The Listening Service

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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

Podcasts

Music: Classical

An odyssey through the musical universe, presented by Tom Service

Rethink music with The Listening Service. Tom Service presents a journey of imagination and insight, exploring how music works

The Listening Service: Wild Isles: Wild Music

Wild Isles: Wild Music

BBC Radio 3 - The Listening Service, Wild Isles: Wild Music

Tom Service explores musical evocations of wilderness and the natural world.

Tom Service explores musical evocations of wilderness and the natural world, and goes in search of what makes music truly wild.

Inspired by David Attenborough’s Wild Isles series, Tom Service goes in search of music that reflects British wildlife and wilderness, and our relationship with it. From the songs of Henry Purcell written whilst wolves still roamed the British Isles to orchestral representations of composers like Hamish MacCunn, Grace Williams and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the score for Wild Isles itself, written by the Oscar nominated film composer George Fenton. But perhaps truly wild music isn’t music written about wild places: perhaps it's music which has a wildness of spirit, of process, or of uncontrollably organic construction, music that releases the untamed and the untameable, by composers like Peter Maxwell Davies, Brian Eno, and Chris Wood. But where do the real sounds of nature fit into all this – the sounds of birdsong, bacteria, and fungi…?

Our witness today is the award-winning author and naturalist Mark Cocker.

Producer: Ruth Thomson

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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The Listening Service

Wild Isles: Wild Music

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