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Tears, Idle Tears

Samuel Barnett and Samantha Bond read words by Keats, Donne and F Scott Fitzgerald on the theme of weeping. With music by Purcell, Schumann and Tchaikovsky.

This words and music is about tears and weeping.

Music is, famously, the art form most likely to make people cry. Tolstoy is said to have wept at Tchaikovsky's String Quartet Number 1 and Mozart himself, on his death bed, broke off writing his Requiem at the Lacrimosa to weep. That is, at least according to one source.

Tales of great weeping are the stuff of legend. Sorrowful Niobe is so drained by her lamentations and grieving that she is transformed into a great, dry mountain and Lamia, here in Keat's version, is made monstrous by grief. Like Medea in the Greek and La Llorona, the child-eating weeping woman of Mexico, the figure of the woman so bereft she becomes terrible and terrifying is common to many stories and cultures.

For Elizabeth Barrett Browning grief is passionless: only those with hope can weep. The melancholic protagonist in Schubert's Winterreise finds his tears are frozen despite the burning passion in his heart and Mary Barnard's cool princesses adorn themselves with reasonable tears like bright ice jewels.

Lovers' tears lace the centuries: Desdemona remembers and sings a sad song of Willow, F Scott Fitzgerald's partygoer sails her sobs on a sea of champagne, the Anglo Saxon voice wails for her Wulf, and Julie London conjures a salt river of loss.

The tears of children and about children can seem puzzling. Gerard Manley Hopkins and Walt Whitman imagine the crying children of their poems to be somehow unsure of the source of their tears. Whitman offers reassurance in the nightly rebirth of the planets and stars whilst Hopkins gives a glimpse of the child's future and her understanding that to be human is to weep.

Producer: Natalie Steed.

1 hour, 15 minutes

Last on

Sun 31 Mar 2013 18:30
大象传媒 Radio 3

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Music Played

Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes

  • 00:00

    anon

    anon - Bells: Tolling of the Knell

    Performer: Monks of the Abbey of St Peter鈥檚 of Solesmes, France

  • Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

    Grief, reader: Samantha Bond

  • 00:01

    Arvo P盲rt

    Psalom

    Performer: Kronos Quartet

    • Nonesuch 7559794572.

  • William Johnson Cory

    Heraclitus reader: Samuel Barnett

  • 00:03

    Henry Purcell

    O let me weep, from Act 5, The Fairy Queen

    Performer: The Sixteen, Harry Christophers

    • COLLINS CLASSICS 70132.

  • John Donne

    Niobe, reader: Samantha Bond

  • 00:10

    Benjamin Britten - Niobe, Six Metamorphoses after Ovid

    Performer: Pauline Oosternrijk

  • Douglas Dunn

    The Kaleidescope reader: Samuel Barnett

  • 00:13

    Franz Schubert

    Gefror'ne Tr盲nen, from Winterreise

    Performer: Ian Bostridge, Leif Ove Andsnes

    • EMI 5577902.

  • Mary Barnard

    The Tears of Princesses, reader: Samantha Bond

  • 00:16

    Leos Jan谩膷ek

    On an overgrown path... book 1 for piano, no.9; V placi (In tears

    Performer: Charles Owen

    • SOMMCD 028 2002.
  • 00:14

    Gioachino Rossini

    Otello, ossia Il moro di Venezia - Act 3; Assisa a pie d'un salice (Willow song)

    Performer: Joyce DiDonato, soprano, Edoardo M眉ller, conductor, Orchestra dell' Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia - Rome

    • Virgin Classics B002LMOCFY.

  • William Shakespeare

    Desdemona鈥檚 Willow Speech, from Othello, reader: Samuel Barnett

  • 00:21

    Ann Ronell

    Willow, Weep for Me

    Performer: Billie Holiday

    • Demon USPR35700173.

  • F Scott Fitzgerald

    From The Great Gatsby, reader: Samuel Barnett

  • 00:25

    Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

    Quartet for strings no. 1 (Op.11) in D major, 2nd mvt; Andante cantabile

    Performer: Borodin Quartet

    • Teldec.

  • Jane Grigson

    Onions, from Jane Grigson鈥檚 Vegetable Book, reader: Samantha Bond

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins

    Spring and Fall: To A young Child, reader: Samantha Bond

  • 00:33

    John Cage, (arr. Eric Salzman)

    Totem Ancestor

    Performer: Kronos Quartet

    • NONESUCH 7559794572.

  • Lewis Carroll

    Alice (and the pool of tears), from Alice in Wonderland, reader: Samuel Barnett

  • 00:37

    Maurice Ravel

    Pavane pour une infante d茅funte

    Performer: Academy of St Martin in the Fields, cond Neville Marriner

    • PHILIPS4121312.

  • Walt Whitman

    On the Beach at Night (extract), reader: Samantha Bond

  • Josephine Jacobson

    The Animals

  • 00:44

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

    Requiem in D minor, Lacrimosa

    Performer: Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Chorus, Sir Charles Mackerras

    • LINN CKD211.

  • Orlando Gibbons

    The Silver Swan, reader: Samuel Barnett

  • 00:47

    Michael Berkley

    Fierce Tears I

    Performer: James Tunbull, oboe, Huw Watkins, piano

    • QUARTZ QTZ2081.

  • John Keats

    Lamia (extract), reader Samantha Bond

  • anon, trans Kevin Crossley-Holland

    Wulf, reader: Samantha Bond

  • 00:55

    Astor Piazzolla

    Tristeza, Separacion

    Performer: Astor Piazzolla

    • Milan.
  • 00:58

    Arthur Hamilton

    Cry Me A River

    Performer: Julie London

    • Cooking Vinyl.

  • Oscar Wilde

    from De Profundis, reader: Samuel Barnett

  • 01:02

    Robert Schumann

    Traumerei (Kinderscenen no 7)

    Performer: Vladimir Horowtiz

    • RCA 82876507542.

  • King James Bible

    from Psalms, Chapter 102, readers: Samantha Bond and Samuel Barnett

  • 01:06

    Paul Mealor

    Stabat mater, 1st mvt;

    Performer: Tenebrae

    • Decca.

Broadcast

  • Sun 31 Mar 2013 18:30
    大象传媒 Radio 3

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