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

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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: Women Writing War

Women Writing War

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Women Writing War

With poetry and prose by the mothers of soldiers and music by Messiaen and PJ Harvey.

Lara Rossi and Carolyn Pickles with poetry and prose by the mothers of WWI soldiers and of young men serving in Afghanistan with music by PJ Harvey, Samuel Barber and June Tabor.

From WWI to Afghanistan, testimony from wives, mothers and women journalists read by Carolyn Pickles and Lara Rossi is set alongside music by Martinů, Messiaen, Max Richter, Clare Connors and Miles Davis.

We begin with Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman before our collaboration with the Big Ideas Project, Motherhood Loss and the First World War, brings letters from the mothers of soldiers in the First World War. Their words are heard with commissioned music by Clare Connors.  Helen Thomas, the young wife of the poet Edward Thomas remembers their last night together before he returned to the Front, heard with George Butterworth’s The Bank of Green Willow: both Thomas and Butterworth did not return from the war.   The great American journalist Martha Gellhorn’s report on the devastation in Madrid is set alongside Samuel Barber’s A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map, inspired by the death of a soldier in the Spanish Civil War. Much closer in time is the war in Afghanistan. The music of Miles Davis is heard as the American Iraq veteran and poet Chantelle Bateman remembers her post-traumatic stress on returning from the conflict.  And the poets Bryony Doran and Isabel Palmer tell of their experiences of being the mothers of young soldiers in Afghanistan.  Women Writing War ends with May Wedderburn Cannan’s July 1919 and her final lines, ‘Never for us is folded War away, Dawn or sun setting, Now in our hearts abides always our war’ are heard with Elgar’s Carissima. 

Producer: Fiona McLean

The annual episode made in partnership with the Imperial War Museum of Radio 3's Arts & Ideas programme Free Thinking is available now on BBC Sounds.  It looks at the gallery's art collection.  And on the Free Thinking programme website you can find a series of episodes exploring different aspects of war.

READINGS 
Phoebe Smith: Letter to Rabindranath Tagore 
SA Walker:          Letter to her Son 
Moniza Alvi:         How the Stone Found its Voice 
Mary Borden:      The Forbidden Zone 
Helen Thomas:     World Without End 
Audrey Withers:   Vogue's Victory Edition 
Jane Duran:          Spanish Civil War 
Martha Gelhorn:   Spanish Civil War 
Cecily Mackworth:  En Route 
Isabel Palmer:        Worse Case Scenario 
Ruth Fainlight:       Handbag 
Chantelle Bateman:  PTSD 
Bryony Doran:         Snow on the Line 
Margaret Postgate Cole:   The Falling Leaves 
May Wedderburn Cannan:   Woman Demobilised

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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