, plays, etc etc that they are involved in. Although it is rather superior to the usual chat show.