The Listening Service

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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

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Music: Classical

An odyssey through the musical universe, presented by Tom Service

Rethink music with The Listening Service. Tom Service presents a journey of imagination and insight, exploring how music works

The Listening Service: Tristan und Isolde

Is Birdsong Music?

Tristan und Isolde

BBC Radio 3 - The Listening Service, Tristan und Isolde

Tom Service on the supercharged emotional impact of Wagner's epic opera Tristan und Isolde

Tom Service looks at the extraordinary impact of Wagner's epic opera Tristan und Isolde, and asks whether one famous chord really was the moment when music changed forever.

How do you listen to a four-hour opera? Tom Service considers the extraordinary impact of Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, a medieval romance that became in Wagner's hands a highly-charged erotic drama of unfulfilled longing. It scandalised and over-excited early audiences in the 1860s, and it still has a profound effect on listeners. How come? Tom explores the influence of the philosopher Schopenhauer on Wagner's thinking, and how the composer's own love-life may have influenced this piece. And musicologist Kenneth Hamilton takes Tom through the radical musical structures in this piece, which somehow manage to remain unresolved over long stretches of music. Did one special chord really change music forever?

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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