The Listening Service

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Music
**The Listening Service**

Rethink music with The Listening Service. Tom Service presents a journey of imagination and insight, exploring how music works

Latest Episodes:

Beginnings - Proms 2018 Special Jul 12, 2018

Show notes

Music – where do we start?

The Fifth Jul 01, 2018

Show notes

Tom Service savours the sound of the fifth - an interval with many meanings, from mystic drone to military bugle call. He's joined by Early Music expert Jeremy Llewellyn who explains the significance of the fifth in medieval music, related to The Music of the Spheres and used to invoke the Almighty in religious chant; and by composer David Bruce, who describes how composers today find fresh uses for this primal sound. Tom finds the open, ringing sound of the fifth in all sorts of music, from a Buzzcocks guitar solo to a Bruckner symphony, providing the thrill of adventure in the Star Wars theme and underpinning the reels of Scottish bagpipe music.

Truck Driver Modulation Jun 24, 2018

Show notes

Today on The Listening Service Tom gets into gear for the truck driver modulation - crunching from one key to another, and not worrying overly about the musical synchromesh.

There's not too much attention paid to the proper rules of harmony in today's programme, which celebrates the emotional and dramatic impact of the well-placed sudden key change. From Bruckner to Bon Jovi, Mahler to Michael Jackson, and less alliteratively, from Schubert to Bill Withers via Barry Manilow, we may love to hate this technique, but join Tom as he stands up for the key change (like Westlife).

With Dr. Dai Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in Music at Oxford Brookes University, and novelist Elizabeth Day.

Igor Stravinsky: Understood Best by Children and Animals Jun 17, 2018

Show notes

"My music is best understood by children and animals," pronounced Igor Stravinsky, no doubt with a twinkle in his eye. According to his critics (and jealous colleagues), Stravinsky's composing consisted of picking up any old second-hand musical baubles he fancied, like a restless musical magpie - sometimes he even had the effrontery to leave them virtually unchanged. Frustratingly, audiences seemed to lap it up. To make matters worse, when it came to explaining his music, Igor liked nothing better than to hide behind contradictory and gnomic statements, as bewildering and frequent as his changes of musical style.

Tom Service goes in search of the essence of Stravinsky, at once one of the greatest yet most elusive 20th Century composers. Including contributions from playwright Meredith Oakes and Stravinsky biographer Jonathan Cross.

David Papp (producer).

The Listening Service recorded live at Hay Festival Jun 03, 2018

Show notes

In this special edition of The Listening Service recorded live at this year's Hay Festival, Tom Service explores the parallels between great children's literature and music written for young people. From Debussy to Prokofiev, Bizet to Britten - childhood has fascinated some of the greatest composers - how does their approach compare to children's writers and illustrators? What can we learn from music written by youngsters themselves and what lessons can be learned from music, pictures and words created for children? Joining Tom to answer those questions at the piano, is the composer and pianist Richard Sisson who wrote the score for Alan Bennett's The History Boys at The National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company's Goodnight Children Everywhere; and the award-winning author and illustrator Ed Vere, creator of Mr Big, Max the Brave and Bedtime for Monsters.

Syncopation Syncopation Syncopation May 20, 2018

Show notes

What's the secret musical ingredient that music from salsa to Saturday Night Fever, from Charlie Parker to George Gershwin, from Johann Sebastian Bach to Leonard Bernstein, from ragtime to funk and disco, not to mention baroque sarabandes, has in common?

The answer is that they all swoon to the sounds of syncopation: to rhythms that dance against, as well as with, the beat - to make us tap our fingers and toes, to get us dancing.

On today's The Listening Service: what are the secrets of syncopation: what defines these rhythms in our music, and in our brains and our bodies, in the physiological and psychological ways that we process them?

Tom Service goes off beat! (And tries his hand at Cuban percussion).

What does ancient history really sound like? May 14, 2018

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From Paleolithic caves to Roman arenas, we know that music was made, and even what instruments were played - but what did the music sound like? Tom attempts to find out, with help from flautist Anna Friederike Potengowski, composer Neil Brand, and media historian David Hendy. Journey with them from the prehistoric to ancient Rome, via the "modern stone age" town of Bedrock.

The Sea May 06, 2018

Show notes

Join Tom on a Listening Service voyage across our oceans to discover why music has long been inspired by the sea - from Sibelius and Mendelssohn to John Luther Adams and The Beatles - how have composers tried to capture the ocean in their music? Is it even possible?

Meanwhile, Tom discovers music that is literally created by the sea itself from Blackpool to the Arctic, and dives down into the sounds of coral reefs with the marine biologist Helen Scales to hear the noisy vibrant reality of life under the waves, from snapping pistol shrimps and angry damsel fish to singing whales.

How does video game music work? Apr 29, 2018

Show notes

Bleep... bleep.... bleeeeep

It's amazing how a few electronic bleeps can tell us so much about what's going on in a video game without us even being aware of it

But music in video games has come a long way from the arcades, from the bleeps and bloops of Space Invaders and Super Mario to epic orchestral scores of the Legend of Zelda and Bioshock, Tom Service goes on an interactive odyssey to discover the secrets behind our favourite video game music. Along the way he meets composer Jessica Curry and video game expert Tim Summers who tell us what's really happening in the music when we're playing, the composer tricks of the trade and how video games can get new audiences closer to classical music.

bleeeeeeep... GAME OVER.

Is Music a Universal Language? Apr 22, 2018

Show notes

What is music good for? In our concluding link with the BBC's Civilisations season, The Listening Service asks one of the most fundamental questions we can about music, a claim often made on the art-form's behalf in a list of reasons why it's an essential good: is music a universal language?

It's a seductive idea, that music's primal activation of the world of our emotions, bypassing the rationalising parts of our brains, means that it has an essential communicative function that carries across cultures in the way that no other phenomenon of the human imagination can. Music binds us together, because Beethoven and the blues sound the same and mean the same whether you're listening in Oklahoma or Osaka.

It's a nice theory, but on The Listening Service, we'll reveal the limits of these claims to the universal. And we'll suggest that music separates and defines us just as much as it brings us together. Not giving the game away, but music isn't a universal language: it's much, much more powerful than that - as we'll discover!

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