Words and Music

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

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 Window

The Window

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Adjoa Andoh and John Rowe are the readers as we move from Messiaen to Mary Jean Chan

Adjoa Andoh and John Rowe with readings about being pushed out of windows, the sparkling of glass, the opportunities an open window suggests and the feeling of being watched.

From David Bowie's Breaking Glass to Mozart's serenade from his opera Don Juan, from the religious inspiration behind Respighi's Church Windows to the diner scene conjured by Suzanne Vega - today's Words and Music weaves together music and poetry which takes us both sides of the glass as we look at literal and metaphorical windows with readings from Adjoa Andoh and John Rowe.  They squint, stare and dream glassy-eyed with Baudelaire, who was born 200 years ago this week; glance over their shoulders with Robert Frost, muse on escaping a mother's rage in the poem by Mary Jean Chan and today's programme contains one piece of strong language in a Philip Larkin poem.   We look at the idea of our eyes as windows, our souls as windows, the words of a poem framing a view of the world and get a sense of windows opening and closing with some of the musical tracks being more transparent than others. 

READINGS: 
Baudelaire: Les Fenêtres translated by Arthur Symons, read by John Rowe in four extracts.
Emily Dickinson:  The Wind Tapped Like a Tired Man 
Marcel Proust: The Way by Swann translated by Lydia Davis
George Herbert: The Windows
J. L. Carr: A Month in the Country
Jules Verne: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea 
Robert Frost: After Apple Picking 
Seamus Heaney: Glanmore Sonnet IX from Field Work
Howard Nemerov: Storm Windows 
Philip Larkin: High Windows 
Mary Jean Chan: The Window 
RP Lister: Defenestration 
Baudelaire: Les Fenêtres translated by Arthur Symons

Producer: Zahid Warley

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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