Bach on the Beeb

The Radio Three Bach Christmas is superb. I've re-tuned most of the radios around the house so i listen to it at various points during the day.

Yesterday evening I was listening to the St John Passion while putting a service sheet together. On Saturday I heard a newly discovered Wedding cantata as I went to the post office to pick up a parcel. Today I've heard some of the Cello Suites in between meetings and preparation for Christmas services.

It's relaxing and beautiful music, and so much nicer to get up to than John Humphrys and the Today Programme. But what's really lovely in the build up to Christmas is listening to music with a deep Christian content and hearing announcers read the texts from the Gospels and the Bible in general on which cantatas are based.

It's the best Christmas present the BBC could have given me (well, Ok, the second best after 7pm on Christmas day).

This is why I pay the licence fee!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Bbc line-up between now and sunday lunch does look very impressive: York, Gloucs, leeds, King's College Cambridge, St Martin in the fields, Royal Albert Hall and the Queen's Speech, not forgetting Clifton :)

Oh sorry you might be a bit busy yourself then...

what a great thing is the video!
12:19 am
Kathryn said…
Absolutley. It has even converted my 13 year old...I'm woken most mornings by Bach pouring out of his bedroom, in welcome contrast to the more common VirginRadio, which I'm rarely ready for first thing. Sheer bliss :-)
9:39 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prayers for Evensong

The BBC were at the Cathedral yesterday, recording our Choral Evensong . I wrote some new prayers for the occasion, which I share here: In the evening of the day, we come to you, O God, bringing those we have met, for your blessing, our hurts for your healing, our sins for your forgiveness, our labours as our offering and our lives as our worship; we come to you through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who became like us, that we might become like him. Amen. Lord Jesus, you call us into your church; help us to leave behind the things we cling to, coax us with the treasure of heaven, and in the age to come, when the first will be last and the last will be first, allow us simply to be found within your Kingdom, and to feast at your table, where there is abundant life for all your world, for with you all things are possible, and in your name we pray. Amen. God of all hope, may the light of your justice search out the darkness of our world; may the power of your love banish al...
Read more

Theology and the Man in Black

Image
I went to hear a paper at the University this evening entitled 'The Apocalypse according to Johnny Cash: Examining the 'Effect' of the book of Revelation on a contemporary apocalyptic writer'. As well as some fine music and lots of humour from YouTube , the paper was examining how we detect the effect of the Bible on the world, and using Cash's The Man Comes Around as a means of doing this. One of the papers themes was that because Cash doesn't name Jesus as the Man (who comes around) he has a weak Christology and leaves his work open to a range of interpretations of who 'The Man' could be - from Cash himself to George W. Bush! Lots of food for thought about how what we say is then heard and repeated in our culture, which has little understanding of the Gospel. But the thing that really stood out for me was the suggestion that it was possible to tell that Cash was really reading the Bible in this song (rather than just regurgitating what his traditio...
Read more

Faith and Struggle on Smokey Mountain: The Michael Ramsey Prize 2016 Shortlist 1

Image
Review of Benigno P. Beltran, Faith and Struggle on Smokey Mountain: Hope for a Planet in Peril (Orbis, 2012). If all the books on the Michael Ramsey Prize shortlist are as good as this, then I’m in for a treat!   It is good to have an author on the shortlist who is not from the UK or the US.   Beltran is from the Philippines.   A Roman Catholic priest, and a teacher of theology, Beltran has also been the chaplain to the most notorious rubbish dump in the world – Smokey Mountain in Manilla.   Here around 25 000 people lived as scavengers, and became a symbol of both poverty and the ecological degradation of the world. This is a deceptively short book.   It is both moving and challenging.   It also covers several different genres.   Most obviously, it is autobiographical.   Benigno Beltran was a Pilipino priest who was sent to study in Rome.   He returned to the Philippines to train seminarians.   On h...
Read more