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: Hey, Little Hen

Hey, Little Hen

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Sophie Thompson and Alex Waldmann enter the curious world of man's old friend the chicken.

From the prose of PG Wodehouse's Love among the Chickens and Clarice Lispector's Hen to the poetry of John Clare and Elizabeth Bishop. Music by Nielsen, Lassus and Willie Dixon.

Sophie Thompson and Alex Waldmann are the readers as we peck and scrape our way around the curious world of man's old friend the chicken.  Lockdown has seen a rise in people taking up chicken keeping but our readings begin much further back in time with Geoffrey Chaucer and Robert Herrick.  We'll hear about the hen who escapes being cooked for Sunday lunch, by laying an egg in Clarice Lispector's short story and the chickens coming home to roost in Kay Ryan's poem - whilst in Love Among the Chickens, P.G. Wodehouse writes of the difficulties of a relationship set against an ill-feted get-rich-quick-scheme on a Dorset farm.  Musical settings range from Rameau, Mussorgsky, Saint-Saens and Lassus to performances by the folk performer Peter Seeger, blues performer Willie Dixon; and Louis Jordan, the American singer and sax player known as "The King of the Jukebox" in the 40s and early 50s.

Producer: Lindsey Kemp

Readings:
Gary Whitehead - A Glossary of Chickens 
John Clare - Hen's Nest
Edward Lear - Oh Brother Chicken! Sister Chick!
Christina Rossetti - A White Hen Sitting 
Clarice Lispector - The Hen 
PG Wodehouse - Love Among the Chickens
Ted Hughes - The Hen 
Herman Melville - Cock-a-doodle doo! or the Crowing of the Noble Cock Beneventano
John Gay -  Before the Barn-Door Crowing 
Chaucer translated by Neville Coghill - The Nun's Priest's Tale 
Katharine Tynan Hinkson - Chanticleer 
Elizabeth Bishop -  Roosters 
Jack Mapanje - The Last of the Sweet Bananas
Edwin Brock -  Song of the Battery Hen
Robert Herrick  - Cock-crow
Henry Vaughan  - Cock-crowing
Kay Ryan  -  Home to Roost
Mark Roper  -  The Hen Ark
Heinrich Heine, translated by Charles Godfrey Leland  -  The Homecoming

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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