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: Light and Shade

Light and Shade

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Light and Shade

Today's theme is prompted by contrasts in the work of Renaissance artist Caravaggio.

The paintings of 16th-century master Caravaggio prompt reflections on light and shade, with readers Ruby Bentall and Justice Ritchie and music ranging from Giramo to Lou Reed.

Dammed as depraved, and lauded as a brilliant innovator: the artist Caravaggio often depicted moments of violence and vanity, using the technique known as tenebrism, an extreme dramatic contrast between areas of light and shade. Readings from Ruby Bentall and Justice Ritchie move between darkness and light, from a hymn in praise of darkness by Caravaggio’s contemporary Edward Herbert, Lord Cherbury, to the 20th-century poet Rabindranath Tagore’s evocation of a world suffused with light, taking in all the shades in between courtesy of Milton, Elizabeth Jennings, Gerard Manley Hopkins, HD, and John Donne. We also hear John Ruskin’s assessment of Caravaggio as an artist of darkness and depravity, and Matteo Augello imagines his reply. The music includes madrigals directly depicted in Caravaggio’s work, and pieces by Mozart, Ligeti, Offenbach and the Velvet Underground. 

This edition also includes original settings of poems referenced in Caravaggio's work: Petrarch's Leave Off Your Veil, and Icarus, as well as Gli Uomini Valenti, taken from a contemporary report of testimony Caravaggio gave at a trial. Original recordings by Electropastiche, Voice and translations by Matteo Augello, Guitars by William Vitali, Produced by Jodi Pedrali. You can find out more about this at dacaravaggio.com 

Producer: Luke Mulhall

READINGS:
Johan Huizinga  The Waning of the Middle Ages
John Ruskin   Review of Lindsay’s The History of Christian Art 
Elizabeth Jennings   Caravaggio’s ‘Narcissus’ in Rome 
John Milton   Paradise Lost
HD   Evening
Caleb Femi   Coping
Sir Henry Wotton    To his Mistress
Martyn Crucefix    At The National Gallery
George Bradley   The Sound of the Sun
Lord Edward Herbery of Churbury   Black Beauty
Samuel Daniel   Are They Shadows
Gerard Manley Hopkins   The Candle Indoors
John Donne   On The Sun Rising
Rabindrath Tagore   Light 
Virgil, tran. A.S. Kline   Ecologue X
Elizabeth Jennings   A World of Light

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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