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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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Words and Music

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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: Blithe Spirit - The Skylark

Blithe Spirit

26/07/2015

Blithe Spirit - The Skylark

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Poetry and music inspired by the skylark, with readers Carolyn Pickles and Adrian Lukis.

A sequence of poetry, prose and music inspired by the skylark, with readers Carolyn Pickles and Adrian Lukis. With Shakespeare, Shelley, Herrick, Hughes and Vaughan Williams.

As Radio 3 is inspired by birds today, this edition of Words and Music hails Shelley's "blithe spirit" - the skylark. This rather nondescript little brown bird fills the skies with the most extraordinary torrent of sound, and has inspired poets and musicians throughout the centuries. Rising vertically from the ground he remains high in the air, fluttering and dropping his "silver chains of sound", before plummeting back down to earth - a "singing firework" as Edmund Blunden put it. How apt that the collective noun for larks is an "exultation". 

Carolyn Pickles and Adrian Lukis are the readers - there is poetry from Shakespeare to Shelley, Herrick to Ted Hughes, with lark-inspired folk music, art song, chamber and orchestral music and of course some well-known Vaughan Williams...

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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