{"id":13681,"date":"2022-05-16T13:00:44","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=13681"},"modified":"2022-05-16T13:00:44","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T11:00:44","slug":"bbc-at-100-a-cultural-institution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/2022\/05\/16\/bbc-at-100-a-cultural-institution\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC at 100: A cultural institution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BBC at 100 PART 6<\/span><\/h3>\n\n

A cultural institution<\/h1>\n\n

Mixing music with drama and the ancient with the cutting-edge, the BBC\u2019s Third Programme set out to scale the shining peaks of \u201chigh culture\u201d. But, says David Hendy<\/span>, its lofty aims alienated as much as they allured<\/h5>\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n
On the HistoryExtra podcast<\/em><\/strong><\/h6>\n\n
\n\n
\"\"
Global voices<\/span><\/strong> Jan Smuts, prime minister of the Union of South Africa, talks to journalists in London in April 1946. That September, Smuts was among the contributors to the launch day of the BBC\u2019s new Third Programme<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

A<\/span>t 6pm on 29 September 1946, when the Third Programme took to the air for the first time, it seemed as if the BBC was dramatically abandoning one of its core \u201cReithian\u201d principles. The corporation\u2019s \u201cfounding father\u201d, John Reith, had always insisted that the broadcaster\u2019s purpose had been to make \u201call that is best\u201d available to \u201cthe greatest number\u201d. Yet here was the Third, apparently threatening to ring-fence high culture for a minority.<\/p>\n\n

Reith, already long departed from the role of director general, harrumphed from the sidelines. True, the very first item in that first Sunday\u2019s schedule was accessible enough. How to Listen <\/em>was a \u201csatirical review\u201d that took the opportunity to poke gentle fun at the Third Programme\u2019s grand pretensions before anyone else did. The rest of the night\u2019s output proved a little more demanding, however. There was Bach\u2019s Goldberg <\/em>Variations, <\/em>played \u2013 rather unusually for the time \u2013 on the harpsichord, followed by \u201cReflections on World Affairs\u201d from the South African prime minister Jan Smuts. Later there were madrigals by Monteverdi conducted by Nadia Boulanger, a live concert featuring works by Hubert Parry and Vaughan Williams, and a specially commissioned Festival Overture from Benjamin Britten.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
George Barnes, the first controller of the new Third Programme, pictured in 1946. The service, Barnes cautioned, was not for everyone <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

\u201c<\/span>The Third Programme\u2019s first head put it bluntly: there would, he warned, be few props. Listeners would need to \u2018make an effort\u2019\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

As for the following days, publicity promised new music from the composer Michael Tippett, contemporary poetry in its original French, talks on James Joyce and atomic energy, Sartre uncensored, nearly four hours of Bernard Shaw, plus the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus\u2019s Agamemnon. <\/em>Officially, the BBC described this extraordinarily ambitious new service as something for \u201cthe alert and receptive\u201d listener. The Third\u2019s first head, George Barnes, put it rather more bluntly: there would, he warned, be few props. Listeners would need to \u201cmake an effort\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Few inside the corporation were under any illusions as to the scale of the challenge they had set themselves \u2013 or how pretentious it might all appear. For, as one senior figure put it, the British people had long demonstrated a widely held prejudice \u201cagainst people being too clever\u201d. Yet in his famous wartime plan for a welfare state, William Beveridge had included ignorance \u2013 alongside want, disease, squalor and idleness \u2013 as one of the giants to be slayed. The postwar Labour government subsequently embraced the idea that culture and learning were vital ingredients of the \u201cNew Jerusalem\u201d it aimed to build \u2013a view that clearly resonated with the BBC\u2019s own deeply rooted ambition to spread the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold\u2019s famous \u201csweetness and light\u201d throughout the land.<\/p>\n\n

The BBC had other, more strategic considerations to face in the years after 1945. The two wartime radio services, the Home and the Forces, had been wideranging and popular. But director general William Haley worried that letting the forces\u2019 easy-listening tradition continue in the form of the Light Programme without creating another service for what insiders called \u201cthe really intelligent section of the public\u201d would unbalance the BBC\u2019s overall peacetime output. Haley was keen, too, to build on the corporation\u2019s reputation abroad, which was at an all-time high due to its extraordinary successes broadcasting vital information to occupied Europe.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Michael Tippett and Vaughan Williams (second and third from left) in 1958. The composers played key roles in a campaign to preserve the Third Programme<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

New interpretations <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

When the Third Programme was finally unveiled, Haley saw it as potentially the greatest civilising influence in the postwar world. There would be no need to chase ratings, no fixed points in the schedule. Talks, concerts and plays would all get whatever time they deserved. And after years of relative isolation, there would be a special attempt to reconnect Britain with the best of world culture. The critics salivated.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Rationing might still be a be a dreary reality on the high street, The <\/em>Listener <\/em>proclaimed, but on the nation\u2019s airwaves there would be a leap \u201cfrom frugality to plenty\u201d.<\/p>\n\n

Over the next few years, there were certainly some startlingly original treats for committed listeners. Virgil\u2019s Aeneid <\/em>might have been a good 2,000 years old, but for its 1951 production the Third commissioned the University of Oxford\u2019s professor of poetry, Cecil Day Lewis, to come up with a fresh translation. Its producers sensed that, in the years of reconstruction after the Second World War, the story of a refugee from war sailing across the perilous Mediterranean to reach the shores of Italy \u2013a tale that had shaped so powerfully the myth of Rome\u2019s foundation as a civilisation \u2013 was especially resonant. The adaptation, designed very much to be spoken rather than read, was vast in scale. By the end of its three-month run, it was loudly praised by the critics for bringing Virgil \u201cfrom the stuffy shades of the classroom into blazing sunshine\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\"\"
One of the ancient tablets featuring the Linear B script. Architect Michael Ventris revealed his translation of their text live on the Third Programme<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Occasionally, the Third earned a mention not just in the critics\u2019 columns but in the news headlines \u2013 as, for instance, when the solution to one of the great archaeological riddles of the 20th century was announced live on air. At the turn of the century, while excavating the ruins of a palace at Knossos in <\/span>Crete, the archaeologist Arthur Evans had unearthed clay tablets that were more than 3,000 years old, many of which had scratched into them a mysterious script \u2013 Linear B. Despite the best efforts of several generations of scholars, the tablets had remained unreadable \u2013 leaving the language behind them, and the whole Minoan civilisation that they represented, unknowable. But, one evening in 1952, a Third Programme producer, Prue Smith, happened to have been visiting the Highgate home of Michael Ventris, a young British architect with a precocious interest in ancient scripts. Ventris, it transpired, had been trying to decipher the Knossos tablets for years. Now, when he came late to the dinner table, he was profusely apologetic. <\/span>\u201cI\u2019m terribly sorry to have kept you waiting,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I\u2019ve done it.\u201d Smith and Ventris agreed between themselves that he would announce his momentous discovery not in an obscure journal or to the national press, but on the radio. When he took to the microphone on Tuesday 1 July, Ventris changed our view of Aegean history at a stroke. He also put a seal on the Third\u2019s reputation <\/span>for allowing its listeners to be the first to hear new ideas as they entered the public realm.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Musical range<\/span><\/strong> Composer and conductor Igor Stravinsky rehearses with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, 1958. The Third Programme aired a diverse array of performances <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Quality or quantity <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Music did not yet dominate the Third\u2019s schedule. Yet there were plenty of ear-catching moments that established it as a platform not just for airing the existing canon but for changing what counted as part of the canon to begin with: startling new work from Peter Maxwell-Davies and Benjamin Britten; modern jazz; rediscoveries from the lost early music of the Renaissance; deliberately provocative programming that placed Bach cheek by jowl with Stravinsky. There was even, in 1960, the very first performance of Mahler\u2019s 10th Symphony. It had been left uncompleted at the time of the composer\u2019s death in 1911, but the BBC producer Deryck Cook ewent back to the originals coreanddid enough \u201cconjectural fillingin\u201d tobuild the foundations of aversion still widely used today.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Such riches did not guarantee big audiences. Haley had calculated that, in what he viewed as his \u201cpyramid\u201d of three radio services, the Third, <\/span>occupying the glittering summit, would attract perhaps 1 in 10 of all listeners. He hoped, too, that through the BBC\u2019s efforts to nurture public taste, this figure would grow over time. Alas, it did not take long to discover that as few as 1 in 100 people were listening. The <\/span>Daily <\/em>Mirror <\/em>soon reported mischievously that some inside the BBC were referring to the new service as \u201cHaley\u2019s Third Symphony, for orchestra and two listeners\u201d.<\/p>\n\n

Some compromises to the Third\u2019s rigorous schedule proved necessary. In 1951, a season of \u201cLight Orchestral Concerts\u201d was unveiled; six years later, big slices of airtime were taken away to make room for \u201cNetwork Three\u201d, a potpourri of hobby programmes, many of them instantly forgettable. Such measures provoked high-profile campaigns by Britain\u2019s cultural elite. Michael Tippett, Vaughan Williams and TS Eliot helped launch the \u201cSound Broadcasting Defence Society\u201d, and in a typically eloquent talk, EM Forster reminded the BBC that the Third\u2019s mission was to chase quality, not quantity.<\/p>\n\n

But the reality was that the BBC\u2019s services always had a delicate line to tread: to be ahead of public taste, but never so far ahead that people would not follow. The Third was no exception to this rule. Yet it remained sufficiently distinctive in its commitment to high culture that in the 1950s it inspired overseas broadcasters, such as RAI in Italy, to launch radio services on a strikingly similar model. As William Haley had always hoped, it was, it seemed, becoming \u201cthe envy of the world\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\n\n

David Hendy <\/strong>is emeritus professor at the University of Sussex. His latest book is The <\/em>BBC: <\/em>A <\/em>People\u2019s <\/em>History <\/em>(Profile, 2022)<\/p>\n\n

VISIT<\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

Explore online exhibitions <\/strong>that showcase different aspects of the BBC\u2019s history at bbc.co.uk\/100<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n

<\/div>
\n

IN FOCUS <\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

How Under Milk Wood realised the Third Programme\u2019s potential<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Welsh wonder <\/span><\/strong>Dylan Thomas during a BBC broadcast in 1948. The writer made a series of radio recordings in the 1940s, and was rehearsing a new drama at the time of his death<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At 7.25pm on 25 January 1954, the Third Programme aired 90 minutes of radio that would go down in history as one of broadcasting\u2019s creative pinnacles, its opening words destined to be among the most famous lines in British poetry:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To begin at the beginning: it is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters\u2019-and-rabbits\u2019 wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crow-black, fishingboat-bobbing sea.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under Milk Wood <\/em>went on to treat listeners to a bawdy journey through the night-time dreams and working days of Organ Morgan, Polly Garter, Captain Cat and a multitudinous cast of other characters in the small fictional Welsh village of Llareggub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its author was the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who was also due to have been the drama\u2019s narrator but died before what he called his \u201cwretched script\u201d was ready. That Under <\/em>Milk <\/em>Wood <\/em>got on the air at all was largely down to the BBC\u2019s infinitely patient producer, Douglas Cleverdon, who\u2019d spent half a decade cajoling a script out of Thomas. It was Cleverdon who persuaded the author to abandon an early, over-elaborate storyline, when it looked as if Thomas was wearing himself to a thread over the commission. It was also Cleverdon\u2019s inspired last-minute decision to cast the film actor Richard Burton as replacement narrator after Thomas\u2019s untimely death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not every critic was impressed by Under <\/em>Milk <\/em>Wood. <\/em>Kingsley Amis, for one, regarded Thomas\u2019s work as \u201csentimentalising, ignorant horsepiss\u201d. Most reviewers, however, were thoroughly spellbound by the rhythm and texture of the lines, delivered with gusto by the production\u2019s all-Welsh cast. And between them Thomas and Cleverdon had delivered on one of the Third Programme\u2019s key promises: that as well as sharing with listeners the established highlights of \u201chigh culture\u201d, here was a radio service that would be creating brand new art all of its own.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

PICTURE CREDITS: BBC ARCHIVE\/GETTY IMAGES\/ALAMY<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC at 100 PART 6 A cultural institution Mixing music with drama and the ancient with the cutting-edge, the BBC\u2019s Third Programme set out to scale the shining peaks of \u201chigh culture\u201d. But, says David Hendy, its lofty aims alienated as much as they allured On the HistoryExtra podcast At 6pm on 29 September 1946, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":13994,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":"","purple_page_number":"46","purple_custom_meta_purple_page_number":"46","purple_seq_number":"1","purple_custom_meta_purple_seq_number":"1","purple_source_article":"article_46-1.xml","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_article":"article_46-1.xml","purple_source_issue":"June-2022","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_issue":"June-2022","purple_external_id":"June-2022-46-1","purple_custom_meta_purple_external_id":"June-2022-46-1","purple_issue_code":"|0000085632||","purple_custom_meta_purple_issue_code":"|0000085632||","purple_android_product":"com.im.historymag.282","purple_custom_meta_purple_android_product":"com.im.historymag.282","purple_ios_product":"com.im.historymag.282","purple_custom_meta_purple_ios_product":"com.im.historymag.282","purple_web_product":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_web_product":"","purple_publication_id":"de2d4977-6998-4200-99aa-454f8dbebdf9","purple_migrated":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"2022-05-16T11:00:53Z","apple_news_article-theme":"","apple_news_api_id":"db0d06d4-a713-46a2-90eb-ce753081844a","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2022-05-16T11:00:53Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A2w0G1KcTRqKQ6851MIGESg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":true,"apple_news_is_preview":true,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_article_theme":"","apple_news_sections":"[]"},"categories":[17],"tags":[46],"apple_news_notices":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-613510460_cmyk-e1651751832320.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"10","apple_news_title":""},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-613510460_cmyk-e1651751832320.jpg",1123,841,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-613510460_cmyk-e1651751832320-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-613510460_cmyk-e1651751832320-300x225.jpg",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-613510460_cmyk-e1651751832320-768x575.jpg",768,575,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-613510460_cmyk-e1651751832320-1024x767.jpg",800,599,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-613510460_cmyk-1536x1163.jpg",1536,1163,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-613510460_cmyk-e1651751832320.jpg",1123,841,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"BBC at 100 PART 6 A cultural institution Mixing music with drama and the ancient with the cutting-edge, the BBC\u2019s Third Programme set out to scale the shining peaks of \u201chigh culture\u201d. But, says David Hendy, its lofty aims alienated as much as they allured On the HistoryExtra podcast At 6pm on 29 September 1946,…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13681"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13681"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14746,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13681\/revisions\/14746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}