Here on BBC Radio 3 we’ve marked many anniversaries over the years, most recently that of Vaughan Williams at 150. Across the BBC we are this month celebrating our own centenary - the centenary of the BBC itself and also of the first radio broadcasts in November 2022.

On Friday 28 October we broadcast a celebration of the centenary of Radio Orchestra 2ZY – which in time was to become the BBC Philharmonic - with the ensemble presenting a programme culminating with Beethoven’s 9^th but also featuring Erland Cooper’s Window over Rackwick – his nod to Peter Maxwell Davies, the Philharmonic’s first conductor composer - and Chanticleer Overture by Ruth Gipps, a composer who conducted the orchestra many times and who is ripe for further discovery.

But Radio 3 is taking the occasion to reinforce its tradition, and the tradition of its predecessor the Third Programme, of celebrating music and sound and the unique joy in sound that radio can bring. In 1946 our mission was to make culture previously considered the preserve of the elite available to all. That continues to this day, even as tastes evolve and reference points become ever broader . 

The centre of all this is our Soundscape of a Century, a look back over 100 years through sounds and moments of history with classical music – and occasionally other genres – providing a musical commentary of each decade over that 100 years. Sometimes the music is contemporary and sometimes just an appropriate illustration of a response to events, an example of how music can interact in so many ways with events – such as the Russian Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the famous Rostropovich Prom performance. In a sense, this illustrates both the power of music and the power of radio working together: of music to engage the mind, sprit and emotions, and of Radio to present, join and engage things in new ways that give the listener new insights into what music means to them and the complex response it evokes. In a sense, it sums up the inherent potential of a network like Radio 3.

Radio 3 is famous for its dramas, as was the Third programme before it. We have created a radiophonic adaptation of Beowulf, the early English poem, drawing on as many of the versions of the piece  broadcast by the BBC, with the version by Ted Hughes acting as a thread through the whole broadcast.

In Churchill versus Reith we examine a major test of the BBC’s independence and impartiality, when then Home Secretary Churchill tried to turn the Corporation into an arm of Government – the BBC’s first Director General fighting this with determination and establishing the BBC’s position as a reliable source of news and truth about world events.

As well as bringing classical and other music to a wide audience, broadcasting Shakespeare to the masses has been a key part of our output over many years – and we acknowledge this in a five part essay series The Beeb and the Bard presented by Samuel West and Dr Andrea Smith.  

An early pioneer of radio as art – modernist art – was Lance Sievking, who in 1928 alarmed the nation with a 70 minute broadcast ‘The Kaleidoscope’, made of assembled sounds and music, put together live in the studio without a pause or commentary – an early example of radio as art which we present regularly on Radio 3 in our Between the Ears slot. So we had to celebrate this  exceptional feat of live broadcasting involving seven different studios with actors, a choir, a quintet, a jazz band, sound effects and a full orchestra in A New Art.  This programme is part of a wider series of radio essays named The Sonic Century, marking special moments, figures, and technologies in radio broadcasting. As part of this  we also present a new poem The Radio of the Future by Paul Farley, A Life Refracted – a ‘conception  to grave’ portrayal of the human lifespan with a radiophonic mixing of the BBC archive - and finally a history of The Microphone – a too often overlooked instrument without which Radio – or indeed the recorded sound we enjoy – would not be possible.

The BBC was an influential player in the development of the early music movement – and in a five part and wonderfully researched essay series Renewing the Past, Nicholas Kenyon looks into the twists and turns of how the BBC reflected various early music movements and helped give a platform to many pioneers who made the notion of early music a real thing for listeners and for the world.

Finally, from Monday 14 November our Breakfast programme will offer listeners an aural glimpse of the music broadcast by the BBC 100 years ago, in its broadcasting infancy, with specially commissioned arrangements by Daniel Whibley of the music that was played in those early years of the BBC - performed by the BBC Philharmonic.

All of this programming, together with activity over the rest of the year showcasing the BBC Orchestras and Choirs and the Centenary, is a celebration of the riches of the past and a confident nod to the future. The power of radio to make the best music available for all to discover and explore further, whether listening live as it happens or whenever you want to online, continues to be an important role and something that just makes life better. We show and we tell the wonders of music’s effect on the heart, mind and spirit. Radio matters, and will continue to matter for anyone who loves music and what music means and who seeks new insights and moments of transcendental insight formed from the happy juxtaposition of the expected and the unexpected. Let’s celebrate radio’s often quirky past, and look to a creative and brave future, a key part of any civil society.