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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

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Words and Music

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Music: Classical

A journey of discovery, weaving music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

A weekly journey of discovery, weaving together a range of music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

Words and Music: Last Things

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Last Things

30/01/2011

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Texts and music about endings, with readings by Tim Pigott-Smith and Katherine Parkinson.

Texts and music about endings, with readings by Tim Pigott-Smith and Katherine Parkinson. Includes Schubert, Mozart and The Doors, plus Updike, Auster and Michael Herr.

An edition of Words and Music about endings with readers Tim Pigott-Smith and Katherine Parkinson.

The subjects include last love and its consolations; death and what may follow; sound fading into silence and Heaven and Hell. These pieces are often the last words of a writer or a composer's last works and can act as a wry counterpoint, or even a kind of swansong. 

So Schubert's 'String Quintet' sits next to John Updike's birthday meditations shortly before his death in 2009; Mozart's 'Requiem' jostles up against the beautiful but bleached words of the narrator in Paul Auster's apocalyptic novel 'In the Country of Last Things'; and The Doors' psychedelic anthem, 'The End', underpins Michael Herr's memories of Vietnam and his eerie vision of a soul slowly unravelling like a parachute. 

Producer: Zahid Warley.

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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