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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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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: Beautiful World, Where Are You?

Beautiful World, Where Are You?

29/07/2018

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A reflection on upheaval inspired by Schiller, Schubert and the Liverpool Biennial.

A reflection on ideas of upheaval inspired by Schiller's poem, 'The Gods of Greece', set to music by Schubert, and the work behind the theme for the 10th Liverpool Biennial.

The line 'Beautiful world, where are you?' derives from a 1788 poem 'The Gods of Greece' by the German poet Friedrich Schiller which Franz Schubert set in 1819. Between these dates Europe saw profound change, from the French Revolution to the fall of the Napoleonic Empire. The line from Schiller's poem was the theme for the 2018 Liverpool Biennial and it sets the tone for a Words and Music exploring change. 

The readers are Nyla Levy and Steve Toussaint. A full list of the words and music can be found on the Words and Music website.

Caliban's the Isle is Full of Noises speech from the Tempest ends darkly, with an injunction to murder Prospero. No-one should listen to promises of Beautiful Worlds and not realise there will be a price to pay. Then there is reaching for the ultimate with John Coltrane and Favourite Things - ecstatic terrifying music. Then those who have tried to think their way to understanding, Pythagoras, Galileo, Ernest Rutherford and Roger Penrose. and those who, faced with reality, take refuge in dreaming like Elizabeth Barrett Browning or John Lennon, reaching into a past he suspects never existed. We lurch from the promise of the Statue of Liberty to the despair of refugees and victims of recent wars and those who refuse to give in to despair. So music and words from around the world and across time, from Hesiod and Nassir Shamma, John Agard and Gillian Clarke, Shelley and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, The Waterboys, Joanna Kavenna, Ambrose, Berthold Brecht and Penelope Lively, Galilei, Simeon ten Holt, Sally Beamish, Bruckner, Max Richter and Josquin des Prez

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

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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