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We are rising high this week, scaling the heights of skyscrapers and bell towers, and reaching to the heavens. As the musical scale glides upwards, birds soar, men overreach, and passions transcend.

The tower of Babel is brought low and a rising balloon signals disaster in the opening of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love. The mounting hubris of man is captured by William Golding and Mary Shelley, while Ayn Rand’s hero stands aloft, above the New York skyline. But there’s the quicksilver of Gerald Manley Hopkins’ windhover and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s skylark. And the pure joy of bounding magical clouds for Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll and friends.

George Frideric Handel and Gregorio Allegri sing their praises to God above, while Vincenzo Bellini’s soaring soprano Norma prays to the moon goddess. There are otherworldly airs from Judith Weir, Miles Davis, and Igor Stravinsky. And the group Franz Ferdinand play with the musical conundrum, the Shepard scale illusion in Always Ascending.

The readers are Robert Glenister and Maggie Service.

Producer: Katy Hickman

READINGS:
John Gillespie Magee Jr - High flight
Carol Ann Duffy - Rapture
King James Bible - Genesis
Emily Dickinson – We never know
William Golding - The Spire
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead
John Dos Passos - Manhattan Transfer
Stephen Spender - The Pylons
Imtiaz Dharker - Ringing the Changes
Irving Stone - Agony + Ecstasy
Baysan, U. and Macpherson, F - Shepard Tone Illusion
Ian McEwan - Enduring Love
Langston Hughes - Mother to Son
JG Ballard - High Rise
Seamus Heaney - The Skylight
Nicola Lamb - Sift: The Elements of Great Baking
Tove Jansson - Finn Family Moomintroll
Gerald Manley Hopkins - The Windhover
Percy Bysshe Shelley - To a Skylark (excerpt)