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: In Pursuit

In Pursuit

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Is the chase sometimes better than the catch? Readings by Heather Craney and Clive Hayward

The dramatic chase in John Buchan's The Thirty Nine Steps to Carroll's Hunting of the Snark and Sylvia Plath's poem Pursuit, alongside music by Strauss, Michael Nyman, Ethel Smyth.

An otter, a dangerous enemy, the search for the Holy Grail: Is the chase sometimes better than the catch?  Perhaps it depends on what you’re pursuing.  In this edition of Words and Music, Heather Craney and Clive Hayward bring us readings in which the net closes in on fugitives from justice;  a ghost is chased and so are rainbows. There’s a suffragette composer, jailed for her pursuit of equality.  A priest scans the sea, in search of religious revelation, while in the Kalahari, a bushman sings a hunting song.  The music includes Puccini, Weather Report, J.S. Bach, George Crumb and Judy Garland, amongst others.   

Readings:
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) – Pursuit
Alexander Pushkin (trans. D.M. Thomas) – The Bronze Horseman
John Buchan – The Thirty-Nine Steps
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Sign of Four
Richard Matheson – Duel
Henry Williamson – Tarka the Otter
Anon (trans, Burton Raffel) – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Lewis Carroll – The Hunting of the Snark
Thomas Hardy – The Glimpse
Sylvia Plath – Pursuit
Alfred Lord Tennyson – Idylls of the King
Pascale Petit – Snow Leopard Woman, Mama Amazonica
R.S. Thomas – Sea-watching
Edward Thomas – The Unknown Bird

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

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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