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 1920s

The 1920s

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, The 1920s

From the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Gatsby to the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb.

Readings by Adjoa Andoh and Guy Burgess of poems and prose by Langston Hughes, Virginia Woolf and Jean Toomer, with music by Ellington, Ravel and Vaughan Williams.

From the Harlem Renaissance and the world of the Charleston, the Great Gatsby and the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb to the financial crash at the end of the decade. Today's programme hears readings by Adjoa Andoh and Guy Burgess of poems and prose by authors including Langston Hughes, Virginia Woolf and Jean Toomer with music by Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith, Ravel and Vaughan Williams.

The 1920s were known variously as the Roaring Twenties, the Golden Twenties, the Jazz Age and the Flapper Era. It was also the decade of the Wall Street Crash, the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb, the first talking pictures and dance crazes like the Charleston and the samba. In many ways it was a period of transition from the pre-First World War order to a more recognisably modern age. Words and Music reflects this change in the novels, poetry, songs and compositions from a century or so ago. There are readings from the fiction of F Scott Fitzgerald, Rosamund Lehman, Richmal Crompton and Virginia Woolf, verse from TS Eliot, Frances Cornford, Thomas Hardy, Edith Sitwell and poets of the Harlem Renaissance while the music ranges from Poulenc and Puccini to Gershwin, Ellington and Bessie Smith, from Ravel and Nadia Boulanger to Weill and Vaughan Williams via Louis Armstrong and Carmen Miranda.

Producer: Harry Parker

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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Words and Music

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