The Listening Service Podcast
Rethink music with The Listening Service. Tom Service presents a journey of imagination and insight, exploring how music works
Episodes to download
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In space no-one can hear you sing...
Sun 19 Feb 2017
Tom Service explores why space-inspired music sounds the way it does.
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What you see is what you hear?
Sun 5 Feb 2017
Tom Service asks if the pictures we see of composers influence the way we hear their music
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Whatever Happened to the Waltz?
Sun 15 Jan 2017
Tom Service explores the waltz and why we love to dance to music in triple metre.
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Breaking Free: Tom Service on the Second Viennese School
New Year's Day 2017
Tom Service considers how to listen to the Second Viennese School.
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Background Music
Sun 11 Dec 2016
Tom Service considers what is background music and how it functions in our lives.
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The Semitone
Sun 4 Dec 2016
Tom Service on what can be done with the semitone, the smallest interval in western music.
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Improvisation
Sun 13 Nov 2016
Tom Service considers the art of musical improvisation with David Toop and Joelle Leandre.
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Colour and music
Sun 16 Oct 2016
Tom Service explores the link between music and colour. Can music be colourful?
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Tristan und Isolde
Sun 2 Oct 2016
Tom Service on the supercharged emotional impact of Wagner's epic opera Tristan und Isolde
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Sound Frontiers: Listening to Recordings
Sun 25 Sep 2016
As part of Radio 3 Live at Southbank Centre, Tom Service explores recorded sound.
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Why is music addicted to bass?
Sun 18 Sep 2016
Tom Service explores the intrinsic importance to humans of bass in music.
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Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto
Sun 11 Sep 2016
Tom Service explores Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto.
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Chasing a Fugue
Sun 10 Jul 2016
Tom Service explores fugues. How do they work and why are they important?
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Why does music move us?
Sun 3 Jul 2016
Tom Service investigates how music can tug on our heartstrings like nothing else.
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Beethoven - Hero or Villain?
Sun 26 Jun 2016
Tom Service asks if posterity's casting of Beethoven as a hero is problematic.
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Is Birdsong Music?
Sun 19 Jun 2016
Tom Service asks how birdsong has inspired and equipped human music over the years.
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How do you describe a teaspoon in music?
Sun 12 Jun 2016
Tom Service explores music's power to describe, illustrate and tell stories in sound.
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How Do You Make a National Anthem?
Sun 5 Jun 2016
Tom Service on the music, meaning and occasional madness of national anthems.
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What's All that Noise?
Sun 22 May 2016
Tom Service asks when is noise just noise, and when is it music.
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What is it about Mozart?
Sun 15 May 2016
Tom Service asks, 'What is it about Mozart?' Rethink music with The Listening Service.
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Repetition
Sun 8 May 2016
Tom Service and Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis explore why repetition is essential in music.
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The Listening Service Extra 12 of 12 - Schoenberg’s Compositional Vision
Thu 29 Dec 2016
Tom explores how Schoenberg hears the music that he is going to write.
Why do we call it 'classical' music?
Tom Service poses a very simple question (with a not-so-simple answer).
Six of the world's most extreme voices
From babies to Mongolian throat singers: whose voice is the most extreme of all?
How did the number 12 revolutionise music?
Why are we all addicted to bass?
Watch the animations
Join Tom Service on a musical journey through beginnings, repetition and bass lines.
When does noise become music?
We like to think we can separate “noise” from “music”, but is it that simple?