Each week the programme examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry.
Programme details: Sunday 18th January 2009
Not Cute Enough
Today’s programme was presented by Mark Tully
The readers were Andrew Sachs, Janice Acquah, Emily Raymond and Frank Stirling.
Readings and Music
Music 1: ‘Beauty is but a Painted Hell’ composed by Edmund Rubbra and performed by Voces Sacrae from the album ‘Mass in Honour of St Teresa of Avila and Other Choral Music’. Released by ASV Digital.
Reading 1: ‘Mirror in February’ written by Thomas Kinsella. Published in ‘Palgrave’s Golden Treasury (New Edition)’ by Oxford University Press.
Music 2: ‘Funny Face’ performed by Sparks. Available on the album ‘Whomp That Sucker’, released by Oasis.
Reading 2: ‘Degrees of Beauty’ (letter to Robert Bridges, 1879) written by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Published in ‘New Oxford Book of English Prose’ by Oxford University Press.
Music 3: ‘Um Canto De Afoxé Para O Bloco De Ilê’ performed by Caetano Veloso. Available on the album ‘Brazil Classics 1’ (Compiled by David Byrne).
Reading 3: Dangerous Liasons by Choderlos de Laclos. Published by Penguin Classics.
Reading 4: Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Published by Wordsworth Editions Ltd.
Music 4: ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ from the opera Salome by Richard Strauss. Performed by the Wiener Philharmoniker, released by EMI.
Reading 5: The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. Published by Vintage.
Reading 6: ‘Homage to my Hips’ by Lucille Clifton from the book Two-Headed Woman. Published by University of Massachusetts Press.
Music 5: ‘Beautiful Freak’ by Eels, from the album Beautiful Freak. Released by Dreamworks Records.
Music 6: ‘The Wooden Prince’ by Bela Bartok, performed by The Philharmonia Neeme Järvi. From the album Suites from The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin, released by Chandos.
Something Understood is a Unique production for BBC Radio 4.
