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 1st March 2009
Spring Forward
Today’s programme was presented by Fergal Keane.
The readers were Liza Sadovy, Paul Shelley and Simon Wolfe.
Readings and Music
Music 1: ‘Spring’ from Alexander Glazunov’s ballet The Seasons Op. 67. Performed by the Concert Arts Orchestra, conducted by Robert Irving. Available on Glazunov: The Season, released by EMI.
Reading 1: ‘Spring’ written by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Reading 2: ‘The Year of the Celts’ taken from A History of Pagan Europe by Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick.
Published by Routledge (1995) ISBN 0-415-09136-5.
Music 2: ‘Tugamar Fein an Samhraid linn (We bring the Summer with us)’ performed by Horlips.
Available on the album Dancehall Sweethearts.
Reading 3: ‘A Brigid’s Girdle’ written by Seamus Heaney, from The Spirit Level. Published by Faber and Faber (1996) ISBN: 0-571-17760-3.
Reading 4: ‘The Cuckoo in Wimsey’s Wood’ written by James McCarrick. Taken from Sligo Weekender.
Music 3: ‘Lou Coucut (Le Coucou)’ sung by Lucie De Vienne from Songs of the Auvergne.
Released by Folkways.
Reading 5: ‘The Young Men’ from Akenfield written by Ronald Blythe.
Published by Penguin Press (1969) ISBN 07139 01004
Music 4: The Jolly Ploughboys (traditional song) performed by Kate Rusby.
Reading 6: ‘Putting in the Seed’ written by Robert Frost.
Available in The Poetry of Robert Frost, published by Random House (2001).
Music 5: ‘I Sowed the Seeds of Love’ (traditional song) performed by Trevor Lucas and arranged by Richard Rodney Bennett.
Available on the original soundtrack of Far From the Madding Crowd. Released by Sony.
Music 6: ‘Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most’ performed by Rickie Lee Jones.
Available on the album Pop Pop, released by Geffen.
Reading 8: ‘A Light Exists in Spring’ written by Emily Dickinson.
Available in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, published by Little, Brown and Company. Reading 9: ‘The Trees’ written by Philip Larkin.
Available in High Windows, published by Faber and Faber.
Music 7: ‘April – England’ composed by John Foulds and performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.
Released by Philips.
Something Understood is a Unique production for BBC Radio 4.
