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: Nature and the City

Nature and the City

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Poetry and prose on plants and people in the metropolis.

Poetry and prose on the lives and fortunes of plants, animals and humans from the changing metropolis. With poems by Phillip Larkin, John Keats and Rainer Maria Rilke.

Poets and composers have long sung the virtues of the green spaces and the wildlife encountered in our urban centres. Ottorino Respighi celebrates the birds and pine trees of Rome, and Rufus Wainwright sings through all weathers and the wild flowers of Berlin’s Tiergarten park. Matthew Arnold, in Kensington Gardens, marvels at the 'endless, active life' he finds all about him at his feet and in the air.

Human cities might, though, be viewed as islands too, pushing out and paving over the natural world, towering evidence of the anthropocentric. For the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, 'the big cities are not true; they betray the day, the night, animals and children' while Edna St Vincent Millay mourns the loss of the 'thin and sweet' music of dancing tree-leaves, drowned out in the 'shrieking city air' of horns and alarms and industry evoked in the music of Steve Reich. And as some writers begin to dream of green hills and escaping the din of the metropolis, the forces of nature are already gathering inside the city walls: rabbits, herds of deer, bears and the sea begin to re-wild and reclaim the human spaces, reminding us that, for all our skyscrapers, we are not separate from but of nature.

Produced by Phil Smith
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3

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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