Words and Music

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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

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 Silver Swan

The Silver Swan

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Texts and music on the theme of swans, with readers Anthony Calf and Louise Jameson.

Texts and music on the theme of swans, with readers Anthony Calf and Louise Jameson. Including Yeats, Rilke and Tennyson, plus Saint-Saens, Villa-Lobos, Tchaikovsky and Sibelius.

Graceful swans, magical swans, migrating swans; swans loyal and, on occasion, cynical; swans living and dying. A miscellany of poetry and prose by WB Yeats, Hans Christian Andersen, Louise Glück, Gillian Clarke, Rilke, Tennyson and "Banjo" Paterson floats above music that includes works by Saint-Saëns, Villa-Lobos, Tchaikovsky, Rautavaara (complete with the sounds of arctic swans) and Sibelius, whose 5th Symphony was inspired by the sight of sixteen swans - "One of the great experiences of my life!" he wrote, " God, how beautiful." 

The readers are Anthony Calf and Louise Jameson.

Readings:
W B Yeats: The Wild Swans at Coole
Gillian Clarke: Migrations
Hans Christian Anderson trans. M R James: The Ugly Duckling
Trad: The Children of Lir
Lawrence Durrell: Swans
Humbert Wolfe: Love is a Keeper of Swans
Rainer Maria Rilke trans Susan Ranson and Marielle Sutherland: The Swan
Keats: To Charles Cowden Clarke
Aesop trans Willliam Ellery Leonard: The Swan and the Goose
Louise Glück: Parable of the Swans
Randall Jarrell: The Black Swan
Tennyson: The Dying Swan
Edna St Vincent Millay: Wild Swans
A.B. ‘Banjo’ Peterson: Black Swans
Edward Plunkett (Lord Dunsany): The Return of Song

Producer: Elizabeth Funning

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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