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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

Words and Music

Drama

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: The Moon

The Moon

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The silvery goddess loved by poets and composers including music actually sent to the Moon

The Moon in all her silvery glory, with writers such as Wordsworth, composers such as Schubert and Schoenberg and the actors Patrick O'Kane and Fenellla Woolgar.

What would Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata sound like if it was played by the Moon? Tune in to this evening's edition of Words and Music and you can hear for yourself, thanks to a piece conceived by the sound artist Katie Paterson. Katie's piece, Earth-Moon-Earth, is part of a programme which celebrates the Moon - whether metaphorical green cheese or cruel, silvery goddess. 
The Moon has always dazzled and puzzled us. Composers such as Beethoven, Chopin and Schoenberg and writers such as Larkin, Auden and Emily Dickinson have all fallen under her spell, and tonight's programme, featuring the actors Fenella Woolgar and Patrick O'Kane, is an invitation to succumb once more to her enchantment. 

Producer: Zahid Warley

Readings:
Nocturne - James Attlee
This Lunar Beauty - W.H. Auden 
With how sad steps - Sir Philip Sidney
Sad Steps - Philip Larkin
I watched the Moon around the house - Emily Dickinson
Drinking Alone - Li Po (trans Arthur Waley)
The Moon and the Yew Tree - Sylvia Plath
Preface to Frankenstein -Mary Shelley
Strange fits of Passion - William Wordsworth
Autumn - T.E. Hulme
Moon Landing - W.H. Auden 
Icaromenippus - Lucian (trans Thomas Francklin)

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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