Neptune's Kingdom
Texts and music evoking the undersea world, with readings by Emily Taaffe and Nicholas Farrell. With Rita Dove, Shakespeare and Charles Kingsley, plus Britten, Hovhaness and Holst.
The undersea world is evoked in a sequence of words and music. Emily Taaffe and Nicholas Farrell read poetry and prose by Rita Dove, William Shakespeare and Charles Kingsley and the submarine music is provided by Britten, Hovhaness and Holst.
Songs of mackerel shoals and whale tales swell the ocean and the seas pick clean the bones of the drowned. There's beauty, death and the sea-change of new life here in the deep.
Last on
Music Played
Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes
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Fanfare from the South China Sea
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00:00Gy枚rgy Ligeti
Die gro脽e Schildkr枚ten: Fanfare vom S眉dchinesischen Meer
Performer: Trumpet, Hakan Hardenberger
- PHILIPS 4460652.
- 09.
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-
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00:00Stuart Dempster
Conch Calling for conch solo
Performer: Stuart Dempster
- New Albion NA076.
- 01.
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Thomas Campion
A Hymn in Praise of Neptune, reader Nicholas Farrell
James Stephens
The Shell, reader, Emily Taaffe
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00:03Trad.
Up Jumped the Herring
Performer: Sam Larner
- Topic GBBHW9951102.
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00:04Ewan MacColl
The Shoals Of Herring
Performer: Ewan MacColl
- Fuse.
Ted Hughes
Mackerel Song
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00:09Benjamin Britten
4 Sea interludes from 'Peter Grimes', no.2; Sunday morning
Performer: 大象传媒 Philharmonic, conductor Edward Gardener
- CHAN10658.
- 10.
Adrienne Rich
Diving Into the Wreck, reader Emily Taaffe
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00:13Bernard Herrmann
Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, Descending; The Octopus
Performer: National Philharmonic Orchestra; conductor, Charles Gerhardt
- RCA GD80707.
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00:17Osvaldo Golijov
Oceanna
Performer: Luciana Souza, Atlanta Symphony, conductor Robert Spano
- DEUTSCH GRAMMOPHON 4776426.
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00:20Gustav Holst
Neptune, the Mystic from the Planets Suite
Performer: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, cond Sir Charles Mackerras
- VIRGIN CLASSICS VCH7908252.
Walt Whitman
The World Beneath the Brine, reader Nicholas Farrell
John Gardiner Calkins Brainard
The Deep, reader Emily Taaffe
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00:27Granville Bantock, arr for piano by Stephen Hough
Song to the Seals
Performer: Stephen Hough
- HYPERION CDA 67267.
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00:31Peter Bruun
Letters to the Ocean 鈥� When Night Falls
Performer: Esbjerg Ensemble, conductor, Petter Sundkvist
- DACAPO 8226553.
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00:35Alan Hovhaness
And God Created Great Whales
Performer: Seattle Symphony Orchestra, conductor Gerard Schwarz
- DELOS DE3157.
Herman Melville
from Moby Dick, A Tail, reader Nicholas Farrell
Charles Kingsley
from The Water Babies, The Whale Pool, reader Emily Taaffe
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Ralph Vaughan Williams
Sinfonia Antarctica, scherzo
Performer: The London Symphony Orchestra, conductor by Bryden Thomson
- CHANDOS CHAN8796.
- 02.
Allen Upward
Scented Leaves from a Chinese Jar, reader, Nicholas Farrell
Robert Graves
I Wonder What It Feels Like to be Drowned,
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00:52Richard Rodney Bennett
Sea Change, for chorus & tubular bells 鈥� Full Fathom Five
Performer: The Cambridge Singers conductor John Rutter
- Collegium CSCD 521.
William Shakespeare
Ariel Song from The Tempest, reader Emily Taaffe
T S Eliot
Death by Water, reader Nicholas Farrell
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00:55Eric Whitacre
Seal Lullaby
Performer: Eric Whitacre Singers, Laudibus, Christopher Glynn piano, cond Eric Whitacre
- Decca 3209.
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Ernest Bloch
Poems of the Sea, Waves
Performer: Malm枚 Symphony Orchestra, cond Sakari Oramo
- BIS CD639BIS.
Rita Dove
The Fish in the Stone, reader, Emily Taaffe
Christopher Reid
Amphibology, reader Nicholas Farrell
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01:05Robert Wyatt Ellidge
Sea Song
Performer: Rachel Unthank And The Winterset, vocal Becky Unthank
- Rough Trade GBRNA0700009.
Producer's Note
The programme begins with Gy枚rgy Ligeti鈥檚 Fanfare from the South China Sea and a pair of sea-shells on the shore: a conch to the lips in Stuart Dempster鈥檚 extraordinary Conch Calling and a shell to the ear which summons an unsettling other world in James Stephen鈥檚 The Shell.
听
We set out across the sea with one of Benjamin Britten鈥檚 Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, following the shoals of herring with Ewan MacColl and sing the praises of the mackerel with Ted Hughes.
Adrienne Rich takes us deep down below the surface to explore a wreck. Amongst the lost treasures and the drowned of the past she faces an emotional reckoning. Walt Whitman guides us through the corals and the weeds and the creatures in the submarine world and imagines a movement from the bottom of the sea through our world and beyond to other spheres. Holst鈥檚 Neptune, from his Planets Suite, evokes a dreamy undersea world in its sound but also hints, like Whitman, at something beyond the earth.听
Next, we encounter the great beasts of the ocean with an extract from Melville鈥檚 Moby Dick and Hovhaness鈥� hymn to whales which makes use of recordings of their song. Tom, the chimney sweep in Charles Kingsley鈥檚 The Water Babies rises up from the bottom of the sea, through clouds of sea moths to visit the great Peace Pool, surrounded by ice-cliffs, where the good whales wait for Mother Carey to transform them into something new.
听
This transformative power of the sea is acknowledged in Ariel鈥檚 song from the Tempest: Full fathom five they father lies; those are pearls that were his eyes. The dead and the drowned fold back into the sea like Rita Dove鈥檚 fish in the stone who, suspended in time and out of its element, is weary of the bright light of analysis.
Producer: Natalie SteedEmily Taaffe
![Emily Taaffe]()
Emily TaaffeNicholas Farrell
![Nicholas Farrell]()
Nicholas FarrellBroadcasts
- Sun 21 Jul 2013 18:15大象传媒 Radio 3
- Sun 17 Aug 2014 18:15大象传媒 Radio 3
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