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Episode details

Radio 3,24 Oct 2025,14 mins

Series The Song Detectorists

10. Bedfordshire

The Essay

Available for over a year

In the Bedfordshire Archives, Professor Stephen Rose shows Matthew the legal books of Mark Newman a 17th century notary. Amongst the densely written material there is a song about the joys of tobacco smoking and a ballad, Lay By Your Reason. Nancy Kerr tells Matthew that it is a sister song to Dominion of The Sword, a ballad from earlier in the 1600s best known now because of its interpretation by the folk singer Martin Carthy. The folk musician Nancy Kerr is co-investigator on the Music, Heritage Place project and has been taking the music found in the archives and reimagining it for the twenty-first century and for performance by her group, The Melrose Quartet (Jess Arrowsmith, Richard Arrowsmith, James Fagan and Nancy Kerr). Matthew also hears about an amazing discovery made by the researchers on the project. In the Norfolk archives, they discovered music written by Henry Purcell in a music book repurposed as an index to the records of Thetford town council. It's the first discovery of music in Purcell's hand for more than 30 years. One of the pieces is an early version of Purcell’s G minor Allemand that otherwise is known from the version printed by his widow in 1696 (a year after Purcell died). The Thetford version probably dates from the early 1690s. It has a lot of differences from the printed version, including some different notes, different ways in which the notes are sustained for resonance, and a lot of different ornamentation. The piece has been specially recorded for this programme and is played by Stephen Rose on harpsichord. Presenter: Matthew Bannister Producer: Natalie Steed A Rhubarb Rhubarb production for ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 3

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