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.

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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: Flights of Fancy

Flights of Fancy

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Flights of Fancy

Barbara Flynn and Hugo Speer with readings and music on imaginative and physical flight.

Barbara Flynn and Hugo Speer with readings on the theme of flight, both imaginative and physical and including music by Dilys Elwyn-Edwards, Tan Dun and George Walker.

Barbara Flynn and Hugo Speer read poetry and prose on the theme of flight, both literal and imaginative.  The readings in this edition of Words and Music have been roughly grouped into three sections that flow seamlessly into each other. They are: flight in nature, human flight and flights of the imagination.

We encounter characters from Shakespeare: Ariel, Queen Mab and one of Titania's fairies, witness a new speed record for seagulls, peruse Dylan Thomas's sleeping fishing village, climb into the wild and majestic mountains with William Wordsworth and face the fantastical monsters of Lewis Carroll and H.P. Lovecraft.

We're on the wing with Einojuhani Rautavaara and a flock of migrating with swans. Kevin Volans takes us to South Africa with tribal rhythms that accompany Horatio Clare's observations of African Swallows.  Paul Lawrence Dunbar's inability to see the sparrows at his window rings as true now as it would have been when the poem was written over 100 years ago. Kathleen Jamie's insight into the habits of peregrine falcons is as much an insight into her own life as that of the birds.

John Gillespie Magee wrote his sonnet High Flight after flying a Spitfire Mk1 and it has been paired here with Fatboy Slim's vision of the transonic jet fighter plane the Hawker Hunter, also known as the Bird of Prey. Both share the sense of freedom and exhilaration of fast flight.
Vaughan Williams is better known for his pastoral sound but his motet "A vision of aeroplanes" is a veritable whirlwind. He takes a passage from the biblical Book of Ezekiel that seems to prophesy an aeroplane appearing through the clouds and sets it to tumultuous organ and vocal writing.

Flying for humans obviously involves rather more logistics than for birds but there are some airports around the world that add character and spark to what is mostly a necessary evil. We hear a little about the quirks of flying in Bolivia and Ecuador and Britain's only 3 runway airport, Barra, which is on a beach in north Scotland and lit by car headlights.

Readings:
Horatio Clare: A Single Swallow
Kathleen Jamie: Findings
John Gillespie Magee: High Flight
Sarah Arvio: Flying
Lonely Planet: Bolivia - Air travel
Undiscovered Scotland: 	Barra Airport
Lonely Planet: Ecuador - Air travel
Shakespeare: Where the Bee Sucks there suck I - Ariel, Act 5 Sc 1 The Tempest
Richard Bach: Jonathan Livingstone Seagull 
Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 sc 4, Queen Mab speech  (Mercutio)
Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream: Over Hill, Over Dale - Fairy, Act 2 sc 1, 
Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Sparrow
Dylan Thomas:  Under Milk Wood (To Begin at the Beginning)
William Wordsworth: The Prelude, Book 13 (extract)
Lewis Carroll: Jabberwocky
H.P. Lovecraft: The call of Cthulhu (Chapter III – The Madness from the Sea)

Produced by Barnaby Gordon

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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