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

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The Essay Podcast

The Essay

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: The Music Appreciation Movement

The Essay: The Music Appreciation Movement: Episode 2

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Music

The Music Appreciation Movement

Episode 2

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Richard Witts on educationalist Walford Davies and Imogen Holst, one of his team.

Richard Witts describes the development of Music Appreciation, focusing on educationalist Walford Davies and Imogen Holst, one of his team of educators.

In the early twentieth century a prominent British movement sprang up under the title 'Music Appreciation', with the aims of introducing to 'ordinary' listeners 'great' or 'serious' music, and teaching them 'the art of listening'. Radio became a chief means by which this misson was to be accomplished, while books, adult education courses and regional 'Music Travellers', also contributed to a new educational field. In this series, musicologist and cultural historian Richard Witts explains the movement's origins, ambitions and idiosyncrasies, and clarifies why it fell out of favour in the second half of the twentieth century as postmodernism cast doubt on what was 'great' and 'serious'. In this second programme he looks at the work of the educationalist and pioneer schools broadcaster Walford Davies, and one of his team of music educators known dismissively by the Bloomsbury set as 'Walford's Holy Women', Imogen Holst.

Producer: Sara Davies

First broadcast in August 2011.

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.

Musicologist Richard Witts describes the development of Music Appreciation

Musicologist and cultural historian Richard Witts describes the development of Music Appreciation, the 20th century movement that aimed to teach the art of listening correctly

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