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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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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: Is Music a Civilising Force?

The Essay: Is Music a Civilising Force?: Episode 2: Professor Alice Roberts

Episode 2

Episode 2: Professor Alice Roberts

Is Music a Civilising Force?

Professor Alice Roberts

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Anatomist and osteoarchaeologist Alice Roberts looks at music's humananising force.

In the second of this week's essays about music's civilising force, Professor Alice Roberts looks back for answers in the history of human development.

Professor Alice Roberts chooses to look thousands of years back in human and pre-human history for signs and signals that music was not so much a civilising as a humanising force. Her exploration takes her to ancient archaeological sites where traces of early instruments have been found and the evidence of shifts and re-shapings in our pre-hominid ancestors which suggest some kind of musical interaction long before language developed.

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.

Guests debate the notion whether music is a civilising force

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Is Music a Civilising Force?

Episode 2: Professor Alice Roberts

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