The Essay: Renewing the Past: The BBC and Early Music 

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Renewing the Past: The BBC and Early Music: 1950s and 60s, Performance in Period Style

1950s and 60s, Performance in Period Style

Renewing the Past: The BBC and Early Music

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Renewing the Past: The BBC and Early Music, 1950s and 60s, Performance in Period Style

Nicholas Kenyon explores early music at the BBC in the 1950s and 60s.

Nicholas Kenyon explores how in the creative years of the 1950s and 1960s, the revival of early music had a new sense of adventure.

The BBC has had a powerful influence on our musical taste, and in this BBC centenary year, Nicholas Kenyon, a former controller of Radio 3 and director of the Proms, delves into the archives to explore the BBC’s role in reviving the centuries of early music from before the 18th century.

Today Kenyon explores how in the creative years of the 1950s and 1960s, the revival of early music had a sense of adventure; new orchestras were established like the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields which explored the repertory in broadcasts and recordings. He highlights the work of three contrasted pioneers: Imogen Holst, who programmed concerts of medieval music at Aldeburgh, promoted by the BBC Transcription Service; Denis Stevens, the musicologist and conductor who broadcast and worked for the BBC Third Programme but became a hugely controversial figure because of his argumentative nature; and William Glock, who became the BBC’s Controller of Music in 1959 and transformed the repertory of the Proms, welcoming in a whole range of earlier music that had never been heard before at the Proms.

Presented by Nicholas Kenyon
Produced by Melissa FitzGerald

The Essay: Renewing the Past: The BBC and Early Music

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.

Nicholas Kenyon explores the BBC's role in the early music revival of the last century.

Nicholas Kenyon, former controller of Radio 3 and director of the Proms, delves into the archives to explore the BBC's role in the early music revival from the 1920s to the 1970s.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Renewing the Past: The BBC and Early Music

1950s and 60s, Performance in Period Style

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3