Italian courts and churches began employing castrato singers in the late sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century, the singers occupied a celebrity status on the operatic stage. Constructed through surgical alteration and further modified by rigorous training, castrati inhabited human bodies that had been “mechanized” to produce sounds in ways that unmec ... Show More
Yesterday
Sharon White Rewires Disco
At the center of 1970s New York's most iconic clubs—from the celebrity-studded Studio 54 to the premiere lesbian discotheque Sahara—stood a queer Black woman on the turntables: Sharon White. With a sound she describes as "edgy, deep, aggressive, tech, synthy, percussive and lush, ... Show More
1h 8m
Nov 15
Lucy Caplan, "Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Recently, musicologists and others have started writing about Black participation in opera. Lucy Caplan’s Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera (Harvard UP, 2025) is a major new publication on this topic. Caplan examines what she calls a Black operati ... Show More
59m 59s
Apr 2024
Richard Beaudoin, "Sounds As They Are: The unwritten music in classical recordings" (Oxford UP, 2024)
In a recording, what sounds count as music? Sounds made by a musician's body--including inhales, finger taps, and grunts--have for decades been dismissed as extraneous noises. In Sounds As They Are: The unwritten music in classical recordings (Oxford UP, 2024), author Richard Bea ... Show More
1h 24m
Jan 2024
William G. Pooley, "Body and Tradition in 19th-Century France: Félix Arnaudin and the Moorlands of Gascony, 1870-1914" (Oxford UP, 2019)
The moorlands of Gascony are often considered one of the most dramatic examples of top-down rural modernization in nineteenth-century Europe. From an area of open moors, they were transformed in one generation into the largest man-made forest in Europe.
Body and Tradition in Nine ... Show More
58m 24s
Aug 2024
George Musgrave, "The England No One Cares About: Lyrics from Suburbia" (Goldsmiths Press, 2023)
An exploration of the much-derided English suburbs through rap music.
There are many different Englands. From the much-romanticized rolling countryside, to the cosmopolitanism of the inner cities (embraced by some as progressive, multicultural enlightenment and derided by others ... Show More
1h 28m
May 2023
Arnold Schoenberg: The Man who Changed Music
Captain, We Hit A Schoenberg! Did Arnold Schoenberg break Classical music? Widely considered the greatest composer of the 20th century, Schoenburg’s innovations in ‘atonality’ (a term he detested throughout his life) changed the trajectory of music forever. In this episode, Joann ... Show More
27m 21s
Jun 2015
Singers on Singing - Warm-Ups
Hear our experts’ many tips and tricks for warming up – from practising in Italian, to talking in a higher voice, and why basses can enjoy longer lie-ins before morning rehearsals than sopranos. Our experts vocal trainer Mary King, counter-tenor Iestyn Davies, soprano Angel Blue ... Show More
7m 39s
Sep 26
The Dead Composer Whose ‘Brain’ Still Makes Music
In a hauntingly innovative exhibit, brain cells grown from the late composer Alvin Lucier’s blood generate sound. Set in a museum in Perth, Australia, the installation blurs the line between art and neuroscience. Host Rachel Feltman and associate editor Allison Parshall explore t ... Show More
25m 25s
Sep 30
Ballads of Love and Death
In this enchanting episode, Dr. Eleanor Janega dissolves the boundaries between history, folklore, and music to explore the haunting world of medieval ballads. Joined by author Amy Jeffs, illustrator Gwen Burns and composer/singer Natalie Brice, Eleanor uncovers the timeless stor ... Show More
1h 1m
Jul 2020
Martin James, "State of Base: The Origins of Jungle/Drum and Bass" (Velocity Press, 2020)
The reissue and revision of Martin James’ State of Bass: The Origins of Jungle/Drum & Bass (Velocity Press, 2020) examines the origins and progression of British Junglism in the 1990s.
Rave culture’s clashes with UK government and police drove the scene into a dark space, but jun ... Show More
48m 20s