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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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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: Good Intentions

Good Intentions

25/05/2014

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John Sessions and Indira Varma set out on linguistic roads paved with good intentions.

In the words of Shakespeare, Milton, Burns and Carol Ann Duffy, John Sessions and Indira Varma elucidate the comedy and tragedy born of the apparent innocence of good intentions.

Intent is a great driver for drama. The better the intent the more agonising the tragedy when it all goes wrong and, in equal part, the more hilarious the comedy as chaos unfolds in front of a knowing audience. And there are several different varieties of good intention; the ambitious, the optimistic, the clear sighted, the nervous and the horribly mistaken.

Today's Words and Music seeks, with the best of intentions, to illustrate just a few of them and to discover where they might lead, beginning with a well-intentioned trip to the underworld where Orpheus attempts to win back his wife.

Eve's intentions appear laudable enough as Milton has her contemplate sampling 'the fruit of that forbidden tree', and it's hard to blame Shakespeare's Juliet and Friar Lawrence for hatching a plot that they believe will ensure a happy ending all round.

There's a look back to the now agonising intentions of the Music Hall Recruitment songs with the results reflected with understated eloquence by Sarojini Naidu's 'Gift of India.'

And there are less direct approaches. Was Midas a greedy tyrant or just another, very modern, figure to fall under the sway of the apparent virtue of economic need? Carol Ann Duffy has Mrs Midas watch and judge the results. And Robert Burns, doing what any farmer should be doing at harvest time, finds his innocent intentions are pretty grim news for the mouse whose home he unwittingly exposes.
And then there's the sheer joy resulting from the operatic activities of a cleaning lady in Wexford, shared by the late Bernard Levin, and the Flanders and Swann hymn to eternal self-generating good works in 'The Gasman Cometh'.

The readers are John Sessions and Indira Varma.

Producer: Tom Alban.

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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