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: Entering the World of Books

Entering the World of Books

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Stephen Mangan & Helen Monks explore attitudes to reading in prose & poetry set to music.

From Roald Dahl's Matilda to Flaubert's Madame Bovary and an 1835 guide to George Eliot's Silly Novels by Silly Lady Novelists. Music includes The Beatles, Haydn and Thomas Ades.

Stephen Mangan and Helen Monks explore attitudes to reading from Roald Dahl's Matilda to Flaubert's Madame Bovary to “The Reading of Young Ladies” (from the American Magazine of Useful Knowledge, December 1836) “Every-one must rejoice that the education of females is considered more important than formerly … But….too much time is spent on novels, few of which are calculated to instruct or to improve”.  Starting off a series this week of Words and Music focusing on writing by some key names in literature, today's programmes takes us into the world of books.  

The birth of the novel in the early 18th century and their growing popularity with female readers lead to many a male moralist worrying about what these romantic literary adventures were doing to women's expectations. Some of Emma's struggles with marriage in Flaubert's Madame Bovary are traced back to the books she reads and Jane Austen satirised the prim James Fordyce, whose Sermons for Young Women we'll hear from. Fordyce warns about books that commit: 'rank treason against the royalty of Virtue'. There's also a passage from Jilly Cooper's Riders.

Musically we'll journey from Haydn at the fortepiano, a combination Jane Austen would likely have been familiar with, to Thomas Adès's haunting take on Shakespeare's The Tempest and Dire Straits' tribute to a Lady Writer. There are also hymns to reading and writers by the 16th-century composer Robert Jones and The Beatles.

'I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on in the world between the covers of books' said Dylan Thomas in his Notes on the Art of Poetry.

You can find a playlist of discussions about Prose and Poetry on the Free Thinking programme website which includes a discussion of attitudes to women writers and readers https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh 

Producer Georgia Mann

Readings: 
Emily Dickinson  -  There is no Frigate like a Book 
Roald Dahl - Matilda  
Mimi Khalvati -  Childhood Books
C.K Williams -  Prose 
Robert Louis Stevenson -  The Land of Story-books
James Fordyce  - Sermons to Young Women, extract From Sermon IV: On Female Virtue
Flaubert -  Madame Bovary
Jane Austen -  Pride and Prejudice
George Eliot -  Silly Novels by Silly Lady Novelists
Jilly Cooper -  Riders
Shakespeare -  The Tempest
Author Unknown -  Extract from Devouring Books, from the American Annals of Education, January 1835
Robert William Service -  Bookshelf 
Andrea Levy -  The Long Song
Katie Ward -   Girl Reading
Dylan Thomas -   Notes on the Art of Poetry

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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