The Listening Service

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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

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Music: Classical

An odyssey through the musical universe, presented by Tom Service

Rethink music with The Listening Service. Tom Service presents a journey of imagination and insight, exploring how music works

The Listening Service: The Cowpat Controversy

How Do You Make a National Anthem?

The Cowpat Controversy

BBC Radio 3 - The Listening Service, The Cowpat Controversy

Calling 20th-century English music 'cowpat music' is just plain rude! And it's inaccurate.

English composers of the early 20th century have been labelled ' the cowpat school'. This is not just unfair. It's downright rude and it belies the depth of their music.

The line-up of early 20th-century English composers includes great figures such as Holst, Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax and Frederick Delius. Since the 1950s, these composers have been dogged by a casual and unkind slur against their work, namely by referring to it as 'cowpat music'. 

Tom Service argues that, far from producing shallow and whimsical pastoral scores, the music produced by this English movement is among the most profound and communicative of the last century, rarely far from the influence of the two world wars.

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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