Words and 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

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: Proust

Proust

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Proust

Marcel Proust's writing on taste, memory, love and jealousy is set alongside music.

Jasmine Hyde and Michael Begley read from translations of À La Recherche du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 to 18 November 1922), with music evoking the period.

7 volumes, 4,300 pages in one translation, featuring more than 2,000 characters: Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu was first refused by the publisher Gallimard but then, after he paid for it to be published himself and for reviewers to write about it favourably, it became recognised as a literary classic.  But the writer had died of pneumonia before he finished his revisions and the final 3 volumes had reached print.   
In a series of vignettes featuring each of the five senses, we find ourselves at the salon given by Madame Verdurin, where Swann hears the little musical phrase which fascinates him; we follow the narrator as he views a famous 18th century fountain, before kissing Albertine, who has driven him wild with jealousy. Later, we find him pondering the death of his grandmother, before having the cup of tea with the madeleine cake whose taste triggers in his mind a whole world of memory, presumed lost, but conjured up now without any effort of the will. 

The English translation is that by C.K. Scott-Moncrieff, along with passages from a new version of Swann in Love by Lucy Raitz. On the way we hear tributes to Proust from other authors, and a Proustian soundtrack including music by Ravel, Johann Strauss and Schoenberg. 
Our readers are Michael Begley and Jasmine Hyde. 

Producer: Tony Sellors

Readings:

Marcel Proust: Against Sainte Beuve, 39
Marcel Proust: Du cote de chez Swann
Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff (trans.): Swann’s Way
Marcel Proust, Lucy Raitz (trans.): Swann in Love
Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff (trans.): Cities of the Plain
Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff (trans.): Within a budding grove
Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff (trans.): The Guermantes Way
James Merill: Synopsis: For Proust, from Water Street (1962)
Elisabeth Kahn: The man who remembered
Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff (trans.): Overture
Clive James: Synopsis: Gate of Lilacs
Brian Bilston: In search of Lost Tomes

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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