ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

Available for 28 days

The clocks go back tonight offering us the luxury of an extra hour in bed, and a wonderful theme for this week’s Words and Music – Sleep, and Dreams. We spend a third of our lives asleep, so it’s not surprising that composers and writers have created works that evoke sleep, induce it, and rail against the lack of it. Sleep, as Macbeth says, 'knits up the ravelled sleeve of care' but it can also lead to 'terrible dreams that shake us nightly'. Piers Plowman has a vision revealing the injustices of C14th society - that still endure today. W. H. Auden, just after the Second World War, writes a loving lullaby but one that acknowledges love and time’s passing. Shakespeare captures the despair of never being able to sleep, and ponders the kinship of sleep and death. Edith Wharton and Katherine Mansfield both describe the beauty of the abandonment to unconsciousness. Debussy captures the fatigue of a faun after a busy afternoon; Mendelssohn the amorous swooning of Bottom and Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Christy Moore sings of John O’ Dreams, to a tune gifted him by Tchaikovsky. John Dowland and Paul McCartney both set to music words by the Elizabethan dramatist, Thomas Dekker. Stephen Hough plays a piece of crepuscular Lizst and, just as you might be nodding off, Ella Fitzgerald will wake you up - with the Lullaby of Broadway. Africa and Old English come sleepily together, Anne Sofie von Otter sings astonishingly beautifully, and the isle is ‘full of noises, sounds and sweet air that give delight and hurt not’. We slip into slumberland, and insomnia country, with readers Amber James and Johnny Flynn, beginning way back in time with some medieval English polyphony from the Huelgas Ensemble: ‘Dou Way Robin’. Producer: Julian May Readings The Vision of Piers Plowman by William Langland Lights Out by Edward Thomas Genesis Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare Julius Caesar by William Sha To Sleep by John Keatskespeare Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton The Bell Jar 1 by Sylvia Plath Macbeth by William Shakespeare The Bell Jar 2 by Sylvia Plath Henry IV by William Shakespeare Hamlet by William Shakespeare Lullaby by W. H. Auden Golden Slumbers by Thomas Dekker One Night Comes Like a Blessing by Grace Nichols St Mark's Gospel To Say Before Going to Sleep by Rainer Maria Rilke The Tempest 1 by William Shakespeare from The Sleeping Lord by David Jones The Tempest 2 by William Shakespeare