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Mark Tully seeks the ideal balance between the virtue of simplicity and embracing the many complexities of life. With music from kd lang and Satie and readings from Yeats and Kant.

Mark Tully seeks the ideal balance between the virtue of simplicity and embracing the many complexities of life. Is there a danger in neglecting the virtue of simplicity? What are the pitfalls, as well as the advantages, of complexity in contemporary living?

Mark questions the potential for naivety in dreams of the "simple life" and celebrates the benefits of simplicity with music by Erik Satie and poetry by W. B. Yeats. He also considers triumphs of complexity with music by Kaikhosru Sorabji and the prose of John Steinbeck.

The readers are Christopher Harper, Francis Cadder and Polly Frame.

Presenter: Mark Tully
Producer: Frank Stirling
A 7digital production for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4.

30 minutes

Last on

Sun 15 Oct 2017 23:30
Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

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Music Played

  • Amischer Lieder

    Gott ist Die Liebe

    • Amischer lieder (Amish Songs).

  • Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji

    Opus Clavicembalisticum

    Performer: Geoffrey Douglas.
    • Sorabji: Opus Clavicebalisticum.
    • CD-1062.

  • Erik Satie

    3 Sarabandes for piano, No. 1, in F Minor

    Performer: Noriko Ogawa.
    • Satie: Piano Works Vo. 2.
    • BIS.
    • BISSACD2225.

  • Jesse Dee

    Slow Down

    Performer: Jesse Dee.
    • Bittersweet Batch.
    • Munich.
    • MRCD-305.

  • k.d. lang

    Simple

    Performer: k.d. lang.
    • Hymns of the 49th Parallel.
    • Nonesuch.
    • 79847-2.

Readings

Title: He's Just Not That Into You (Screenplay) 

Author: Abby Kohn and Mark Silverstein


Quotation: 'We are not rich by what we possess

Bur rather by what we can do without.'

Author: Immanuel Kant


Title: Live Simply 

Author: Eileen Campbell 

Published by Thorsons


Quotation: 'Leave off that excessive desire of knowing;

therein is found much distraction.

There are many things the knowledge of which is of little or no profit to the soul.'

Author: Thomas A Kempis


Quotation: 'Manifest plainness,

Embrace simplicity,

Reduce selfishness,

Have few desires.'

Author: Lao Tzu


Title: Prayer

Author: Anonymous


Title: Leisure 

Author: W.H. Davies


Title: The Buddhist Path to Simplicity 

Author: Christina Feldman 

Published by HarperCollins


Title: The Lake Isle of Innisfree 

Author: W.B. Yeats


Broadcasts

  • Sun 15 Oct 2017 06:05
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4
  • Sun 15 Oct 2017 23:30
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4