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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Collage, writ large: Berio's Sinfonia
Sun 5 Mar 2023
Tom Service explores Luciano Berio's 1968 Sinfonia for orchestra and 8 amplified voices.
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Mystery, rumour and deception: Mozart's Requiem
Sun 19 Feb 2023
Tom Service dissects Mozart's final, unfinished masterpiece.
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Symphonic Steampunk: Saint-Sa毛ns's Organ Symphony
Sun 5 Feb 2023
Tom Service dissects Camille Saint-Sa毛ns's Third 'Organ' Symphony.
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David Lang: The Little Match Girl Passion
Sun 15 Jan 2023
Tom Service explores Lang's Pulitzer-Prize-winning secular take on the Christian Passion.
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Also Sprach Zarathustra: Strauss鈥檚 New Dawn
New Year's Day 2023
Tom explores a piece composed by Strauss, inspired by Nietzsche and made famous by Kubrick
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Britten's Choral Christmas
Sun 11 Dec 2022
Tom Service explores the stories behind some of Britten's best-loved festive works.
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Pr茅lude 脿 l'apr猫s-midi d'un faune: Half Man, Half Myth, All Debussy
Sun 4 Dec 2022
Tom Service plunges into the heady sound world of the Pr茅lude 脿 l'apr猫s-midi d'un faune.
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Kurt Weill and The Threepenny Opera
Sun 20 Nov 2022
Tom Service dives into the decadent sound world of Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera.
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Steve Reich's Different Trains: Minimalism and Memory
Sun 6 Nov 2022
Tom Service explores the minimalist composer Steve Reich's 1988 piece Different Trains.
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The Hebrides Overture: Mendelssohn's melodious cave
Sun 23 Oct 2022
Tom Service explores the story behind the very first orchestral tone poem.
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Musical Time Travel: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams
Fri 14 Oct 2022
Tom Service on one of Vaughan Williams' most spellbinding pieces of music.
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Stormy Weather
Sun 25 Sep 2022
Tom explores how storms have inspired composers and musicians from Beethoven to Britten.
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The Enchantment of Chant
Sun 18 Sep 2022
Tom explores how chant has resonated across a thousand years of music.
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TV Themes
Sun 10 Jul 2022
Tom Service explores television themes with Oscar-winning composer Anne Dudley.
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The Music of Sound
Sun 26 Jun 2022
Tom Service on the mutually creative relationship between music and its surroundings.
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What's the point of cadenzas?
Sun 12 Jun 2022
Tom Service explores cadenzas with the American pianist Jeremy Denk at the Hay Festival.
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Royal Music
Sun 5 Jun 2022
Music fit for kings, queens, princes and princesses: but what do we mean by royal music?
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Can music be funny?
Sun 22 May 2022
Tom Service on the art of classical music comedy. And it's not necessarily about timing.
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The Musical Recycling Plant
Sun 8 May 2022
From composers to composters: how and why do composers re-use their own music?
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What's in a Name?
Sun 24 Apr 2022
Tom Service on the often baffling language of classical music naming and numbering.
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Song Cycles and Concept Albums
Sun 10 Apr 2022
Tom Service explores the connections between song cycles and concept albums.
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Finishing the Hat
Sun 27 Mar 2022
Tom Service explores the lyrics and legacy of musical theatre composer Stephen Sondheim.
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John Williams - the Force of Music!
Sun 20 Mar 2022
Tom Service has a close encounter with the film music of John Williams.
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Classical Crossover
Sun 20 Feb 2022
Tom Service turns his ears to a musical world where classical and pop converge.
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Recorders
Sun 30 Jan 2022
Tom Service explores the music and mystery of that schooldays favourite - the recorder.
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Dancing about Architecture
Sun 23 Jan 2022
Is writing about music really like dancing about architecture?
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Making Overtures
Sun 2 Jan 2022
Tom Service explores the rise and fall of the musical curtain-raiser.
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?
How Schoenberg opened a new cosmos for composers and listeners to explore.
Why are we all addicted to bass?
Bass is everywhere, but why do we enjoy it? Join Tom Service on a journey of discovery.
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 鈥渘oise鈥� from 鈥渕usic鈥�, but is it that simple?
