Speechification

In quiet corners of the BBC remarkable things happen. Here’s an example from Radio 3. It’s a play, written by Stephen Phelps (a veteran of investigative TV) about the Piper Alpha disaster that tells the story of the critical ninety minutes from the first failure to the final explosion, in real time, twenty years after the disaster—to the second. As an experiment I think it’s a total success. Tense, moving and terrifying: high octane stuff, structured like a movie. It’s genuinely spine-tingling and left me thinking about it for a long time after it had finished (MP3).

And thanks to the people who offered copies of the programme from their archives in response to my appeal.

I’ve started this post about five times in the last week. And it’s no good, I can’t think of anything clever to say about this programme. It’s a series of UK soundscapes, each faded into the next, with a little puzzle buried in it. It’s very good and everything, it’s part of the always listenable Between The Ears series on Radio 3, but I can’t think of anything to add. You should just have a listen. MP3 here.

Here’s another lovely series of Radio 3’s The Essay. In this one we learn from four archaeologists that the discipline extends further than you may have expected. To the surface of the moon (or at least the parts of it affected by human visitors), for instance. Also to Long Kesh/Maze prison in Northern Ireland where Republican hunger strikers died, a wood by a B-road near Sheffield where 19th and 20th Century graffiti artists carved their names on the trees and the fields in Essex where some radio masts once stood. Really fascinating, surprising stuff. Here’s episode one (MP3), which is the one about the moon. You can hear the other three here for the next few days (the fourth episode’s Real stream jumps and skips a bit, beware).

If The Verb went out on Radio 4 there’d be complaints—Feedback would be busy for weeks. It’s one of those programmes that exposes Radio 4 as sort of uptight. Which is funny when you think that it actually goes out on dark brown corduroy Radio 3… Just goes to show (MP3).

Catherine Bott, Radio 3’s early music guru, presents a programme about Chopin’s pianos, part of the station’s ‘Chopin Experience‘ from last weekend. Fascinating social and economic history plus loads of music. For the next five or six days you can listen to all the shows in the season here. Here’s an MP3 of the show.

Radio Three runs a lovely series of fifteen minute ‘cultural talks’ called The Essay. Monday to Thursday at 11pm. This week it was some smart and listenable radio called Maths and Music by trumpter player and mathematician Marcus Du Sautoy. Monday was all about time and counting with Steve Reich and Ewe music from Ghana. Tuesday we had Pythagoras, the music of the spheres and why so many cultures end up with twelve notes in a scale, Wednesday brought us Bach, symmetry, theme and variations and we ended on Thursday with some more twentieth century material and mathematically generated music. Brilliant stuff. Programme One. Two. Three. Four. Incidentally it’s well worth listening right to the end of programme three just to hear the continuity announcer’s way with German. No-one does foreign languages quite like Radio Three.

Here’s a nice long one. Nearly two hours of poetry and music on the theme of the weather from Radio 3: you might consider it a companion to Dan’s much scarier Aussie weather post from a few days ago. You’ll probably think this one’s a bit soporific for your cutting edge tastes but the choice is eclectic enough—from A. A. Milne to Kurt Weill and from Kathleen Ferrier to Steve Reich. I think this would make a great soundtrack to a longish train journey. London to Bristol, say. In the rain.

Here’s the programme’s MP3 and here’s the extensive playlist.

What do I learn from Radio Three’s Building a Library? I learn that, though I’ve been building (randomly accumulating, really) my own library for twenty-odd years, I know practically nothing about classical music. I learn that the potential for variation in the delivery of a piece of music is essentially limitless and yet quite often undetectable to my ears.

I learn that there are people in the world (well, Piers Burton-Page Andrew McGregor, really) who know too much about classical music. I learn that I don’t own any of the really good classical recordings (that’s what you get for choosing albums from the bargain bin by the door) and I learn that one person’s passion for and understanding of a subject can be really awe-inspiring.

This edition is about Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2. Here’s the MP3. Building a Library now has a podcast and, amazingly, it really works - even though the copyright rules limit the length of clips in the MP3 so the podcast version is a fraction of the length of the broadcast version. Another real joy from your national broadcaster.

St Augustine never saw a bible in his lifetime. There’s a fact to get your teeth into. This really fascinating Radio 3 four-parter (four experts: one essay each - and one of them’s the Archbishop of Canterbury!) about Augustine is full of such mind-blowing information, especially the fourth part - presented by Dr James J O’Donnell, one of Augustine’s biographers - which I’m featuring here for the podcast (MP3). Part one, part two and part three are here too. Wonderful.

If you fancy some conspiracy theory this might provide handy fuel for your fire. It’s a Radio 3 Sunday feature by Ken Hollings about the RAND corporation, the first think tank, once dubbed the ‘malevolent university’ and influencer of presidents. Though it you look at their website now they seem to be successfully cloaking their malevolence with stock photography. It’s a good old listen, and many thanks to Simon for bringing it to our attention. (I feel we’ve now got to the stage where I can use a collective speechification ‘we’) MP3 here.