[rnotes]
Death has been an inspiration to poets, authors, artists and composers throughout the centuries. The multi award winning poet, Professor Michael Symmons Roberts, devotes his debut presenting Something Understood to an intense reflection on the subject, its mystery and inevitability.
Roberts has himself used death in his own work, notably in his poem Corpse which is featured in the programme alongside the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens. But it’s the life and poetry of John Donne, which Roberts cites as his main inspiration. Donne, Roberts explains, courted death as a young man and witnessed plenty of it.
Another life-long influence on Roberts is the music of David Bowie who died earlier this year. “Mortality, the need to seize the fleeting life we have, was always there in his work,” Roberts says as he reflects on the elegiac Heroes and tells the story of Bowie’s final album, Blackstar and the song Lazarus. “Many fans interpreted it as a message from beyond the border, from a man who had crossed it.”
Other music includes Vera Hall singing Death is Awful, Mozart’s Requiem and John Donne’s poem Death Be Not Proud set to music by John Tavener.
Presenter: Michael Symmons Roberts
Producer: Michael Wakelin
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.
Rex Tremendae Majestatis
Mozarts Requiem In D Minor
Madison Avenue Goes To The Opera. Capitol.
John McCormack
Send Me Away With a Smile
Songs of World War I. Delta.
Malcolm Stewart, Roger Benedict, Anna Cooper, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Vaughan Williams: A Pastoral Symphony (No 3): I Molto Moderato (Opening)
Classical Music (24 Recommended Masterworks From The Great Composers). EMI Records Ltd..
Vera Hall And Dock Reed
Death Is Awful
Spirituals With Dock Reed And Vera Hall Ward. Folkways Records.
Charlie Mole
Dorians Theme
Dorian Gray (OST). BFD.
David Bowie
‘Heroes’
Heroes. RCA Victor.
David Bowie
Lazarus
Blackstar. Columbia Records.
Anders Eliasson Roos (STIM), Michael Ellgren (STIM)
Uttarakhand
ADD074 Wilderness. Addictive Tracks.
John Tavener
Three Holy Sonnets: Death, Be Not Proud
Iepo Oneipo. Smekkleysa.
Readings
Title: John Donne: The Reformed Soul – A Biography
Author: John Stubbs
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Title: Because I Could Not Stop For Death (Taken from Poems: Series 1)
Author: Emily Dickinson
Publisher: Roberts Brothers
Title: Plenty
Author: David Hare
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Title: Sunday Morning (Taken from Selected Poems)
Author: Wallace Stevens
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Title: Corpse (Taken from Edgelands)
Author: Michael Symmons Roberts
Publisher: Vintage
Title: Psalm 23:4 (Taken from The Bible – King James Version)
Publisher: Collins
Title: Holy Sonnets: Death, Be Not Proud (Taken from Holy Sonnets)
Author: John Donne
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
[/rnotes]
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