I lay in my bed and fiddled
With a dreamland viol and bow,
And the tunes flew back to my fingers
I had melodied years ago.
Of all our poets since the Jacobeans, Thomas Hardy is the most indebted to music for his inspiration: he wrote almo t 1,000 poems and almost one in eight of them has a musical subject or form.
Eric Crozlcr traces the musical themes in the works of Hardy and explores the reasons behind them.
Readers EILEEN ATKINS and NIGEL HAWTHORNE DAVID OGDEN (violin)
Producer GRAHAM SHEFFIELD