Main content
Sorry, this episode is not currently available

Heroines

Tuppence Middleton and Patsy Ferran read poems, prose and music exploring figures including Malala, Rosa Parks, Little Red Riding Hood, Mary Richardson and Sappho.

Readings by Tuppence Middleton and Patsy Ferran and a selection of music, from Ethel Smyth to Janelle Mon谩e , Rokia Traor茅 to Fanny Mendelssohn, Respighi to Robert Wyatt in praise of heroines: some fictional, like Sally Bowles and Scheherazade, some historical, like Grace Darling and Joan of Arc, some inspirational, like Malala Yousafzai and Rosa Parks, and some simply anonymous and everyday - like poet Gillian Clarke's mother rescuing a drowning child or WB Yeats' Song of an Old Mother.

As we approach this year鈥檚 International Women鈥檚 Day next Friday - Words and Music this weekend explores the idea of what a heroine is and the range of qualities which have been praised from patience to protest, from caring to cunning.

We begin with a Concerto for Violin Horn and Piano by Ethel Smyth, the composer who had written The March of the Women in 1910, which became the official anthem of the Women's Social and Political Union. This is followed by folk musician Eliza Carthy's solo version of the Pankhurst Anthem, a new piece commissioned by 麻豆约拍 Radio 3 from composer Lucy Pankhurst which uses the words of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. But if we begin with campaigning energy should we end in a celebratory mood?

Producer: Harry Parker.

1 hour, 15 minutes

Last on

Sun 3 Mar 2019 17:30
麻豆约拍 Radio 3

More episodes

Previous

Seven

Next

The Chessboard

See all episodes from Words and Music

Music Played

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

  • 00:00

    Ethel Smyth

    Double Concerto in A for Violin, Horn & Piano 聳 Allegro moderato

    Performer: Renate Eggebrecht-Kupsa (violin), Franz Draxinger (Horn), Celine Dutilly (Piano), Ethel Smyth Ensemble.
    • Troubadisc TRO-CD 01405.
    • Tr8.

  • Judith Terzi

    Ode to Malala Yousafzai, read by Patsy Ferran

  • Mary Richardson

    from Laugh, A Defiance, read by Tuppence Middleton

  • 00:04

    Lucy Pankhurst

    The Pankhurst Anthem

    Performer: Eliza Carthy performing solo live on Radio 3 Breakfast.
  • 00:07

    Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart

    Sisters Are Doin聮 It For Themselves

    Performer: Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin.
    • Sony Music 88875061592.
    • Tr7.

  • William Shakespeare

    Antony and Cleopatra Act V Sc II, read by Tuppence Middleton

  • 00:10

    Piotr Il'Yich Tchaikovsky

    The Maid of Orleans 聳 Act Two 聳 No. 9 Entr聮acte

    Performer: Orchestre Philharmonique et Choeur de Radio France, Jean-Pierre Marty (Conductor).
    • Gala GL100627.
    • CD1 Tr10.

  • G. B. Shaw

    St Joan, read by Patsy Ferran

  • 00:13

    Rupert Gregson鈥怶illiams

    Amazons Of Themyscira from Wonder Woman (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

    Performer: Rupert Gregson鈥怶illiams.
    • WaterTower Music 88985447072.
    • Tr1.

  • Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard

    Love Lyric fragment, read by Tuppence Middleton

  • 00:15

    Claude Debussy

    Syrinx

    Performer: Alison Balsom (trumpet), Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Edward Gardner (Conductor).
    • EMI 3532552.
    • Tr16.

  • Anthony Howell聽

    Penelope, read by Patsy Ferran

  • 00:16

    Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

    From Scheherazade Opus 35: The Young Prince And The Princess

    Performer: New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein (Conductor).
    • Classic Fm CFMCD 3.
    • Tr2.

  • Richard F. Burton

    The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, read by Tuppence Middleton

  • 00:22

    Vincenzo Bellini

    Norma: Act I - Casta Diva

    Performer: Leontyne Price (Soprano), the Ambrosian Opera Chorus, John McCarthy (Director).
    • RCA 09026 61236 2.
    • CD4 Tr7.

  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    Santa Filomena, read by Tuppence Middleton

  • 00:29

    Rokia Traor茅

    Sarama

    Performer: Rokia Traor茅.
    • Nonesuch 7559-79591-8.
    • Tr9.

  • Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer

    Negro Heroines, read by Patsy Ferran

  • 00:35

    Horace Silver

    Nica's Dream

    Performer: The Horace Silver Quintet.
    • Blue Note 0946 3 55207 2 9.
    • Tr7.

  • Rita Dove

    Rosa, read by Patsy Ferran

  • 00:42

    Janelle Monae, Nathaniel Irvin, Charles Delbert Joseph, Roman Gianarthur Irvin

    Dorothy Dandridge Eyes

    Performer: Janelle Monae Featuring Esperanza Spalding.
    • Bad Boy Entertainment 7567 86840 5.
    • Tr18.
  • 00:44

    Ottorino Respighi

    Belkis, regina de Saba, P 177 聳 Danza orgiastica

    Performer: Philharmonia Orchestra, Geoffrey Simon (Conductor).
    • Chandos CHAN 241-45.
    • CD2 Tr12.

  • William Wordsworth

    Grace Darling, read by Patsy Ferran

  • 00:47

    Fanny Mendelssohn

    Il Saltarello Romano in A Minor Op. 6 No.4

    Performer: Liana 葮erbescu.
    • CPO 9990152.
    • Tr10.

  • Jonathan Swift

    To Stella Visiting Me In My Sickness, read by Patsy Ferran

  • Gillian Clarke

    Cold Knap Lake, read by Tuppence Middleton

  • 00:50

    Johann Sebastian Bach, Charles Gounod

    Ave Maria

    Performer: Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Bobby McFerrin (voice).
    • Sony Masterworks SK 48177.
    • Tr10.

  • W. B. Yeats

    The Song of the Old Mother, read by Patsy Ferran

  • 00:53

    Bill Withers

    Grandma's Hands

    Performer: Bill Withers.
    • Knight Records KNCD 22071.
    • CD2 Tr11.

  • Roald Dahl

    Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf read by Tuppence Middleton

  • 00:56

    Piotr Il'Yich Tchaikovsky

    Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf

    Performer: Original Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra.
    • Pilz Acanta 44 1006-2.
    • Tr21.
  • 00:58

    Robert Wyatt

    Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road

    Performer: Robert Wyatt.
    • Virgin Records CDV 2017.
    • Tr3.

  • Eve Alexandra

    Heroine, read by Patsy Ferran

  • 01:02

    Nicola LeFanu

    Concerto for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra

    Performer: John-Edward Kelly (alto saxophone), Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, Micha Hamel (Conductor).
    • Neos 10910.
    • Tr2.

  • Alison Croggon

    Billie Holiday, read by Patsy Ferran

  • 01:04

    Billie Holiday, Herbert Horatio "Herbie" Nichols

    Lady Sings The Blues

    Performer: Billie Holiday.
    • Verve 521 429-2.
    • Tr11.

  • Christopher Isherwood

    Goodbye to Berlin, read by Tuppence Middleton

  • 01:10

    John Kander and Fred Ebb

    Mein Herr

    Performer: Liza Minnelli.
    • Hip-O Records HIPD 40027.
    • Tr2.

Producer's Notes: 'Heroines'

One of the universally recognised political heroines of the modern age is Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani campaigner for female education.聽 As a fifteen year old in 2012 she was shot by a Taliban gunman along with two other girls on a bus returning from taking an exam: it was an attempt to assassinate her for her work against the restrictions on female education in the Taliban controlled northwest Pakistan - something she had been promoting since she was eleven. 聽Her courage in recovering from her injuries and her defiant stance won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 and her subsequent educational journey to Oxford University is a story which has inspired and encouraged women the world over. 聽Judith Terzi鈥檚 poem Ode to Malala Yousafzai comes from a collection Malala: Poems for Malala Yousafzai, edited by poets Joseph Hutchison and Andrea L. Watson, for publication on the first anniversary of the shooting.

聽A hundred years earlier other political heroines were making their stand for women鈥檚 suffrage. 听滨苍 Britain the vote was finally granted in1918 to women over thirty but only after the suffering, imprisonment and even death of those fighting for it. 聽And it is the suffragette Mary Richardson鈥檚 account from her autobiography, Laugh, A Defiance, of the death of Emily Davison at the 1913 Derby that demonstrates the sacrifices some were prepared to make for the cause. 聽Writings and documents from this struggle are part of an exhibition called Sappho to Suffrage: Women Who Dared at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

聽Another woman who was part of that movement was Ethel Smyth, the first composer to be made a Dame for her services to music. 聽Her 1926 concerto for Violin Horn and Piano underscores the reading by Tuppence Middleton from Richardson鈥檚 book. Smyth also wrote The March of the Women in 1910, to words by Cicely Hamilton, which became the official anthem of the Women's Social and Political Union. 聽On February 6th this year Radio 3 premiered another anthem marking exactly 100 years of women鈥檚 suffrage. 聽The women's rights activist Emmeline Pankhurst, a founder of the WSPU, is honoured in the new choral piece, The Pankhurst Anthem, with music by composer Lucy Pankhurst and text by Helen Pankhurst, based on words written by her great-grandmother. This folk interpretation was performed live by Eliza Carthy on Radio 3鈥檚 Breakfast programme that day.

聽Women鈥檚 empowerment is also celebrated in the Eurythmics鈥� 1985 hit Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves featuring vocals by Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin.聽 It too has become something of a feminist anthem.

聽Shakespeare鈥檚 heroines are many, varied and often flawed - from Portia the persuasive lawyer in disguise from the Merchant of Venice to the power hungry Lady Macbeth, from the star-cross鈥檇 lover Juliet to the principled Cordelia in King Lear. Like the suffragettes Cleopatra makes it clear what sacrifices she will make rather than be oppressed by Caesar and Rome. 聽Militaristic resistance is displayed by Joan of Arc in a speech from scene V of George Bernard Shaw鈥檚 St Joan whilst Tchaikovsky鈥檚 musical interpretation of the same character is from the entr鈥檃cte of his opera The Maid of Orleans.

聽If Joan was a wonder woman in the 15th century the modern taste for superheroes is given a feminist spin in the film of Wonder Woman - last year鈥檚 huge cinema success starring Gal Gadot as the eponymous heroine. 聽The score is by Rupert Gregson-Williams and this cue entitled Amazons of Themyscira. 聽Five hundred years BC the poetess Sappho used military imagery and evoked another ancient heroine Helen of Troy in this fragment of love poetry on display at the Bodleian Library exhibition and translated from the ancient Greek by Mary Barnard.

聽Debussy鈥檚 Syrinx was written in 1913 for a dramatic poem, 笔蝉测肠丑茅, by the French novelist and poet Gabriel Mourey. 聽The piece was originally composed for the flute as it illustrates the Greek myth of the lecherous satyr Pan who wanted to seduce a wood nymph, Syrinx. 聽She however was heroically determined to preserve her chastity and, appealing to the naiads or river nymphs for help, was turned into a reed. 聽Unfortunately Pan heard the sound made by the wind blowing across the hollow stem and cut the reed into several different lengths and joined them to form the pipes of Pan or Syrinx flute. 聽Here it is interpreted on the trumpet by Britain鈥檚 leading woman in the predominantly male world of brass playing, Alison Balsom.

聽Another ancient Greek, Penelope, used more cunning to protect her love for her husband. Anthony Howell鈥檚 poem refers to the wife of Odysseus who, while her husband was missing presumed dead on his voyage, is besieged by would-be replacements. 聽She says she will choose one when she has finished making a funeral shroud for her father-in-law. 聽Each day she would weave a section and each night unravel it only to start all over again the next day. 聽By this subterfuge she fends off the suitors.

聽Night-time stalling tactics were also employed by Scheherazade, the heroine of The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night, to protect her own life.聽 To avoid becoming one of the women that the King Shahryar sleeps with once and then beheads she starts telling the catalogue of tales that has given us Sinbad, Aladdin, Ali Baba and many others. 聽She makes sure to end each story at dawn on a cliff-hanger ensuring her survival until the next night.聽 In this extract from Richard Burton鈥檚 translation from an Egyptian version she achieves her ambition to not only save her children and survive but become Queen.

聽The great operatic tragic heroine Norma is looked on as a courageous woman by the Druids she leads as High Priestess. 聽They hope she will negotiate peace with the invading Romans and to this end she prays to the moon - the Casta Diva or chaste goddess in this aria. 聽It is sung by Leontyne Price, not only one of the great lyric sopranos but the first African-American singer to star at the Metropolitan Opera in New York where she joined the company in 1961.

聽The Malian singer Rokia Traor茅 sings of the courage of African woman in the song Sarama. 聽The words translate from the Bambara language as: 鈥淭hey are astonishing, Malian women are strong, my mothers are impressive, African women enchant, my revered ones! 聽Femininity is an art. 聽Maternity is a job of work. 聽Many talk about it, but few have mastered it. 聽At the source of every great man a great woman reigns鈥�.

聽African-American women are the subject of Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer鈥檚 poem Negro Heroines. 聽Moorer (1868-1936) was a teacher in South Carolina who wrote much of her poetry about race issues and was indeed a civil rights activist herself, This poem is about the recognition of the聽 heroism of black nurses, recruited by Mrs Namah Curtis in 1898 to serve in Cuba in the war between the USA and Spain.

聽Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter seems at first an unlikely heroine for African-Americans, being a daughter of the Rothschild banking family. But she was a champion of jazz during the post-war bebop era and acted as patron of many of the jazz stars of the day particularly Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk who wrote a piece of music dedicated to her 鈥� Pannonica 鈥� as did numerous others too and the one we hear is Horace Silver鈥檚 Nica鈥檚 Dream.

聽Rosa Parks was another heroine of the American civil rights movement. In 1955 she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white passenger sparking a boycott of buses in one of the first direct action protests in the campaign against segregation. 聽This is commemorated in the poem Rosa by Rita Dove, the first African-American to have been appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

听滨苍 Dorothy Dandridge Eyes, singer, songwriter and rapper Janelle Mon谩e celebrates one of the first black American film stars. 聽The recording also features the superb young jazz bass player Esperanza Spalding. Dandridge was the first black female to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, portraying Carmen Jones in the 1954 film.

聽The Queen of Sheba is a shadowy figure in the Bible. 聽Most scholars think that Sheba was sited in or around present day Yemen but little else is known about her. Yet Belkis, as she may have been called, was obviously a commanding presence around the ninth century BC as her visit with a huge retinue of followers and servants to King Solomon鈥檚 court being part of the legends of the Jewish, Islamic and Christian faiths. 聽The key indicator of her power was the idea that she came to put hard questions to test Solomon. 聽Again not much is known of these riddles but she was able to inspire legends in literature from medieval times to the present as well as music from the likes of Handel and Gounod, and this, Respighi鈥檚 Belkis Queen of Sheba a ballet from 1931.

聽Its tempestuous mood fits well with the story of Grace Darling, a far less mysterious figure than Belkis. 聽Grace was a real person, who with her lighthouse keeper father rescued survivors from the 鈥楩orfarshire鈥� wrecked off the coast of Northumberland in 1838.聽 She became a renowned heroine of the Victorians and inspired William Wordsworth鈥檚 poem about her written five years later.

聽Fanny Mendelssohn鈥檚 reputation as a woman composer is often overshadowed that of her brother Felix but she was prolific composer particularly of songs and piano music and deserves to be more widely appreciated as a pioneer of classical composition regardless of gender. 聽This piece, Il Saltarello Romano is played by Liana 葮erbescu, the concert pianist and musicologist, herself a champion of women composers.

聽It accompanies one of the numerous poems by Jonathan Swift written to or about a woman called Stella whom he idolised.聽 This 1720 poem is Visiting Me In My Sickness.聽 聽And Henry Wadsworth Longfellow鈥檚 poem Santa Filomena is in praise, though not specified, of Florence Nightingale. 聽It is here that the term the 鈥榣ady with the lamp鈥� is first coined.

聽The quiet heroism of caring, particularly in the context of motherhood, is a theme picked up by the next few pieces. 聽The Welsh poet Gillian Clark wrote Cold Knap Lake about a real childhood incident in which her mother rescues a stranger鈥檚 child from drowning.

聽J. S. Bach鈥檚 prelude, which was later revised by Gounod and then in 1859 used as a setting for the Latin prayer to the mother of Jesus, Ave Maria, is performed by jazz singer Bobby McFerrin and the classical cellist Yo-yo Ma.

聽W. B. Yeats鈥檚 The Song of the Old Mother from 1899 tells of the hardships and sacrifices made in the course of the daily chores by an aged woman for her children who apparently take her for granted. 聽By contrast Bill Withers鈥檚 1971 song Grandma鈥檚 Hands reveal a much more appreciative family member.

聽The role of Grandma traditionally takes on a decidedly sinister tone in the story of Little Red Riding Hood. 聽The way Roald Dahl tells it in his rhyming version, the russet hatted girl is very much the heroine, not bothering to wait for the woodcutter to rescue her but taking the initiative in dispatching the wolf herself.聽 The reading is illustrated by Tchaikovsky鈥檚 music for the folk tale from his 1890 ballet The Sleeping Beauty.

聽Robert Wyatt鈥檚 composition Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road from his 1974 album Rock Bottom leads us into a poem called Heroine from the 2003 collection The Drowned Girl by the American poet Eve Alexandra which also refers to Little Red Riding Hood. The verse expresses the resoluteness of the self-assured woman.

聽Nicola Lefanu is a leading contemporary composer the daughter of another musical heroine, Elizabeth Maconchy. 聽Nicola鈥檚 1989 Concerto for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra takes us into聽 the Australian poet and playwright Alison Croggan鈥檚 poem Billie Holliday about the jazz singer who for so many is a heroine not just for her singing but for her espousal of civil rights. 聽Holiday herself gives us Lady Sings the Blues from 1956, also the title of the 1972 film about her life starring Diana Ross.

聽Another film released that year, Cabaret, was based on an earlier musical by John Kander and Fred Ebb. 聽This in turn was based on I Am a Camera, a play from 1956 by John Van Druten, which itself was drawn from Christopher Isherwood鈥檚 1939 autobiographical novella Goodbye to Berlin, from which this reading is taken. 聽All of these iterations were dominated by the powerful presence of the central character Sally Bowles. 聽Despite the film鈥檚 portrayal of Sally as a bubbly American, according to Isherwood the original was from Lancashire. 聽She is not perhaps a heroine in the usual sense but her uninhibited attitude in pre-war Germany prefigured much of the sexual and feminist liberation that didn鈥檛 arrive until about three decades later. 聽As a finale Liza Minelli sings Mein Herr from the film which articulates this spirit exactly.

听听

Harry Parker

Broadcasts

  • Sun 10 Jun 2018 17:30
    麻豆约拍 Radio 3
  • Sun 3 Mar 2019 17:30
    麻豆约拍 Radio 3

Featured in...

  • Music Icons

    Killing the game with Grace Jones, Adele, St. Vincent, Mary J Blige & more

  • hear her

    Women鈥檚 voices across the 麻豆约拍

The hidden history of plant-based diets

The hidden history of plant-based diets

Forget social media influencers - the meat-free movement started with the Victorians.

Books website

Get closer to books with in-depth articles, quizzes and our picks from radio & TV.