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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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Twenty Minutes

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Eclectic arts magazine programme, exploring a range of fascinating subjects

Eclectic arts magazine programme, exploring a range of fascinating people, places and events

Twenty Minutes: I Will Wear the Green Willow

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Music: Folk

I Will Wear the Green Willow

17/08/2013

BBC Radio 3 - Twenty Minutes, I Will Wear the Green Willow

Fay Hield explores how the willow as a badge of forsaken love appears in traditional song.

Dr Fay Hield, ethnomusicologist and singer, explores the way the willow as a badge of forsaken love appears in traditional song. With Jon Boden of the band Bellowhead.

The second half of this afternoon's Prom concert begins with the Willow Song from Otello. But it is not Verdi's, nor Shakespeare's work. The song Desdemona sings is a folksong of some antiquity. Its earliest appearance in print was in1583, when Thomas Dallis included the tune in his Lute Book. Willow, Willow is one of a number of folksongs that Shakespeare knew well and incorporated into his plays. His audience knew them, too, and understood their motifs and symbols. Dr Fay Hield, ethnomusicologist and singer, explores the way the willow as a badge of forsaken love appears in traditional song - remember Steeleye Span's hit All Around My Hat? - with quotations and musical illustrations drawn from recordings and performed by her and Jon Boden, fiddle player and singer with the hugely successful folk big band, Bellowhead.

Producer: Julian May.

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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