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: Dante

Dante

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Dante

Visions of heaven and hell from the writings of Dante, set alongside musical evocations.

The visions of heaven and hell set down in the Divine Comedy by Dante have inspired music by composers including Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Liszt, Radiohead and Soweto Kinch.

"Father of the Italian language": the writing of Dante Alighieri c. 1265 – 1321 has given us Beatrice - symbol of divine love, the visions of heaven, purgatory and hell set down in his Divine Comedy, a use of vernacular language and Tuscan dialect when most poetry was written in Latin and a three line rhyme scheme or terza rima.  Today's Words and Music features readings from his key works taken from a range of different translations (and some excerpts in Italian).  These are set against music inspired by his words.

In 1849 Franz Liszt wrote "Dante has become for my mind and spirit what the column of clouds was for the children of Israel when it guided them through the desert," and he went on to compose a sonata and a symphony inspired by the Italian poet.  In 1876 Tchaikovsky read the fifth canto of Dante's Hell and began his symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini, a noblewoman who falls in love with her husband's brother.  Rachmaninov's operatic version of this story premiered in 1906.  Soweto Kinch's The Legend of Mike Smith brings Dante's Inferno and the seven deadly sins into our modern world.  The idea of "people being ferried across the river of death" in an exhibition of Egyptian art inspired the track Pyramid Song by Radiohead, which takes images from Dante's journey through heaven and hell.  

Readers: Christine Kavanagh and Leighton Pugh.

Producer: Tony Sellors 

READINGS:
Giovanni Boccaccio  Dream of Dante
Dante Alighieri (trans. Andrew Frisardi)   Vita nuova
Dante Alighieri (trans. Allen Mandelbaum)  Dante's Exile (Paradiso Canto 17)
Michelangelo   Sonnet to Dante
Dante Alighieri (trans. Henry Francis Cary)  Inferno Canto 1
Dante Alighieri (trans. Sandow Birk and Marcus Saunders)  Inferno Canto 1
Dante Alighieri (trans. Henry Francis Cary)  Inferno Canto 3 (The gates of Hell)
Dante Alighieri (trans. Henry Francis Cary)   Inferno Canto 3
Dante Alighieri  The Rivers of Hell (Inferno Canto 3, trans H.F.Cary)
Dante Alighieri  Piero and Francesca (Inferno Canto 5, trans. Cary)
Dante Alighieri  Canto 5 (Trans. Sandow Birk and Marcus Saunders)
Ned Denny       B, Canto 5
Dante Alighieri (trans. Sandow Birk and Marcus Saunders  Inferno Canto 8
Dante Alighieri, trans. Allen Mandelbaum   Purgatory, Cantos 1 and 2
Dante Alighieri   Purgatorio Canto 2
Dante Alighieri (trans. A.S. Kline)  Canzone Two
Dante Alighieri (trans Allen Mandelbaum)   Paradiso Canto 30
Dante Alighieri (trans Barbara Reynolds)  Paradiso Canto 33
Michelangelo    Sonnet to Dante

You can find Free Thinking episode Dante's Visions in which Rana Mitter's guests look at art inspired by the Italian writer.
You can also find an exploration of Dante's language in the Divine Comedy hearing from scholars Prue Shaw and Nick Havely, poet Sean O'Brien and writer Kevin Jackson in the Free Thinking playlist called Landmarks of Culture.

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