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  4. The Outsider

The Outsider

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Last broadcast on Sun, 29 Jan 2012, 18:30 on BBC Radio 3.

Synopsis

Lesley Manville and Tom Goodman-Hill read poetry and prose on the theme of outsiders, from those who seek to escape society's constraints, to those who long to conform. With words by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Clare, Mary Shelley, Albert Camus, George Orwell, Maya Angelou and Jeanette Winterson, and music by Gesualdo, Strauss, Berg and Feldman.

Tom Goodman-Hill

Lesley Manville

Producer Note

This programme is dedicated to men and women who dare to – or can’t help but – stand out from society. We begin with a spectacular boast from the philosopher, novelist and sometime music theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau, paired with music by Scriabin – a man of such hubris that he practically believed in his own divinity.

Simeon Stylites’ feat of standing on a pillar for thirty years demonstrates the lengths to which people will go in order to avoid engaging with everyone else. His monotonous routine is reflected by a fraction of Morton Feldman’s six-hour-long String Quartet (II).

Next the delusional Don Quixote tilts at windmills in both Cervantes’s original and Strauss’s portrait. Alan Bennett’s neighbour/local tramp, Miss Shepherd, has frequent visions of the ‘BVM’. The Blessed Virgin Mary appears to the accompaniment of this ‘Vision’ by Messiaen. In contrast to the poverty of Miss Shepherd, Jay Gatsby’s wealth makes him an outsider at his own party; Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of ‘Tenderly’ strikes a note of wistful romance on a warm summer’s night.

On to other worlds, and Herrick’s ‘Beggar to Mab, the Fairy Queen’; Mendelssohn’s scherzo from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ brings to life this diminutive world, where an ant or the ear of a mouse makes for a nourishing and tasty meal. Alice is an odd girl out in a whole host of misfits in Wonderland, and Cinderella is an outcast in her own home, here, in Mikhail Pletnev’s sparkling arrangement of Prokofiev’s original ballet.

In the first of his adventures Gulliver finds himself a giant among the Lilliputians, accompanied by Mussorgsky’s Unhatched Chicks from ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’. Another ‘Picture’ – the fearsome witch Baba Yaga – transports us to the miserable world of Frankenstein’s creature, who has been outcast by an intolerant and unforgiving society. Berg sums up a similar experience in the poignant interlude from the end of ‘Wozzeck’, another outsider driven to murder. Emily Dickinson reminds us that judgment is subjective, but there’s a warning for those whose views don’t correspond with the majority’s.

Bach’s chorus from cantata BWV 12, ‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’ (‘Weeping, lamenting, worrying, fearing’), continues the dark mood and leads us to the interrogation of Winston in George Orwell’s classic, ‘Nineteen-Eighty-Four’. His torturer argues that reality can be controlled by the Party – cue the Fourth Symphony of Shostakovich, a composer whose life was blighted by political control.

Quentin Crisp protests too: he describes his education of the English masses with his customary wit, accompanied by Robert Farnon’s jaunty ‘Portrait of a Flirt’. Where Crisp flaunted his difference, the heroine of Jeanette Winterson’s semi-autobiographical ‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’ longs to blend in but is set apart by her evangelical upbringing. The Dixie Hummingbird’s foot-tapping rendition of ‘The Devil Can’t Harm A Praying Man’ brings us to a humiliating Easter Sunday in Maya Angelou’s childhood, and Billie Holiday’s ‘Gloomy Sunday’.

Next the Renaissance composer and nobleman Gesualdo, infamous for the murder of his wife and her lover, whose radical harmonies are displayed in ‘O vos omnes’. The anti-hero of Albert Camus’s novel ‘The Outsider’ is sympathetically portrayed, despite having no regret for his callous murder of a stranger. Beethoven was a stranger to his audience with the following ultra modern-sounding fugue. The haunting melodies of Britten’s Violin Concerto and John Clare’s moving poem of alienation, ‘I Am’, end the programme on an ambiguous note.

Clara Nissen (Producer)

Music and featured items

Timings are shown from the start of the programme in hours and minutes.

  1. 00:00

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. J. M. Cohen

    The Confessions (excerpt), reader Tom Goodman-Hill

  2. 00:00

    Scriabin — The Poem of Ecstasy (opening)

    Performer: Cleveland Orchestra Performer: Lorin Maazel

    Decca 417 252-2, Tr 1
  3. 00:02

    Morton Feldman — String Quartet (II) (excerpt)

    Performer: FLUX Quartet

    mode 112, CD1 Tr 2
  4. 00:02

    Edward Gibbon

    The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (excerpt), reader Lesley Manville

  5. 00:04

    Richard Strauss — Don Quixote (excerpts)

    Performer: Steven Isserlis (cello) Performer: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Performer: Lorin Maazel (conductor)

    RCA 74321 75398 2, Trs 1 and 3
  6. 00:05

    Cervantes, trans. John Rutherford

    Don Quixote (excerpt), reader Lesley Manville

  7. 00:09

    Alan Bennett

    Writing Home (excerpt), reader Tom Goodman-Hill

  8. 00:08

    Messiaen — Visions de l’Amen (No. 4)

    Performer: Steven Osborne (piano) Performer: Martin Roscoe (piano)

    Hyperion CDA 67366, Tr 4
  9. 00:10

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    The Great Gatsby (excerpt), reader Tom Goodman-Hill

  10. 00:11

    Original Dixieland Jazz Band & Joe Jordan — Dixie Jass Band One Step

    Performer: Original Dixieland Jazz Band

    Trikont TRIKONT-0396, Tr 2
  11. 00:12

    Gross/Lawrence — Tenderly

    Performer: Ella Fitzgerald Performer: Louis Armstrong

    Prism PLATCD4908, CD1 Tr 19
  12. 00:16

    Robert Herrick

    The Beggar to Mab, the Fairy Queen, reader Lesley Manville

  13. 00:17

    Mendelssohn — Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

    Performer: Ensemble Orchestral de Paris Performer: John Nelson (conductor)

    Virgin Classics 5455322, Tr 2
  14. 00:22

    Lewis Carroll

    Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (excerpt), reader Lesley Manville

  15. 00:24

    Prokofiev, arr. Pletnev — Spring from ‘Cinderella’

    Performer: Martha Argerich (piano) Performer: Mikhail Pletnev (piano)

    Deutsche Grammophon 00289 474 8682, Tr 4
  16. 00:26

    Jonathan Swift

    Gulliver’s Travels (excerpt), reader Tom Goodman-Hill

  17. 00:27

    Mussorgsky — ‘Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks’ from Pictures at an Exhibition

    Performer: Berlin Philharmonic Performer: Simon Rattle (conductor)

    EMI 51758226, Tr 9
  18. 00:28

    Mussorgsky — ‘The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga)’ from Pictures at an Exhibition

    Performer: Berlin Philharmonic Performer: Simon Rattle (conductor)

    EMI 51758226, Tr 14
  19. 00:31

    Mary Shelley

    Frankenstein (excerpt), reader Tom Goodman-Hill

  20. 00:32

    Alban Berg — Act III Interlude from Wozzeck

    Performer: Staatskapelle Berlin Performer: Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

    Teldec 0630-14108-2, CD 2 Tr 19
  21. 00:36

    Emily Dickinson

    Untitled, reader Lesley Manville

  22. 00:36

    J. S. Bach — Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (BWV 12)

    Performer: Collegium Vocale Gent Performer: Philippe Herreweghe (conductor)

    Harmonia Mundi HMC 901843, Tr 2
  23. 00:42

    George Orwell

    Nineteen-Eighty-Four (excerpt), reader Lesley Manville

  24. 00:44

    Dmitry Shostakovich — Largo from Symphony No. 4 (excerpt)

    Performer: Scottish National Orchestra Performer: Neeme Järvi (conductor)

    Chandos CHAN 8640, Tr 3
  25. 00:47

    Quentin Crisp

    The Naked Civil Servant (excerpt), reader Tom Goodman-Hill

  26. 00:48

    Robert Farnon — Portrait of a Flirt

    Performer: New London Orchestra Performer: Ronald Corp (conductor)

    Hyperion CDS 44263, Tr 9
  27. 00:51

    Jeanette Winterson

    Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (excerpt), reader Lesley Manville

  28. 00:52

    The Dixie Hummingbirds — Devil Can’t Harm a Praying Man

    Performer: The Dixie Hummingbirds

    Shout! 2950682, Tr 11
  29. 00:53

    Maya Angelou

    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (excerpt), reader Lesley Manville

  30. 00:54

    Rezs? Seress — Gloomy Sunday

    Performer: Billie Holiday

    Verve 549-081-2, 10
  31. 00:58

    Gesualdo — O vos omnes

    Performer: Tallis Scholars Performer: Peter Phillips (conductor)

    Gimell CDGIM 015, Tr 5
  32. 01:01

    Albert Camus, trans. Joseph Laredo

    The Outsider (excerpt), reader Tom Goodman-Hill

  33. 01:02

    Beethoven — Grosse Fugue, Op. 133

    Performer: Lindsay String Quartet

    ASV CDDCS 403, CD2 Tr 6
  34. 01:06

    Benjamin Britten — Violin Concerto (3rd mov)

    Performer: Maxim Vengerov (violin) Performer: London Symphony Orchestra Performer: Mstislav Rostropovich (conductor)

    EMI 5575102, Tr 3
  35. 01:08

    John Clare

    I Am, reader Tom Goodman-Hill

Broadcast

  1. Sun 29 Jan 2012
    18:30
    BBC Radio 3

More details

A programme from

  1. Words and Music

Duration

75 minutes

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