Music Matters

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Music Matters: Mahler's 8th Symphony

Mahler's 8th Symphony

BBC Radio 3 - Music Matters, Mahler's 8th Symphony

A book on the Symphony of the Thousand, and how the Enlightenment affected concert halls.

A book on Mahler's 8th Symphony, how the Enlightenment changed our behaviour in concert halls, and searching for natural amphitheatres to perform music in.

Tom Service talks to Stephen Johnson about his new book, 'The Eighth: Mahler and the World in 1910', in which he explores the meaning and context of one of the most gigantic and profound symphonies ever written. Music Matters also hears from three UK music institutions, who reveal the financial and artistic challenges they face as they start to plan for life after lockdown. Tom speaks to internet guru Jaron Lenier, too, who explains why COVID-19 is likely to produce profound changes in the way we consume music online. We hear, as well, about recent research by British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow Bettina Varwig, as she describes how audiences’ auditory experience of music in 18th-Century concert halls became a more introspective, private and physical – and how the consequences of this shift during the Enlightenment are still felt to this very day. And we take a look at how new Geospatial information provided by the Ordnance Survey can be used to search the nation’s topography for spaces such as natural amphitheatres that may be suitable for performance in the era of coronavirus.

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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Mahler's 8th Symphony

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