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: Like a butterfly's wing

Like a butterfly's wing

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Like a butterfly's wing

For Pride month, music and readings of Oscar Wilde, Jackie Kay, Dean Atta & Torrey Peters.

A sequence of words and music celebrating the creativity of LGBTQ+ writers, performers and composers, including Oscar Wilde, Jackie Kay, Torrey Peters, Ethel Smyth & David Bowie.

Celebrating the creativity of LGBTQ+ writers, performers and composers, this episode hears the evocation of seasons in Radclyffe Hall’s "Well of Loneliness" and Michael Field’s poetry; there's the Polari description of life on board ship in Richard Milward’s novel "Man-Eating Typewriter"; "Sappho’s Song" written by the Elizabethan author John Lyly and "The Last Prom Queen in Antarctica" - a poem by Ocean Vuong.  There's also an excerpt from the agonised letter sent by "Tales of the City" writer Armistead Maupin to his mother and the impassioned analysis of the "Sex and the City" choices facing trans women outlined in Torrey Peter’s acclaimed recent novel "DeTransition Baby".   Plus, Jackie Kay evokes a jazz trumpeter, Paul Burston reflects on his teenage interest in David Bowie, and AE Housman muses on the persecution of homosexuals following the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895.  

We’ll hear ballet music by Tchaikovsky, a love song from Pauline Oliveiros' accordion, Billy Strayhorn taking the A-Train, electronic wizardry by Wendy Carlos and Kenneth Williams singing Noel Coward's impassioned plea to Mrs Worthington.   

And our title comes from a phrase in Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando.

The readers for this episode are Alicya Eyo and Arthur Bostrom.
Composer of the Week running June 24th to 28th focuses on the work of Lou Harrison and there are special mixtapes running across the week as part of Radio 3's programming for Pride Month. 

Producer in Salford: Les Pratt

READINGS and MUSIC 
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – The lilac fairy [The Sleeping beauty - suite (Op.66a)]
Dean Atta – The Black Flamingo 
Jean-Baptiste Lully – Prelude: Psyche
Oscar Wilde – The Portrait of Dorian Gray 
Jonathan Dove – From Heaven to Here [Sappho Sings]
John Lyly – Sappho’s Song 
Pauline Oliveiros – A Love Song
Joelle Taylor – Vitrine 
Ethel Smyth – Concerto for violin & horn (2nd mvt: Elegy “In Memoriam”)
Radclyffe Hall – The Well of Loneliness 
Walt Whitman – Sometimes with the one I love 
Craig Urquhart – Here the frailest leaves of me
Armistead Maupin – More Tales of the City 
Nico Muhly – The Street [Station IV: Jesus Meets His Mother]
Angela Morley – A Canadian in Mayfair
Torrey Peters – Detransition Baby 
JS Bach arr. Wendy Carlos – Brandenburg Concerto No.3 (1st mvt) 
Richard Milward – Man-Eating Typewriter 
Noel Coward – Mrs Worthington
Anon – Cud (excerpt) Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet
Jackie Kay – Trumpet 
Billy Strayhorn – Take the A Train
Michael Field – A Summer Wind 
Francis Poulenc – Sextet for piano & winds (2nd mvt: Divertissement)
Paul Burston – We can be heroes 
David Bowie – Rebel Rebel 
Chris Lowe / Neil Tennant – It’s a sin 
AE Housman – Oh who is that young sinner?
Meredith Monk – Passage
Virginia Woolf – Orlando 
Dominique Phinot – Pater peccavi 
Julius Eastman – Gay guerilla 
Carol Ann Duffy – Prayer
Ocean Vuong – Last Prom Queen in Antarctica
Janis Joplin – Mercedes Benz

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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