The Listening Service – Details, episodes & analysis

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The Listening Service

BBC Radio 3

Music

Frequency: 1 episode/12d. Total Eps: 251

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

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Apple Podcasts

🇬🇧 Great Britain - music
28/08/2026
#96
🇨🇦 Canada - music
13/06/2025
#100
🇨🇦 Canada - music
08/03/2025
#84
🇬🇧 Great Britain - music
27/01/2025
#80
🇬🇧 Great Britain - music
25/12/2024
#91
🇬🇧 Great Britain - music
24/12/2024
#91
🇨🇦 Canada - music
29/09/2024
#76
🇬🇧 Great Britain - music
07/09/2024
#98

Spotify

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08x4b5z
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Score global : 33%

Publication history

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What's the point of Listening?

Sunday, March 31, 2024 • Duration 28:34

Isn’t it great to be able to listen to so much music, to be able to search and scroll and find anything you want…? Or to have tracks suggested for you without even thinking about it…? Or is it? Perhaps you miss the days when you had to save up to buy a recording, and you loved it so much you listened over and over again. Or you waited for something to be played on the radio, knowing it might be the only chance you’d have to hear it.

Tom Service explores how we listen today in the digital age and reflects on the pieces of music that changed his life when he heard them first, and then really listened to them, again and again.

Producer: Ruth Thomson

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Needle Drop: the power of classical music in film

Sunday, March 10, 2024 • Duration 28:29

Tom Service discovers the mighty musical power of needle drop - the use of pre-existing music in film soundtracks.

From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Barbie, from The Shining to Maestro, Tom listens in to some of the most iconic film scenes using needle-dropped classical music. He explores how directors harness the resonance and meanings of a piece of music to enrich the film's storytelling, and how a successful fusion of sound and image can leave such a deep impression in viewers' minds that music and film become inextricably entwined in popular consciousness.

Plus, Maggie Rodford - one of the film industry's most sought-after music supervisors - pulls back the curtain on the processes and thinking behind choosing the right needle drop for the right scene to make the most meaningful movie.

Producer: David Fay

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The Old Testament of Music

Sunday, November 19, 2023 • Duration 29:02

Tom Service explores JS Bach's extraordinary The Well-Tempered Clavier, a series of 48 preludes and fugues for keyboard in all 24 major and minor keys. It's widely regarded as a towering achievement and a cornerstone of western art music. The 19th century German conductor and pianist, Hans von Bülow famously described it as “The Old Testament of Music” and generations of musicians and scholars have spoken of its monumental stature in the history and development of music.

From the first, C major prelude with its lean and simple series of arpeggios, taking listeners on an exquisite harmonic journey, through to darker and more complex moments, with plenty of playfulness and joy along the way, The Well-Tempered Clavier is an astonishing feat of imagination. These two books of preludes and fugues are a treasure trove, where Bach combines contrapuntal wizardry with his extraordinary gift for expressing human emotion.

With help from American pianist, Jeremy Denk, Tom Service lifts the lid on The Well-Tempered Clavier to discover its secrets.

Producer: Jonathan Hallewell

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Music and breathing

Sunday, June 28, 2020 • Duration 29:47

How is the rhythm and physicality of our breathing reflected in music? From operatic breath control to circular breathing techniques to a flautist inspired by the relearning of her technique after sinus and asthma problems, Tom looks at a fundamental element of music making.

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The Musical Universe of Maurice Ravel

Sunday, June 14, 2020 • Duration 29:39

Tom Service scopes the musical world of one of his favourite composers, Maurice Ravel.

Wagner’s Ring Cycle: The Ultimate Box Set Binge

Sunday, May 31, 2020 • Duration 30:19

Tom Service explores classical music’s ultimate binge-listening box set - Richard Wagner’s apocalyptic four-part 16-hour marathon music drama, The Ring.

Cram packed with heroes, heroines, gods and goddesses, it took 25 years to write and has inspired everyone from JRR Tolkien to Francis Ford Coppola and Bugs Bunny.

Selfishness, deception, hypocrisy, greed, destruction; like all good box sets they’re all in there, but what’s The Ring really about? And what can we, and perhaps today’s world leaders, learn from it?

Tom has half an hour to find out.

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English Music

Sunday, May 24, 2020 • Duration 30:04

Does English music have a formula? Think of the stirring 'nobilmente' tunes of Elgar and those melodies and harmonies of Vaughan Williams and Holst which have become inextricably linked with the very notion of Englishness. When did English music begin and is it still being written? In an attempt both to define English music and explain its appeal Tom Service enlists the help of Em Marshall-Luck, founder-director of The English Music Festival.

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Talking in music

Sunday, May 3, 2020 • Duration 29:24

Tom Service explores talking in music - from Gilbert & Sullivan's patter songs to high-art "Sprechgesang" by Schoenberg, from Mozart's recitative to the rap of present-day LA. Anyway, who's to say what is talking and what is singing? Archive recordings of WB Yeats reveal him intoning his poetry melodically, while Ken Nordine devised what he called "Word Jazz".

This edition was first broadcast in 2020: the poet named there as Kate Tempest identified as non binary later that year, changing their name to Kae

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Lisztomania

Sunday, April 19, 2020 • Duration 29:11

Tom takes a deep drive into the music of Franz Liszt, celebrated, and sometimes denigrated, for his ultra-virtuosity. Tom is joined by former Radio 3 New Generation Artist Mariam Batsashvili who plays some of her favourite moments of Liszt at the piano, and explains why Liszt has always held a special place in her heart. From struggling with being the first world-famous musician, to pre-empting the likes of Wagner and Schoenberg, Tom explores the surprising and conflicting role Liszt played on the musical stage.

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Close Harmony

Sunday, March 29, 2020 • Duration 29:51

From Corsican polyphony to Jacob Collier, 50s rock and roll and global hit TV series Glee, close harmony runs through music traditions around the world: but nowhere is it more important than in barbershop, famous for its striped waistcoats, bow ties, and comedy parodies. But today over 70,000 singers of all ages and genders participate in barbershop societies around the world, coming together to compete and perform in quartets and larger choruses, enjoying its exuberant and expressive performance style, and revelling in its magical 'overtones'.

With Brian Lynch from the Barbershop Harmony Society in Nashville and members of the BBC Singers, Tom explores what makes it so unique, from its vocal setting to its use of 'just intonation', and discovers the roots of its history, far from the exclusive Ivy League world it's thought to represent.

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The Listening Service – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

The Listening Service – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other1

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other1

Apple Podcasts

Spotify