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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Early Music Show

Music: Classical: Early Music

Performance and news from the world of early music.

An exploration of early music, looking at early developments in musical performance and composition in Britain and abroad. UK only: please note that not all episodes are podcast.

Sam Phillips

The Early Music Show: The Muiderkring

The Muiderkring

15/11/2008

BBC Radio 3 - The Early Music Show, The Muiderkring

Catherine Bott explores the Muiderkring, a group of 17th century Dutch cultural figures.

Catherine Bott explores the Muiderkring, a group of the leading figures of cultural life in the Netherlands in the 17th century, who supposedly met at a castle near Amsterdam.

The Muiderkring or Muider Circle was a group of contributors to the arts and sciences in the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, when Dutch trade, science and art was among the most important in the world. Chief among this group was the historian, poet and playwright Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, who was appointed as Sheriff and Bailiff for the Gooiland, the area around Hilversum, in 1609, and was given a medieval moated castle to live in, the Muiderslot. 

Over the next four decades, he spent his summers there, entertaining house parties of distinguished friends from the worlds of art, music and philosophy. They discussed current affairs, read their poetry to each other, debated philosophical and moral issues and of course, made music. 

Hooft seems to have had impeccable taste and his guestlist reads like a who's who of the Dutch cultural elite: with the poets Caspar Barlaeus and Hooft's great friend Joost van den Vondel, the wealthy merchant and poet Pieter Roemers Visscher and Constantijn Huygens among the castlist.

In today's Early Music Show, Catherine Bott investigates this mysterious cultural group.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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