Rethink music with The Listening Service. Tom Service presents a journey of imagination and insight, exploring how music works
Latest episodes
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What's the point of Listening?
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 i…
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Needle Drop: the power of classical music in film
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,…
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Impassioned argument: Elizabeth Maconchy's string quartets
"For me, the best music is an impassioned argument". So said one of Britain's greatest 20th-century composers, Elizabeth Maconchy. Who?? Despite her many awards and medals - includ…
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Songs of the Moon
Many of the most instantly recognisable works in classical music are inspired by the Earth’s moon – Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’, Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’, Dvořák’s ‘Song to the…
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'Pathétique'
Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony is given the subtitle "Pathétique", the use of the French word removing some of the negative connotations that the word pathetic has in English, which is…
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Turangalila!
It made Pierre Boulez want to vomit: Francis Poulenc thought it was atrocious: and Igor Stravinsky said all you needed to write it was enough manuscript paper. But its composer wro…
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Jumping Fleas: the rise and rise of the Ukulele
Tom Service explores the world of the Ukulele, from the Hawaiian Royal Court of King Kalakaua to Blackpool Pier with George Formby, the Royal Albert Hall where hundreds of ukulele…
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Resolutions
The word 'resolution' has several meanings. It can refer to something that has been settled or resolved. It can infer a desire to do something differently or to behave in a changed…
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New York, New York!
Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's Tom Service, exploring the musical life of The Big Apple, from its underground scene to John and Yoko's loft and Superman's skies. He roams Th…
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The Trombone Section
At the back row of the orchestra, usually three in number, sit the trombone section, but why three and how long have they been there? Tom Service reflects on their history and the…
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The Old Testament of Music
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 to…
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In it to win it
From Strictly to village fête vegetables, competitions are embedded in our culture. And music is no exception: think of the Pythian Games of ancient Greece, the mediaeval singing c…
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Hitting the High Notes
Tom Service explores the enduring appeal of the tenor voice.
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Unripe Cherries: Brahms's Symphony No 4
Tom Service explores one of the most popular, played, and performed works of all time - Johannes Brahms's Symphony No 4 in E minor.
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The Ethereal
The opening orchestral strains of Wagner's opera Lohengrin with its high shimmering strings prompted the French poet Charles Baudelaire to observe that in Wagner's music he found "…
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Strange Tuning
Mozart's famous Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola makes its effect not least through the unusual tuning of the strings of one of the solo instruments. Mozart asks the viola…
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Gloria!
Tom Service enters the sublime and joyous world of Poulenc's Catholic choral work Gloria.
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What's the Point of Symphonies?
What exactly is a symphony, and how can one written in the 18th century by the ‘father of the symphony’ Joseph Haydn (he wrote over a hundred), have anything in common with one wri…
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Musical Time Travel: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams
Tom Service experiences musical time travel as he listens to "Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis" by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with its magical interplay of ancient and modern.And…
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What's on the programme?
Who decides what goes into a classical music concert? What music will there be? What constraints are there on what can be played? And how have ideas about concerts changed over the…