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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: Music in Its Time

The Essay: Music in Its Time: Episode 5: The Firebird

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Music: Classical

Music in Its Time

Episode 5

Episode 5: The Firebird

The Firebird

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Stephen Johnson on the reactions of the first audiences to Stravinsky's The Firebird.

Stephen Johnson examines the reactions of the first audiences in Paris in 1910 to Stravinsky's first ballet score, The Firebird.

Stephen Johnson considers how five seminal pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first. He probes the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners to reveal what our modern ears might be missing.

It's easy for us to recognise, in Stravinsky's first ballet score, portents of the musical revolution that would soon follow. This is music that teeters on the brink of a breakdown in traditional tonality, and points forward to the complex, fractured world of twentieth century art. Did that first Parisian audience of 1910 glimpse such things in The Firebird? Or were they simply seduced by its colourful oriental influences, which were the height of fashion in Europe at the time. People were fascinated by the outlandish, the gothic, the occult; and they gorged themselves on Firebird's exotic pleasures.

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.

How pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first

Stephen Johnson on how pieces of music would have been heard by the audiences who heard them first. He examines the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners

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