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Rules and How to Break Them

Live from St Mary's Church in Gateshead for Free Thinking 2015, texts and music on the theme of 'tearing up the rulebook', with readers Patricia Hodge and Stephen Tompkinson.

From St Mary's Church in Gateshead, a special live edition of Words and Music as part of this year's Free Thinking Festival on the theme 'Tearing Up The Rule Book'. Patricia Hodge and Stephen Tompkinson read texts and poetry about Rules and How to Break Them, accompanied by live music from members of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, choir Voices of Hope, and pianist John Reid.

There are literary characters who railed against the rules, such as Winston in Orwell's 1984, and the unfortunate boys in Golding's Lord of the Flies, real life people like Charles Darwin and Emmeline Pankhurst who dared to challenge the status quo, and writers who broke the rules with their writing style or content. Musically there has been a long tradition of rule-breakers, from Byrd and Shostakovich using their music to subvert religious or political laws, to innovators such as Beethoven, Schoenberg and John Cage who changed the musical direction for all who followed them.

1 hour, 15 minutes

Last on

Sun 8 Nov 2015 17:30
麻豆约拍 Radio 3

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  • Provocative debate, new ideas, music and performance

Music Played

Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes

  • The Bible (KJV)

    The Ten Commandments, read by Patricia Hodge

  • Carlo Gesualdo

    Belta poi che t聮assenti (Book 6 of madrigals 5vv)

    Performer: Voices of Hope, Simon Fidler (conductor).

  • Douglas Adams

    So long, and thanks for all the fish, read by Stephen Tompkinson

  • Anton Webern

    3 Kleine St眉cke, Op. 11

    Performer: Daniel Hammersley (cello), John Reid (piano).

  • Robert Graves

    To an Ungentle Critic, read by Patricia Hodge

  • Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

    Fantasia in F sharp minor (excerpt)

    Performer: John Reid (piano).

  • William Golding

    Lord of the Flies, read by Stephen Tompkinson

  • Hildegard von Bingen

    Praise to the Trinity (Laus Trinitati)

    Performer: Voices of Hope, Simon Fidler (conductor).

  • Robert Herrick

    Delight in Disorder, read by Patricia Hodge

  • Charles Ives

    Study no.23

    Performer: John Reid (piano).

  • Charles Darwin

    On the Origin of Species, read by Stephen Tompkinson

  • Ludwig van Beethoven

    Grosse Fuge (excerpt)

    Performer: Members of the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

  • Emmeline Pankhurst

    My Own Story, read by Patricia Hodge

  • Fran莽ois Couperin

    Les Barricades Mysterieuses

    Performer: John Reid (piano).

  • Oscar Wilde

    Libertatis Sacra Fames, read by Stephen Tompkinson

  • William Byrd

    Mass for 4 voices - Agnus Dei

    Performer: Voices of Hope, Simon Fidler (conductor).

  • Lewis Carroll

    Through the Looking Glass, read by Patricia Hodge

  • John Cage

    The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs

    Performer: Hannah Reynolds (soprano), Mark Edwards (piano percussion).

  • Hilaire Belloc

    More Beasts (For Worse Children): The Python, read by Stephen Tompkinson

  • Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber

    Sonata Representativa: Frog + Cock and Hen

    Performer: Tristan Gurney (violin), John Reid (harpsichord).

  • George Orwell

    1984, read by Patricia Hodge

  • Arnold Schoenberg

    Little Pieces Op.19

    Performer: John Reid (piano).

  • Opening Address for the Prosecution

    Lady Chatterley trial, read by Stephen Tompkinson

  • Dmitry Shostakovich

    String Quartet no. 8: 3rd movement

    Performer: Members of Royal Northern Sinfonia.

  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Concert Interpretation (Le Sacre de Printemps), read by Patricia Hodge

  • Igor Stravinsky

    Ave Maria

    Performer: Voices of Hope, Simon Fidler (conductor).

  • Lewis Carroll

    Rules and Regulations, read by Stephen Tompkinson

  • Erik Satie

    Vexations

    Performer: John Reid (piano).

Producer's Note - Rules and How to Break Them

We need rules.聽 Sometime we also need to break them.聽 This programme covers rules in their many forms: moral codes, rules enshrined in law, social norms and artistic conventions. There are artists who have produced great art despite an inability to stay within the law, those who have used their art to subvert religious or political dicta and those who have advanced their field by deliberately defying its conventions. There are also examples of literary characters who railed against the rules, and real people who, by daring to challenge the status quo - whether political, religious, intellectual or social - have changed it for ever.

聽The programme begins with one well-known set of rules: The Ten Commandments, followed by a madrigal by Gesualdo, who by murdering his wife and her lover broke at least one of them. Then to a concise set of rules from The Hitch Hiker鈥檚 Guide to the Galaxy, which I鈥檝e coupled with a composer who stripped music back to its bare bones: Anton Webern. Robert Graves鈥� poem To an Ungentle Critic suggests that old-fashioned art has as much worth as innovative new art. CPE Bach鈥檚 Fantasia which follows shows a composer keen to create his own voice, rather than emulate his 鈥渙ld-fashioned鈥� father, JS Bach.聽 The choirboys stranded on an island without adults in Golding鈥檚 Lord of the Flies, are desperately trying to create rules to stop their little society from breaking down. 聽聽This I felt should be accompanied with choral music 鈥� Hildegard of Bingen who was something of an innovator simply by being a female composer in the 12th century (along with being an abbess, writer, philosopher, visionary, etc..) Robert Herrick鈥檚 poem extols the virtues of disorder, which I think would have appealed to Charles Ives who could be notoriously unruly in his music.

聽Then to some real life rule-breakers: Charles Darwin, who realised that his Theory of Evolution wasn鈥檛 compatible with the accepted view of how God created the World. Beethoven鈥檚 Grosse Fuge which follows was condemned when it was written some thirty years earlier in 1825 for being completely incomprehensible, and to my ears still sounds startlingly modern.聽 Next is Emmeline Pankhurst who, with her fellow WSPU members resorted to militant tactics to persuade the Government of the day to take women鈥檚 suffrage seriously. Pankhurst felt a strong connection to the female revolutionaries who stormed the Bastille, so Couperin鈥檚 Les Barricades Mysterieuses seemed fitting. In society鈥檚 eyes, Oscar Wilde broke the law by being actively homosexual. Here I have chosen his poem Libertatis Sacra Fames (Sacred Hunger for Liberty) in which he muses about socialism. William Byrd was a rule-breaker too, setting Catholic texts: a life-threatening endeavour in post-Reformation England.

聽Lewis Carroll delights us with his wit in the passage from Through the Looking Glass, where the Red and White Queens exasperate Alice with their arbitrary rules. This is followed with music by John Cage, who famously shook up the musical establishment by writing 4鈥�33 of silence. Four minutes 33 seconds of silence on Radio 3 at this point would in itself subvert the rules of broadcasting mechanics, so I鈥檝e included instead The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs for voice and the wood of the piano, which sets words by another stylistic rule-breaker, James Joyce. A comic poem by Hilaire Belloc about a python is paired with Ignaz von Biber, a composer who broke the rules of string writing by including techniques such as scordatura (mistuning). We鈥檒l hear him in animal mode with part of his Sonata Representativa 鈥� Frog, and Cock &Hen.

聽In George Orwell鈥檚 dystopian novel 1984, Julia believes that if you keep the small rules, you can break the big ones without anyone noticing. When Schoenberg broke the big rules by completely reinventing the harmonic system, everyone noticed! We鈥檒l hear his Little Pieces for Piano, in which you can hear him experimenting with tonality before he went on to create his 12 tone method. Next to works of art which the authorities attempted to ban. Penguin Books was taken to court when it tried to publish D.H. Lawrence鈥檚 鈥榦bscene鈥� novel, Lady Chatterley鈥檚 Lover in this country, while Shostakovich鈥檚 music fell foul of Stalin鈥檚 diktat that composers should only write 鈥榩roletarian鈥� music. A fellow Russian musical rule-breaker was Stravinsky, whose Rite of Spring was so shocking with Nijinsky鈥檚 choreography that it cause a riot. Siegfried Sassoon鈥檚 poem Concert Interpretation explores how our attitude as an audience to such shocking sounds changes over time. 聽The final poem is a set of rules again by Lewis Carroll, which signs off with the moral to rule-breakers - 鈥榖ehave鈥�. The final composer, Satie, did anything but behave in his music-writing. His Vexations were interpreted by John Cage to be performed 840 times. We might not manage that but we鈥檒l fit in as many as we can before the end of the programme!

聽Ellie Mant - Producer

Broadcast

  • Sun 8 Nov 2015 17:30
    麻豆约拍 Radio 3

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