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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

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

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: Five Seismic Moments in New Music

The Essay: Five Seismic Moments in New Music: Episode 3: Ivan Hewett on Brian Eno's Music for Airports

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Episode 3

Episode 3: Ivan Hewett on Brian Eno's Music for Airports

Five Seismic Moments in New Music

Ivan Hewett on Brian Eno's Music for Airports

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Five Seismic Moments in New Music, Ivan Hewett on Brian Eno's Music for AirportsClose menu

Ivan Hewett reflects on Brian Eno's creation of a new genre, which he named ambient music.

Ivan Hewett reflects on Brian Eno's 1978 album Music for Airports, where Eno created a new genre which he named ambient music.

In his 1978 album Music for Airports Brian Eno created a new genre of music he named 'ambient music'. The album was designed to ease the tedium of waiting in airports, but ambient music, which Eno said was 'as ignorable as it is interesting', had an influence way beyond that. Ivan Hewett looks into the genesis and subsequent history of ambient music, and explains why Eno's description is not as self-contradictory as it appears to be.


The story of new music is peppered with events that have altered the course of musical history. For our New Year New Music season, we asked five Radio 3 presenters to each tell the story of one of these "seismic moments". From silence and ambient sounds to riot and revolution, these intriguing events have, in different ways, changed the progress of sound and culture - or, as one of our five suggests, have they?

Written and read by Ivan Hewett.
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.

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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Episode 3: Ivan Hewett on Brian Eno's Music for Airports

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