Three’s Company – An Irishman’s Diary on 70 years of the Third Programme and BBC Radio 3

The richness and diversity of radio is something that most of us take for granted. But 70 years ago, just after the end of the second World War, the wireless, as it was known, represented the entire offering of all broadcast media. By 1946 Radio Éireann had already been established for nine years, while the BBC in London had two stations, the Light Programme and the Home Service, and that year decided to start a third.

The idea behind the Third Programme was to broaden horizons from "light entertainment" to a cultural highbrow featuring philosophy, current affairs, drama and poetry as well as catering for the "attentive listener of serious music". From the start, its raison d'être was questioned, attacked, ridiculed and mocked. One contemporary cartoon showed two working men sitting by the fire listening to the radio. One says to the other: "The pizzicato for the double basses in the coda seems to me to want body."

Wavelength

Initially its audience quickly fell away, partly because many chose not to listen to it but also because of technical difficulties. Its wavelength was officially assigned to Latvia, which led to complaints from listeners about interference from Soviet programmes.

In 1967, the station rebranded, becoming Radio 3. Its 70th anniversary is being marked with a season of 70 new commissions of speech and music, live broadcasts and special performances.

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Apart from its musicality, it has provided a platform for the work of dramatists such as Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Samuel Beckett and Louis MacNeice. Early in 1954 the broadcast premiere of the most famous of all prose poetry radio scripts, Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, described as a lyrical play for voices, was aired. The part of First Voice should have been taken by the poet himself but he had died the previous November. Richard Burton was drafted in and the result was a recording full of rhythmic sounds, subtle inflections, alliteration and humour that has stood the test of time. Some years earlier, "Third Division", written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden, starred Peter Sellers, Michael Bentine and Harry Secombe, and laid the foundation for what became The Goon Show created by Spike Milligan in 1951.

In the course of an average week nowadays you may hear the divine terzettino 'Soave sia il vento' from Mozart's Così fan tutte rubbing shoulders with Peter Maxwell Davies's enchanting Farewell to Stromness. At other times it may be an organ voluntary from choral evensong or a burst of Gregorian chant, work by the minimalist composer Steve Reich, or songs from the repertoire of Maria Callas, Kathleen Ferrier, and more frequently, the sublime voice of the Mullingar-born soprano Ailish Tynan.

One of the more quirky Sunday morning offerings recently featured a choir performing with gusto the Mexican Hat Dance. Several years ago, guitar music was shunned by a previous controller who disliked it so much he banned it from the airwaves. The rules appear to have been relaxed, since Spanish guitar music has slipped into late-night programmes.

Throughout the BBC, radio has always been regarded as the “senior” service and frequently the poor relation to television. By 1962, with the growing popularity of TV, the corporation thought that the only people listening to radio would be the blind. Happily this has proven not to be the case and the station has its cheerleaders in the form of a powerful lobbying group, Friends of Radio 3, who never miss an opportunity to fight their corner when they smell a dumbing-down proposal.

The 21st-century voice of Radio 3 comprises not just music, but essays, drama, features and documentaries, while interviews are an integral part of its make-up. Whatever the detractors’ view of its impact, it is an important patron of the arts, opening up classical, contemporary, folk, jazz and world music, as well as the secular and the sacred.

Its coterie of presenters has included esteemed names. Some have been conscious of costs in a publicly funded organisation constantly under pressure to justify its licence fee. Many years ago, in his distinctive tones, John Holmstrom, introduced a Strauss opera with the words: “No expense has been spared to bring you this. The records cost several pounds.”

Voices

Sometimes in musical announcements, words lose their meaning, or are misheard, resulting in a delightful mondegreen. One of the BBC’s longest-serving voices in Belfast, Walter Love – himself now some years older than the Third Programme and still presenting his Sunday night Radio Ulster Jazz Club – was involved in BBC Northern Ireland’s 50th anniversary Ulster Orchestra concert at St Anne’s Cathedral. The opening piece by the composer Howard Ferguson was called

Overture for an Occasion

. When he introduced it, Love ran the words together which led to consternation amongst the audience who thought he had said: “We are beginning tonight with Howard Ferguson’s overture ‘Fornication’.”