29/01/2012 BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature: BACH AND THE ART OF BEE-KEEPING
SUNDAY 29 JANUARY 7.45pm (1945-2030GMT)
On first hearing Arvo Pärt and J.S.Bach appear to write very different music: one distilled to the point of crystalization, the other fizzing with richly-hued life. But both have the same notion of order in the universe, of a harmony greater than the musical expressions they give to it. In this patchwork narrative the singer Kathryn Knight uncovers the common denominators and extramusical connections between these two iconic figures – from the art of fugue via quantum mechanics and the honeycomb to the technique of tintinnabulation. With the Reverend Alan Walker, Dr John Crook, Guy Denning, and Konrad Volker. Written and produced by Antony Pitts.

Charles Tomlinson's poem begins "If Bach had been a beekeeper he would have heard all those notes suspended above one another in the air of his ear..."

Linked superficially by Pärt's musical references in If Bach had been a Bee-keeper and other works, Bach and his Estonian co-conspirator seem to represent opposing currents in the ocean of Western classical music, but in this meditative and wide-ranging tour their strange numerical relationship comes to light. With his imperial touch Old Bach apotheosized all existing forms in timeless Elysian gold, while those same traditional casts were shattered by the Estonian revolutionary Arvo Pärt, in order to reshape a musical future from the simplest elements of sound and silence. Around these central two strands are heard an ebb and flow of creative responses from very different worlds...

A Golden Radio production for BBC Radio 3 (90-93FM in the UK) and on the web
http://goldenradio.co.uk/sounds/trails/BatAoBkTRAIL.mp3

Bach and the Art of Bee-keeping is another Golden Radio production for BBC Radio 3:
listen again (for seven days after the broadcast) on the BBC iPlayer.
details of the music and readings
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019pp86



20/11/2010 BBC Radio 3 Between the Ears: A WIRELESS REVELATION (2010)
SATURDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2010 9.25pm (2125-2230GMT)
A Golden Radio production for BBC Radio 3 (90-93FM in the UK) and on the web
At the back of the Bible hides perhaps the most misunderstood but profoundly influential little book of them all: the Apocalypse of St John, also known as the Book of Revelation. The Apocalypse - which means "unveiling" - is a breathless and intense sequence of visions given to the exiled John on the Aegean island of Patmos, 70 miles or so from Ephesus in what is now Turkey, at the end of the first century AD. Although it’s well-known for being a challenging read, Revelation compensates right from the start with an explicit blessing on both reader and listener. Thereafter its twenty-two chapters are packed full of pictures and patterns that have inspired artists and composers down the nineteen centuries since it was written: seven seals including the seventh seal with its seven trumpets, a beast with seven heads and ten horns, a woman with a crown of twelve stars on her head, and a Hallelujah chorus! http://goldenradio.co.uk/sounds/trails/AWRtrail.mp3

However, the book also ends with a curse on anyone tampering with its text, and so this radiophonic version sagely presents the complete text from mysterious beginning to epic end - in a communal reading from a number of translations old and new (including echoes of New Testament Greek as well as Mandarin, Arabic, Persian, and Urdu). John Ashenfelter reads from the English Standard Version of the Holy Bible; additional voices include the Reverend Alan Walker (Thyatira), the Reverend Clifford Hill, Ekene Akalawu, Kathryn Knight (presenter), the former Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali (Smyrna), and the Reverend Richard Coles (Sardis). Like an illuminated manuscript, the sacred text is decorated and underscored as it unfolds with an historical panoply of music featuring iconic fragments from Handel’s Messiah and every movement of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, as well as choral music by Hildegard of Bingen and by Antony Pitts - including a setting of the Seven Letters from the Book of Revelation, sung by TONUS PEREGRINUS.

"It's undoubtedly still one of the most challenging programmes I've ever made - both to put together and to listen to", says producer and composer Antony Pitts, "It's a bit like being an icon-maker - trying to create a stylized, clear 'window into heaven' based directly on a given sacred text. Heard aloud, the structure and rhythm of the text become a carrier wave for layers of meaning that are all the more powerful without any textual commentary. It was wonderful to be given the chance to remix it for this extended broadcast on Radio 3: there's definitely no lack of pace or tension, but now there's more light and shade, and a little bit more room for the words and music to breathe." Executive Producer Jeremy Summerly suggests listening with a Bible to hand; the text (King James Version only) is here, along with full music details: http://goldenradio.co.uk/AWirelessRevelation2010.pdf

A Wireless Revelation is another Golden Radio production for BBC Radio 3: originally broadcast in July 2009, this extended remix can be heard on Saturday 20 November 2010 at 9.25pm (GMT), and for seven days afterwards on the BBC iPlayer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lkm83
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6632652.ece http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jul/06/radio-review-elisabeth-mahoney


09/07/2010 BBC Radio 3: THE WANDERING JEW
FRIDAY 9 JULY 2010 7pm (1800-2000GMT)
sound design by Golden Radio for BBC Radio 3 (90-93FM in the UK) and on the web
A world-premiere recording and broadcast of The Wandering Jew, an opera with music and libretto by Robert Saxton. Commissioned by BBC Radio 3, the opera is a modernist take on the tale of the Wandering Jew, the shoe-mender condemned in legend to wander the earth until the Second Coming after refusing to help Jesus as He went to His crucifixion at Golgotha. Initially inspired by the East German / Jewish author Stefan Heym's satirical version of the mediaeval legend, Saxton's two-hour-long 'musico-dramatic myth for radio', scored for singers, actors, mixed choir, orchestra, and electroacoustic treatment, follows his own scenario in which many other legendary characters are introduced - from medieval and other myths: Faust, Mephistopheles, Kundry, Wotan. Underneath the surface of The Wandering Jew lies a structure relating to the annual cycle of Jewish and Christian festivals, which is combined with a plan of rising tonal centres, in a journey that takes eight scenes. 'All the music - both vocal and orchestral - is derived from a basic diatonic note-set', explains the composer (himself Jewish with one Christian grandparent, and strongly aware of his 'mixed' heritage): 'The essence of my opera is a meeting between the Wandering Jew and Jesus in a Nazi death camp during WW2; they become reconciled - as they are both 'condemned' Jews... The opera spans 2,000 years, ranging from the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70AD to the Holocaust in the 20th century. Apart from reconciliation and forgiveness, the opera examines the nature of Time and Reality; the legendary aspects of the drama are psychologically more 'real' and eternal and enduring than the historical elements.'

Studio production is by Ann McKay; electroacoustic sound design by Antony Pitts - who has worked with Saxton for over a decade on the realization of his unique radio opera, and recorded early workshop versions of key scenes for the landmark 18-hour history of Western music broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at the turn of the Millennium, The Unfinished Symphony (1999/2000).

Roderick Williams (Wandering Jew)
Tim Mirfin (Jesus/Beggar)
Teresa Cahill (Widowed Mother)
Simon Paisley Day (Showman)
Hilary Summers (Fortune Teller)
Louise Winter (Kundry)
Geoffrey Lloyd-Roberts (Faust)
Brindley Sherratt (Mephistopheles)
Graeme Danby (Odin)
Jeremy White (The Old Man)
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Andre de Ridder (conductor)


26/12/2009 BBC Radio 3: LESSONS WITH MOZART
SATURDAY 26 DECEMBER 2009 12.15pm (1215-1300GMT)
A Golden Radio production for BBC Radio 3 (90-93FM in the UK) and on the web
devised and produced by Jeremy Summerly and Antony Pitts
Jeremy Summerly eavesdrops on Thomas Attwood’s composition lessons with Mozart. Study strict counterpoint for a year, said Mozart to the young Englishman freshly arrived in Vienna in 1785, and then we’ll talk about fugues... Remarkably, the manuscripts from their lessons over the next year and a half survive, as does the study in Mozart’s luxury apartment near St Stephen’s Cathedral in the centre of Vienna; they provide a unique glimpse of a great composer setting out the tools and techniques of his trade. Also listening in to the master and pupil scribbling notes and wisecracks side by side are the Mozarthaus director Gerhard Vitek, composer and teacher Antony Pitts, and the British Library’s curator of music manuscripts, Nicolas Bell. With the voices of Nicholas Dixon, Kathryn Knight, and Toby Scholz, and students from the Royal Academy of Music.


04/07/2009 BBC Radio 3 Between the Ears: A WIRELESS REVELATION
SATURDAY 4 JULY 2009 9.30pm (2030-2130GMT)
A Golden Radio production for BBC Radio 3 (90-93FM in the UK) and on the web
composed and produced by Antony Pitts
At the back of the Bible hides perhaps the most misunderstood but profoundly influential little book of them all: the Apocalypse of St John, also known as the Book of Revelation. The Apocalypse - which means "unveiling" - is a breathless and intense sequence of visions given to the exiled John on the Aegean island of Patmos, 70 miles or so from Ephesus in what is now Turkey, at the end of the first century of the Christian era. Although it's well-known for being a challenging read, Revelation compensates right from the start with an explicit blessing on both reader and listener. Thereafter its twenty-two chapters are packed full of pictures and patterns that have inspired artists and composers (not to mention scientists, kings, and politicians) down the nineteen centuries since it was written: seven seals and seven trumpets, a beast with seven heads and ten horns, a woman with a crown of twelve stars on her head, and a Hallelujah chorus! As, however, the book also ends with a curse on anyone tampering with its text, this hour-long radiophonic version sagely presents the complete text from mysterious beginning to epic end - in a communal reading from a number of translations old and new (including echoes of New Testament Greek as well as Mandarin, Arabic, Persian, and Urdu). Decorating and illuminating the sacred text as it unfolds is an historically-wide array of music including iconic fragments from Handel's Messiah and every movement of Messiaen's wartime Quartet for the End of Time, as well as choral music by Hildegard of Bingen and Antony Pitts.
Executive Producer Jeremy Summerly suggests listening with a Bible to hand; the text (King James Version only) is here, along with music details: http://goldenradio.co.uk/AWirelessRevelation.pdf


02/05/2009 BBC Radio 3 Between the Ears: IN MEMORIA
SATURDAY 2 MAY 2009 9.30pm (2030-2130GMT)
20/12/2008 BBC Radio 3 Between the Ears: IN MEMORIA
SATURDAY 20 DECEMBER 2008 9.15pm (2115-2215GMT)
A Golden Radio production for BBC Radio 3 (90-93FM in the UK) and on the web at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio3.shtml
devised and produced by Edward Wickham & Antony Pitts
with new and electro-acoustic music by Antony Pitts
"Industrial decay is the backdrop to this gentle ritual dialogue between late-mediaeval memorial motets by Ockeghem, Dufay, Obrecht, and Josquin des Prez, and recent fragments of anecdote, reflection, and reminiscence: Josquin's lament for Ockeghem, Nymphes des bois, is heard through an electronic prism as increasingly distressed audio, and the sequence culminates in a new motet by Antony Pitts, Thou wast present as on this day, celebrating the simultaneous present of eternity. Edward Wickham directs The Clerks in live performances from Crossness Pumping Station, Sellafield Visitors' Centre, and elsewhere..."
Hear an excerpt at: http://www.theclerks.co.uk/mp3/InMemoriaOPENING.mp3

In 2008 The Clerks and director Edward Wickham commissioned composer Antony Pitts to develop a live electro-acoustic concert programme with them based around the repertoire featured in their album In Memoria. Partly inspired by an exploratory visit to the tunnels of the National Mining Museum near Wakefield, and ultimately recorded in non-traditional, multi-layered performance spaces including Crossness Pumping Station in Bexley, In memoria evokes a dialogue between our own synthetic age and the deep music of memory represented by the greatest late-mediaeval and early-Renaissance composers. Ockeghem, Dufay, Obrecht, and Josquin each wrote motets to memorialize themselves and their colleagues: Dufay's motet, designed to be sung at his own death-bed, features a turning-point in Western artistic expression as he invokes a minor modality to implore mercy for himself; Josquin, in his turn, uses the harmonic contradictions between the traditional modes to lament the passing of Ockeghem in his iconic setting of Nymphes des bois. In this specially-mixed collage for radio these loved voices are presented as part of a living concert ritual as well as through an electronic prism; fragments of anecdote, reflection, and reminiscence - drawn from children's songs, poetry, real stories both humorous and tragic - culminate in a new motet by Antony Pitts for three pairs of voices, Thou wast present as on this day – where the past, present, and eternity itself are celebrated and mourned together.

Nearing the end of a disquisition which was to set the tone for public self-examination from the Middle Ages to Oprah, Augustine turns in his Confessions to the subject of memory itself. Having, through recollection of past sins, enacted a form of contrition (as well as some score-settling), he reflects on the symmetrical phenomena of memory and expectation, and by implication also on the nature of existence and eternity. He is to recite a Psalm (presumably one that he has committed to memory). Before he does so, the full extent of the Psalm stretches ahead of him in his expectation; half-way through the recital, the Psalm is divided between those verses still to come, and those which are now in the past. Finally "the whole expectation is exhausted" and all has "passed into memory". He goes on: "this which takes place in the whole Psalm, the same takes place in each several portion of it, and each several syllable; the same holds in that longer action, whereof this Psalm may be part; the same holds in the whole life of man, whereof all the actions of man are parts; the same holds through the whole age of the sons of men, whereof all the lives of men are parts." Humanity is forever balanced between the past and the future. And yet, Augustine reasons, future and past exist only in the mind: as "expectation of things to come" and "memory of things past". All time, he implies, is contained within the present moment; the analogy is with the way in which God may be said to understand time: not as the unfolding of a linear narrative, but as an object eternally present in the mind.

Augustine uses the example of the recitation of a familiar Psalm, but it might instead have been a well-known story, or rhyme, whose ending is known - indeed, is inevitable - as soon as the first words are spoken. There is a form of cruelty which authors inflict on characters who can't escape their own destinies; just as, with the swallowing of a fly, the old woman sets in train a sequence which results in catastrophe, of course. "In memoria aeterna erit iustus: ab auditione mala non timebit." As so often in the Gregorian liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, the meaning and implication of this statement has changed in the process of its translation from the Book of Psalms to the Requiem mass. In Psalm 112, its two clauses appear in two separate, albeit consecutive, verses. "The righteous man will never be moved: he will be remembered for ever. He is not afraid of evil tidings; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord." The suggestion here is that the evil tidings are of a worldly nature: a bereavement or loss of property, perhaps. But through the elision of the verses - "The righteous man will be remembered for ever: he is not afraid of evil tidings" - we are transported into the theology of the after-life, and of judgement. "Mala" in this sense refer to the rulings of the Eternal Judge on the Last Day; and in this context, "memoria" is perhaps no longer passive - it entails acts of commemoration...

Thou wast present as on this day sets a text for Holy Saturday or Easter Eve - its origins in the Orthodox liturgy - and builds directly on two musical sources: Josquin's Nymphes des bois (the central musical material for In memoria) and a central theme from Pitts's own oratorio Jerusalem-Yerushalayim. The text is heard three times - in three different places, as it were - and The Clerks' three pairs of voices weave an increasingly intricate texture around a luminous major triad.


01/05/2007 Mad World released exclusively on iTunes
Music from Not In My Name performed by TONUS PEREGRINUS:
Mad World, The Flower, Lazarus!


10/10/2006 BBC Radio 3 Late Junction
STING SINGS SONGS FROM THE LABYRINTH LIVE
a sequence of live highlights on BBC Radio 3's Late Junction


18/03/2006 BBC Radio 3 Between the Ears
NOT IN MY NAME
A tragic memory, a fantastic dream, and a decisive moment: half a lifetime ago an anonymous source was a little forward with the truth; not long from now an old BBC voice will ask questions about the very small, very mad world; meanwhile an author struggles to finish the beginning of her story.
Featuring John Crook, Christopher Gunness, and Sally Phillips.
Written and composed by Antony Pitts and Gary Watt.

"In 1987, Crockford's Clerical Directory was published with an anonymous preface for the *last* time. Not in my name."

listen to the complete trailer

"We have done those things which we ought not to have done."

A Golden Radio production for
BBC Radio 3 (90-93FM, bbc.co.uk/radio3)


10/01/2005 "I left BBC over Jerry filth" (The Sun)