The Listening Service

Sunday 11th February 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

In this edition of The Listening Service Tom Service explores sonata form. The word sonata originally meant simply a piece of music. But over the course of music history 'sonata form' came to mean something very specific and laid the foundations for over two hundred years of sonatas, string quartets, symphonies and concertos. How can you hear them? How is it done?

Sunday 18th February 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Tom Service considers whether Claude Debussy was an Impressionist or not, arguing that he was instead a modernist, an abstract composer and also a creator of nightmares. Service claims that Debussy's music has quite a different character to that of the Impressionist painters - and to prove it he discusses the techniques of those painters with art historian Anthea Callen. Debussy, Tom argues, was a modernist, an abstract composer and also (in his opera Pelleas et Melisande) a creator of nightmares.

Sunday 25th February 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Tom Service explores the intrinsic importance to humans of bass in music, focusing on works by Bach, Boulez, Stevie Wonder and Dizzee Rascal as well as reggae and rock 'n' roll. Tom also discovers what links whales and horror movies in the world of bass and hearis from neuroscientist Dr Laurel Trainor.

Sunday 4th March 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Tom Service unwinds the 12-foot metal tube that is the French horn to discover its atavistic appeal for three centuries of composers, from Handel to Ligeti and beyond.

Sunday 11th March 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Tom Service explores the idea of polyphony - a musical democratic utopia? Or are some voices always going to be more equal than others? Live at the Free Thinking Festival.

Sunday 20th May 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

What is syncopation? An off-beat edition of The Listening Service. With Tom Service.

Sunday 17th June 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

'My music is best understood by children and animals,' said Igor Stravinsky. Undaunted, Tom Service seeks the essence of one of the 20th century's most elusive composers.

Sunday 1st July 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Tom Service savours the sound of the fifth - an interval with many meanings, from mystic drone to military bugle call. With guests Jeremy Llewellyn and David Bruce.

Sunday 15th July 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

As the BBC Proms begin, Tom Service ponders the seemingly never-ending allure of the orchestra for both composers and audiences, and how and why they have changed over the centuries.

Sunday 30th September 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

From the dawn of human music-making, all instrumental music has been made via technology, whether bone flutes, violins, pianos, tape or synthesisers. Is new musical technology driven by the needs of composers and musicians or are they dazzled by its possibilities before they can really get to grips with it? How has cheap technology impacted on music, now that laptops have done for expensive studios and choosy producers. Do the infinite possibilities of today's digital technology limit musical imagination? To help answer these and many other questions, Tom is joined by Maggie Cole, player of keyboard-based technologies from the clavichord to the synthesiser, and by composer, producer, and surfer of today's digital technological Utopia, Jono Buchanan.

Sunday 14th October 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

The line-up of early Twentieth Century English composers includes great figures such as Holst, Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax and Frederick Delius. Since the 1950's these composers have been dogged by a casual and unkind slur against their work, namely by referring to it as 'cowpat music'. Tom Service argues that, far from producing shallow and whimsical pastoral scores, the music produced by this English movement is among the most profound and communicative of the last century, rarely far from the influence of the two World Wars.

Sunday 4th November 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

The Listening Service had a question from a listener : "When I see the musicians playing, they seem to be looking at their sheet music, not the conductor. Can an orchestra not function perfectly well without a conductor? If I'm intensely moved by a piece of orchestral music, is it not the musicians which moved me? Why must I applaud some arbitrary conductor, who never touched a single instrument throughout the entire performance?" Tom Service rises to the challenge and looks at the role of the conductor - is it all about their ego, their clothes, their ability to beat time or their emotional outpouring onstage - or it is something else entirely? Rethink music with The Listening Service.

Sunday 9th December 2018 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

From Baroque instrumental operatic interlude to Romantic heroic ideal and beyond, classical concertos have evolved into an exploration of the relationship between soloist and orchestra. Tom Service finds out how they work and asks violinist Pekka Kuusisto what it's like to be the soloist, walking the tightrope of virtuosity, sandwiched between orchestral colleagues and expectant audience.

Sunday 13th January 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Good vibrations or horrible wobbling? Why do singers use vibrato? Tom Service goes to the wobbling heart of the matter of vibrato in singing. Why does it induce such visceral reactions - love and hate? Is it a matter of classical-singing artifice or is it a welcome and naturally occurring phenomenon in the healthy workings of our vocal chords, in the way our bodies make the sounds we call singing?

Sunday 3rd February 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Schubert - The Dark Side.

Tom Service delves into the dark side of Franz Schubert with Dr Laura Tunbridge of Oxford University, uncovering what his deceptively simple music reveals about the human condition.

Sunday 10th February 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

The Key to Keys.

Tom Service examines the significance of keys to composers throughout history, examining why there are 12 major and minor keys and how their use has changed over time.

Sunday 3rd March 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Style Counsel.

Tom Service discusses the styles of different eras in classical music, examining how they grew and changed and what the defining style of modern music is.

Sunday 24th March 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Anton Bruckner and the Symphonic Boa Constrictors.

Tom Service reassesses Bruckner's reputation as a composer of symphonies, arguing that he was a master of creating daring long-form music as well as perfect miniatures.

Friday 19th April 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 16:30 to 17:00 (30 minutes long)

Music for Mourning.

Tom Service examines the importance of music to mourning, exploring the development of funeral music and how some pieces are associated with grief despite not being intended to be.

Sunday 26th May 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

What's the Point of Practice?

Does practice make perfect? And what is perfect practice? Tom Service asks whether anyone can become a good musician by just putting in the hours. Pianist James Rhodes talks about the role practice plays in his life, and Professor Brooke Macnamara reveals the true role practice plays in performance.

Sunday 9th June 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Countertenors - Classical Rock Gods!

From Frankie Valli and Jimmy Somerville to Andreas Scholl and Iestyn Davies - Tom Service celebrates the male singers hitting the high notes. Why do they do it? How do they do it? And why is it so uniquely thrilling a sound? And it's not about singing like a woman! With inside knowledge from countertenor Lawrence Zazzo.

Sunday 29th September 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Al-Andalus: What Makes Music Sound Spanish?

As Radio 3's Al-Andalus day continues, Tom looks for the essence of Spain in the music of later centuries - why was so much Spanish music written by Russian, French or German composers, and how do we recognise a Spanish sound in music now?

Sunday 20th October 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

Dialling up the Drama: Dynamics.

From loud to soft, even louder and even softer, dynamics are crucial to the dramatic effect of music. Tom Service explores the possibilities available to composers. Plus, does pop music lack dynamic variation and is all music louder these days? With the Royal College of Music's Head of Composition, William Mival.

Sunday 10th November 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

How to Compose Music.

So you want to write a piece of music? Where do you start? And then how do you carry on? How much music theory do you need to know? Or can you get away with knowing very little about music? Tom Service offers encouragement with the help of composers Brian Irvine and Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

Sunday 29th December 2019 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 17:00 to 17:30 (30 minutes long)

The Joy of Bach.

Tom Service celebrates The Joy of J S Bach. Originally broadcast as part of Radio 3's Spirit of Bach season in 2017.