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 Black Sun

The Black Sun

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, The Black Sun

Inspired by Robert Oppenheimer's work on the first atomic bomb and the fall-out from that.

Iain Glen and Kae Alexander read extracts from survivors of Hiroshima, John Hersey's journalism, poems by John Donne, with music by Sakamoto, John Adams and Hildur Gudnadottir.

John Donne's poetry was read and quoted by Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who led the Los Alamos laboratory which developed the atomic bomb.  With the film version of his story gaining award nominations here's another chance to hear a Words and Music first broadcast to mark the anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6th and 9th August  1945. Readers Iain Glen and Kae Alexander (who was born in Kobe in Japan), read work by Japanese writers, including Hiroshima survivors Nakamura On and Sadako Kurihara; poetry by Allen Ginsberg, John Donne, Ukrainian poet and Chernobyl survivor Liubov Sirota and the British writer Susan Wicks. The programme includes extracts from the journalist John Hersey’s Hiroshima, first broadcast on The Third Programme in 1948, an unflinching account of some of the survivors Hersey met. There’s also an excerpt from John Osbourne’s 1956 play Look Back In Anger, capturing the cynicism and sense of dread that reverberated across the world in the years after the Atomic bombings.  Musically, Japan is evoked by shakuhachi player Toshimitsu Ishikawa and koto player Kimio Eto, there’s also music by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Electronic pioneer Isao Tomita. You’ll also hear part of Krzysztof Penderecki’s harrowing piece Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, and music from Hildur Gudnadottir’s award-winning  score for the television series Chenobyl – plus songs by country duo The Louvin Brothers, pop band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Kate Bush, dealing with the fear and ferment of the Nuclear age.

READINGS:
Ota Yoko, translated by Richard H Minear extract from Hiroshima, City of Doom
Nakamura On, translated Kyoko Selden extract from City in Flames
John Hersey excerpt from Hiroshima
Shoji Tokie translated by Kyoko and Mark Selden Hiroshima is without light a white white city
Allen Ginsberg extract from Plutonian Ode
Seirai Yuicho, translated by Paul Warham extract from Insects
Taruma Yoshikazu translated by Kyoko and Mark Selden Firefly in an orphan's hands
John Hersey excerpt from Hiroshima
Ed Simon extract from Extract from Printed in Utopia: The Renaissance's Radicalism
Susan Wicks Nuclear 
William E Stafford At the Bomb Testing Site
Suga Takashi translated by by Kyoko and Mark Selden In the cathedral in the ruins of boundless expanse
W.H Auden extract from September 1, 1939
Debora Greger Ship Burial
Peter Porter Your Attention Please
Liubov Sirota, translated by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta Ritchie extract from Radiophobia
John Osbourne extract from Look Back In Anger
Stuart Evers extract from The Blind Light
Sadako Kurihara, translated by Richard Minear  Let Us Be Midwives! An untold story of the atomic bombing

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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