The Sticking Place
Texts and music about risk and failure, with readings by Sylvestra Le Touzel and Peter Marinker. Including Beckett, Tennyson and Larkin, plus Janacek, Delius, Gurney and Stravinsky.
The Sticking Place: words and music exploring risk and failure; with poems by Emily Dickinson, Anne Sexton and TS Eliot.
When Macbeth says to Lady Macbeth, "If we should fail", she responds "We fail! But screw your courage to the sticking place and we'll not fail."
This edition is about daring to take the plunge, doing and building the impossible, Icarus's flight, Byron's swim, the Tower of Babel, the fear of failure and the loss of it all. Poems by Samuel Beckett, Tennyson and Philip Larkin are read by Sylvestra Le Touzel and Peter Marinker. Music includes work by Leos Janacek, Frederick Delius, Ivor Gurney and Igor Stravinsky.
Last on
Music Played
Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes
-
00:00
Benjamin Britten
6 Metamorphoses after Ovid for oboe solo, no 2 Phaeton
Performer: Roy Carter.- EMI Classics 21752629.
- Tr12.
-
William Shakespeare
from Macbeth, read by Sylvestra Le Touzel and Peter Marinker
Christopher Logue
Come to Edge, reader Sylvestra Le Touzel
00:01Eric Whitacre
Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine for Chorus
Performer: Whitacre Singer, Laudibus, cond. Eric Whitacre.- DECCA 3209.
- Tr9.
Anne Sexton
To A Friend Who Has Come To Triumph, read by Sylvestra Le Touzel
00:11Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen, from Die Zauberlflöte
Performer: Rita Streich.- Deutsche Grammophon 4357412.
- Tr6.
00:14Igor Stravinsky
The Firebird Suite, The Firebird and her Dance
Performer: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, cond Paavo Järvi.- TELARC CD80587.
- Tr7.
00:15Igor Stravinsky
The Firebird Suite, Round of the Princesses Khorovod
Performer: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, cond Paavo Järvi.- TELARC CD80587.
- Tr8.
William Carlos Williams
Danse Russe, read by Peter Marinker
00:16John Adams
John's Book of Alleged Dances, Judah to Ocean
Performer: Kronos Quartet.- NONESUCH 755794652.
- Tr1.
George Herbert
Love Bade Me Welcome, read by Sylvestra Le Touzel
00:19Orlando Gough
Falling
Performer: The Shout.- B00E8W5MEA.
- Tr9.
00:23Laura Marling
Crawled Out Of The Sea (Interlude)
Performer: Laura Marling.- Virgin/EMI.
- Tr7.
00:24Franz Liszt
Ballade No 2
Performer: Leslie Howard.- HYPERION CDA67034.
- Tr12.
Lord Byron
Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos, read by Peter Marinker
Emily Dickinson
The Spider Holds a Silver Ball read by Sylvestra Le Touzel
00:28Richard Strauss
Don Quixote, Variation V
Performer: cello, Mstislav Rostropovich; viola, Ulrixh Koch; Berliner Philharmoniker; cond Herbert von Karajan.- EMI CDC7493082.
- Tr7.
George Orwell
From Homage to Catalonia, Gaudis Sagrada Familia, read by Peter Marinker
00:33Florain Fricke
Wehe Khorazin, from Soundtrack to Fitzcarraldo
Performer: Popul Vuh.- High Tide ? TIDE 9112-2.
- Tr1.
Book of Genesis
Tower of Babel; from Genesis 11 (King James Version), read by Sylvestra Le Touzel
00:37Terje Isungset
Floating
Performer: Terje Isungset.- All Ice 0601.
- Tr4.
00:39Knudåge Riisager
Kærlinghedsdans from Månerenen (Moon Reindeer)
Performer: Aarhus Symohiny Orchestra, cond Bo Holten.- DACAPO 8226022.
- Tr14.
SA Andree (trans John Lowe)
Extract from the Andree Diaries, read by Peter MArinker
Philip Larkin
To Failure, read by Sylvestra Le Touzel
00:44John Dowland
Lachrimae, "Seaven Teares": II. Lachrimae Antiquae Nouae
Performer: Jakob Lindberg.- BIS-CD-315.
- Tr2.
TS Eliot
extract from The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock, read by Peter Marinker
00:50Frederick Delius
Pale amber sunlight falls, from Songs of Sunset
Performer: Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, cond Richar Hickox.- CHANDOS CHAN2914.
- Tr9.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
from Ulysses, read by Peter Marinker
00:55Ivor Gurney
Sleep
Performer: Tenor Paul Agnew, piano Julius Drake.- HYPERION CDA67243.
- Tr18.
John Clare
Written in Northampton County Asylum, read by Sylvestra Le Touzel
01:00Leos Janáček
from On an overgrown path, no 6 Nelze Domlubit (Words Fail)
Performer: Charles Owen.- SOMMCD 028.
- Tr8.
Samuel Beckett
What is the Word, for Joe Chaikin, read by Peter Marinker
01:03Henryk Mikolaj Górecki
Symphony no. 3 (Op.36) "Symphony of sorrowful songs" for soprano and orchestra, 2nd movement
Performer: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, cond Donald Runnicles.- Telarc 80699.
- Tr1.
Producer’s Note: The Sticking Place
This edition of Words and Music takes us to the edge and asks us to jump off: it’s about daring to take risks and flying; the determination to reach impossible heights and defeat crushing odds; to pit human ingenuity, strength and insane determination against nature, God and good sense.
It is also about failure.
We begin with Britten’s piece for Phaeton’s daring and disastrous attempt to drive the chariot of the sun and the unrealised dreams of Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machines and Anne Sexton’s treatment of the Icarus myth where the boy’s foolish but splendid soaring into the sun is contrasted with his sensible father’s earthly trudge away from the scene.
The dizzying achievement of the almost impossible is celebrated in Rita Streich’s famous ‘Queen of the Night’s’ aria from Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ whilst the bold daring of a more domestic kind is conjured by William Carlos Williams naked and marvellous ‘Danse Russe’ placed with John Adams “alleged” dance piece for dances yet to be imagined.
Submitting to the pleasure of the fall, irrespective of the potential smash to earth, is echoed in Orlando Gough’s beautiful, insistent swoon: ‘Falling’ set, here, with George Herbert’s unsuccessful resistance of spiritual Love, alongside Byron’s boastful account of his swimming the Hellespont and Liszt’s account of Leander’s swim for love of Hero that Byron replayed for glory.
Emily Dickinson’s observation of the industry of the spider recalls the story of Robert Bruce’s inspiration to renewed determination after witnessing a spider’s efforts to spin a web across a cave and contrasts with the energetic but deluded efforts of Strauss’ ‘Don Quixote.’
Two grand schemes for buildings, Gaudi’s Barcelona Cathedral La Sagrada Família and the Tower of Babel, here receive less than favourable reviews from the critics George Orwell and God and there’s music from Werner Herzog’s film, ‘Fitzcarraldo’, about an extraordinary project to transport a steamship over a hill to reach a rubber plantation.
Another grand plan gone awry was S A Andree’s doomed attempt to be the first to cross the Arctic in a hydrogen balloon in 1897. Buoyed by the hot air of international publicity and subscriptions, he and his two companions attempted an arctic flight which ended after only 2 days. The balloonists survived for several weeks but their remains, diaries and photographs were discovered more than thirty years later.
And then, failure and the tender beauty of its description and recognition by Philip Larkin, TS Eliot’s Prufrock and John Clare, with a brief rally via Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’, whose purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset.
At the end there is the final unravelling as words themselves fail in Beckett’s ‘What is the Word’ and their power is reasserted in Gorecki’s ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’, inspired by the words of a young woman written on the walls of a Gestapo prison cell in Poland, and a hymn to courage in the face of darkest despair.
Natalie Steed
Broadcasts
- Sun 6 Apr 2014 20:00
- Sun 7 Aug 2016 18:15
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