The Soft Machine
Sunday 1 June 2008 22:45-0:00 (Radio 3)
A sequence of poems read by Anna Maxwell Martin and John Rowe interspersed with music, all on the theme of the body. The programme features writings by Whitman, Homer and Auden along with music from Tchaikovsky, Monteverdi and Charles Mingus.
Duration:
1 hour 15 minutes
Playlist
Words and Music: The Soft Machine
Producers Note
Nothing is at once so familiar and yet so strange as the body. For most of the time this soft machine we inhabit is invisible, weightless even, but the slightest turbulence serves as an intimation of mortality. Suddenly we feel the pull of gravity, the burden and bounty of being human, and of course we sing and write about it.
Words and Music this week takes its cue from this moment - the moment when fleshy mechanics and consciousness seem to collide or separate, when the fifty trillion cells from which each of us is apparently composed fall into novel, self aware shapes. The programme is about the human body when it emerges from the shadows.
As you might expect it begins with an overture - Walt Whitman's 'I Sing the Body Electric' and hauls itself up from all fours until its features are, I hope, all too recognisably human, from Tchaikovsky's tip toeing Sugar-Plum Fairy to Alvin Lucier's journey into the brain's inner space, from pas de deux to double helix and yet with still enough time to catch the warm, scented pulse of a princess and the fever of a man with night sweats.
If you hear voices they will probably be the actors Anna Maxwell Martin and John Rowe breathing life into the words of Alexander Pope, Ezra Pound, Vicki Feaver and W.H.Auden amongst others; if its sounds and sweet airs then the culprits are likely to be Monteverdi, Handel, Beethoven or Charlie Mingus, in other words the surprise of recognition and the shock of the new.
Zahid Warley - producer
Playlist
Timings are from the beginning of the programme
00:00:00
Charlie Mingus
Pithycanthropus Erectus
Accord 1997430
Track 1
00:01:31
Walt Whitman
Section 9 from I Sing the Body Electric
From The Complete Poems Of Walt Whitman
Penguin Classic
Readers: Anna Maxwell Martin and John Rowe
00:05:51
Tchaikovsky
Sugar Plum Fairy
Tchaikovsky: Ballet Suiten
Berliner Phlharmonker/Mstislav Rostropovich
Track 11
Deutsche Grammophon 4290972
00:07:56
Ezra Pound
Dance Figure
From Personae - Collected Shorter Poems
Faber.
Reader: John Rowe
00:09:16
Dem Bones
Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians
From: The Singing Detective
Track 4, Disc 1
Pott CD 200.
00:11:31
W.H.Auden
Musee des Beaux Arts
From Collected Shorter Poems
Faber
Reader: Anna Maxwell Martin
00:13:04
Liszt
Totentanz
Played by Leslie Howard
Track 23.
Hyperion CDA66429.
00:14:33
Homer
The Odyssey
Eurycleia recognises Odysseus from the scar on his thigh
Taken from Homer's Odyssey by Simon Armitage
Faber
Reader: Anna Maxwell Martin
00:16:16
Monteverdi
Il ritorno d'Ulisse
Garrido
Eurycleia's Aria
Track 9 CD 3
K617091 SAAN 4547733
00:20:28
Seamus Heaney
The Skunk
Poem in Field Work
Reader: Seamus Heaney
00:21:58
Shostakovich
Entr'acte from Act 1 of The Nose
Performed by Akhimov/Rozhdestvensky
Chant du Monde
LDC27899899.
00:25:27
Sarah Maguire
Spilt Milk
From Spilt Milk
Published by the Poetry Book Society
Reader: Anna Maxwell Martin
00:26:47
Fever
Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes
SEPC 5827
00:30:25
Thom Gunn
The Man with Night Sweats
From the book of the same name
Faber
Reader: Thom Gunn
00:31:32
Beethoven
Piano Sonata No 27 in E minor, Op 90.
Solomon -1st movement
Track 4
Testament SBT1191
00:37:27
Vicki Feaver
The Red Cupboard
From The Book of Blood
Jonathan Cape.
Reader: Anna Maxwell Martin
00: 38:42
Elvis Presley
Heartbreak Hotel
Performed by Kevin Ayers
Track 3
Island IMCD92.
00:44:00
Tolstoy
War and Peace
Vintage Classics
Reader: John Rowe
00:45:57
Beethoven
Piano Sonata No 27 in E minor, Op 90. Solomon -2nd movement
Track 5
Solomon
Testament SBT1191.
00:53:07
Raymond Tallis
Page 8 from The Kingdom of Infinite Space
Atlantic Books.
Reader: John Rowe
00:54:47
Alvin Lucier
Music for solo performer
First piece composed using alpha waves from the brain
00:57:47
NOT I extract
Billie Whitelaw
Reader: Billie Whitelaw
00:58:41
Como Nome Aria
Verdi
Rigoletto
Track 12 CD 1
Deutsche Grammophon 4577532
01:05:01
Pope
Rape of the Lock.
From Alexander Pope Poems selected by John Fuller.
Faber.
Reader: John Rowe
01:05:43
Samson
Karl Richter
Total Eclipse
Track 14
CD1
Archiv 45324.
01:10:11
Jo Shapcott
Ear poem from Her Book Poems 1988-1998
Faber.
Reading: Anna Maxwell Martin
01:11:49
Charlie Mingus
Pithecanthropus Erectus
Accord 1997430
Track 1
01:13:07
Gillian K Ferguson
Human Genome: Poems on the Book of Life
First section of poem 1.
Reader: Anna Maxwell Martin and John Rowe
01:14:44
Gillian K Ferguson
Human Genome: Poems on the Book of Life
Last section of poem 1.
Reader: Anna Maxwell Martin and John Rowe
