The Listening Service
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The Listening Service
Rethink music with The Listening Service. Tom Service presents a journey of imagination and insight, exploring how music works
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What's the point of Listening?
Isn’t it great to be able to listen to so much music, to be able to search and scroll and find anything you want…? Or to have tracks suggested for you...
Needle Drop: the power of classical music in film
Tom Service discovers the mighty musical power of needle drop - the use of pre-existing music in film soundtracks.
From 2001: A Space Odyssey to...
Impassioned argument: Elizabeth Maconchy's string quartets
"For me, the best music is an impassioned argument". So said one of Britain's greatest 20th-century composers, Elizabeth Maconchy.
Who?? Des...
Songs of the Moon
Many of the most instantly recognisable works in classical music are inspired by the Earth’s moon – Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’, Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight...
'Pathétique'
Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony is given the subtitle "Pathétique", the use of the French word removing some of the negative connotations that the word pat...
Turangalila!
It made Pierre Boulez want to vomit: Francis Poulenc thought it was atrocious: and Igor Stravinsky said all you needed to write it was enough manuscri...
Jumping Fleas: the rise and rise of the Ukulele
Tom Service explores the world of the Ukulele, from the Hawaiian Royal Court of King Kalakaua to Blackpool Pier with George Formby, the Royal Albert H...
Resolutions
The word 'resolution' has several meanings. It can refer to something that has been settled or resolved. It can infer a desire to do something differe...
New York, New York!
Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's Tom Service, exploring the musical life of The Big Apple, from its underground scene to John and Yoko's loft and...
The Trombone Section
At the back row of the orchestra, usually three in number, sit the trombone section, but why three and how long have they been there? Tom Service refl...
The Old Testament of Music
Tom Service explores JS Bach's extraordinary The Well-Tempered Clavier, a series of 48 preludes and fugues for keyboard in all 24 major and minor keys...
In it to win it
From Strictly to village fête vegetables, competitions are embedded in our culture. And music is no exception: think of the Pythian Games of ancient G...
Unripe Cherries: Brahms's Symphony No 4
Tom Service explores one of the most popular, played, and performed works of all time - Johannes Brahms's Symphony No 4 in E minor.
The Ethereal
The opening orchestral strains of Wagner's opera Lohengrin with its high shimmering strings prompted the French poet Charles Baudelaire to observe tha...
Strange Tuning
Mozart's famous Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola makes its effect not least through the unusual tuning of the strings of one of the solo inst...
Gloria!
Tom Service enters the sublime and joyous world of Poulenc's Catholic choral work Gloria.
What's the Point of Symphonies?
What exactly is a symphony, and how can one written in the 18th century by the ‘father of the symphony’ Joseph Haydn (he wrote over a hundred), have a...
Musical Time Travel: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams
Tom Service experiences musical time travel as he listens to "Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis" by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with its magical interp...
What's on the programme?
Who decides what goes into a classical music concert? What music will there be? What constraints are there on what can be played? And how have ideas a...
Secret Music: Byrd's Masses
England in the 1590s. Elizabeth I is the reigning monarch and the religion of the country is Protestantism. Celebrating Catholic mass is outlawed. Wha...
All American Ives?
What links baseball, life insurance and American art music? Charles Ives does! Unknown during his lifetime in Connecticut and New York the experimenta...
Surround Sound: Tallis's Spem in alium
Tom Service surrounds himself in Tallis's Spem in alium, a colossal Renaissance masterpiece for 40 individual voice parts, arranged in eight groups of...
Artificial intelligence and music
Tom Service programmes himself into the matrix of musical artificial intelligence.
Ravel's Bolero: A Piece without Music?
Tom Service explores Ravel's Bolero – a classical chart-topper, concert-hall-filler and the soundtrack to Torvill and Dean's Olympic skating glory. Wr...
All the King's Music
Tom Service assesses the history of the masters of the king's (or queen's) music - a pantheon of 21 names, some brilliant, some average, some really r...
Once upon a time... The Fairy-tale Operas of Judith Weir
Tom Service delves into the deep (and often dark) worlds of Judith Weir's fairy-tale and folk-inspired operas, including Blond Eckbert and The Vanishi...
Wild Isles: Wild Music
Inspired by David Attenborough’s Wild Isles series, Tom Service goes in search of music that reflects British wildlife and wilderness, and our relatio...
Stravinsky, the puppet master: Petrushka
Tom Service takes you on a journey into the extraordinary world of Stravinsky's ballet Petrushka, based on an archetypal puppet myth that shares the s...
Here Comes the Bride
Tom Service with a guide to music written for and performed at weddings.
Bluebeard's Castle: Enter at Your Peril
Tom Service intrepidly explores Bluebeard's Castle - the one-act Symbolist opera by Hungarian composer Bela Bartok first performed in 1918 which featu...
Collage, writ large: Berio's Sinfonia
Tom Service explores Luciano Berio's Sinfonia - an iconic piece of the late 1960s modernism, scored for orchestra and eight amplified voices who speak...
Mystery, rumour and deception: Mozart's Requiem
Tom Service examines Mozart's final masterpiece - a work shrouded in mystery, rumour and deception. He’s joined by Dr Kathryn Mannix, a specialist in...
Repetition
The Listening Service - an odyssey through the musical universe with Tom Service. Join him on a journey of imagination and insight, exploring how musi...
Symphonic Steampunk: Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony
"I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again." So said child prodigy, virtuoso pianist, inte...
On the March: Pomp, Circumstance and Dam Busters
The musical and military features of the march seem pretty unpromising terrain for composers - you’ve got to constrain your creativity to two-time, e...
David Lang: The Little Match Girl Passion
Tom Service delves into David Lang's secular take on the Christian Passion: The Little Match Girl Passion. Winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2008, the wor...
Also Sprach Zarathustra: Strauss’s New Dawn
Made famous by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra which was composed by a young Richard Strauss in 1896 is...
Britten's Choral Christmas
Tom Service delves into the music of Benjamin Britten and explores the unusual stories behind some of his best-loved festive works, including St Nicol...
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune: Half Man, Half Myth, All Debussy
Tom Service plunges into the heady sound world of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.
"The flute of the faun brought new breath to th...