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Episode details

Radio 3,03 May 2020,29 mins

Talking in music

The Listening Service

Available for over a year

Tom Service explores talking in music - from Gilbert & Sullivan's patter songs to high-art "Sprechgesang" by Schoenberg, from Mozart's recitative to the rap of present-day LA. Anyway, who's to say what is talking and what is singing? Archive recordings of WB Yeats reveal him intoning his poetry melodically, while Ken Nordine devised what he called "Word Jazz". This edition was first broadcast in 2020: the poet named there as Kate Tempest identified as non binary later that year, changing their name to Kae

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