大象传媒

As we start a new year, our thoughts turn towards the year ahead with all its plans and resolutions. And yet of course it is irrational to make this complete distinction between December and January; in fact, the more you think about it, the more you realise that everything about time is strangely slippery.

The slippery nature of time is something that preoccupies Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist who has worked in Italy and the United States and who is currently directing the quantum research group at the Centre for Theoretical Physics in Marseille. His books 鈥淪even Brief Lessons on Physics鈥�, 鈥淩eality is Not What it Seems鈥� and 鈥淭he Order of Time鈥� have become international best-sellers, outselling 鈥淔ifty Shades of Grey鈥�.

In Private Passions, Carlo Rovelli talks to Michael Berkeley about how music has helped him think about time, and how memory of the past and expectation of the future come into constant play when we listen to music: 鈥淲e don鈥檛 live in the present, we live a little bit in the future and a little bit in the past 鈥� we live in a clearing in the forest of time.鈥� He looks back to his childhood, growing up in Verona, and hearing Vivaldi played every week in the local church. He discusses Philip Glass鈥檚 鈥淓instein on the Beach鈥�, a work he admits he likes particularly for its title. He thinks about how Mozart represents the end of time in his 鈥淒ies Irae鈥�, music he loves to listen to at full volume when his partner is out of the house. Other choices include Schubert, Arvo P盲rt, Beethoven鈥檚 Missa Solemnis and the Bach cantata he discovered as a teenager that still astonishes him.

A Loftus production for 大象传媒 Radio 3
Produced by Elizabeth Burke