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: Material World

Material World

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Material World

Wool, velvet, cotton, silk: Kate O'Flynn and Matthew Needham with readings set with music.

With readings from Brokeback Mountain, John Donne, The Devil Wears Prada and The Road to Wigan Pier. And music by John Tavener, Ella Fitzgerald, Puccini and Lana Del Rey.

The choice between denim and chiffon skirts is the quandary for the young woman who works for a powerful fashion magazine editor in Lauren Weisberger's novel from 2003 The Devil Wears Prada, whilst in Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho Timothy Price sports a cotton shirt, linen suit, silk tie and leather lace ups. In George Orwell's On Wigan Pier, he writes about new clothes allowing you to "stand on the street corner, indulging in a private daydream of yourself as Clark Gable or Greta Garbo". Today's Words and Music is like a draper's shop offering poems by John Donne, Cynthia Miller and Mark Doty. There's music written by Saint-Saëns inspired by the story of Le Rouet d'Omphale, an episode in the story of Hercules when he was condemned by Apollo to spend three years disguised as a woman spinning wool for Omphale and William Grant Still's orchestration of Florence Price's Dances in the Canebrakes, a thicket of tall cane plants found in the cotton producing regions of the American South. Bobby Vinton croons about Blue Velvet, Lana Del Rey about blue jeans, and Celine Byrne performs the aria "mi chiamano Mimì" from La Bohème, Puccini's opera about a seamstress and her artist friends in 1830s Paris.  Kim Addonizio declares that what women really want is a tight red dress while Jane Eyre eschews a symphony of silks. Strauss brings music to Moliere’s satire Le bourgeois gentilhomme and Madonna declares we are living in a Material World. 

Our readers are Kate O'Flynn and Matthew Needham.
 
Producer: Belinda Naylor

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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Words and Music

Material World

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