The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #173703   Message #4222408
Posted By: FreddyHeadey
11-May-25 - 07:28 PM
Thread Name: BBC Radio This week 2025
Subject: RE: BBC Radio This week 2025
Coming up this week


The Song Detectorists - 2025
The Essay - Radio 3

Matthew Bannister travels across England to find out about the music discovered in County Record Offices and reimagined for the 21st Century by the folk musician and academic Nancy Kerr.
Matthew Bannister has been the host of Folk On Foot, a podcast which explores folk music and its connection with landscape in the UK, since 2018 and has often wondered about where “folk music” comes from. When he heard about Nancy Kerr’s involvement in a new project, Music, Heritage, Place he wanted to know more.
Researchers from Royal Holloway and Newcastle University have been collaborating on an AHRC funded project sending out researchers, the “song detectorists”, to sift through the archives held in County Record Offices across England looking for music. They’ve returned with musical gems that Nancy Kerr has arranged and the discoveries are offering new insights into the way that music was shared and enjoyed in the past outside of the places historians and musicologists have traditionally expected to find it.


1. Norfolk
Matthew Bannister is in Norwich to visit the Norfolk County Record Office where researchers have found some remarkable manuscripts including an 18th century music book from a village band in Mileham and a ballad written by a woman ousted from her home in the 17th century. Nancy Kerr has made new musical arrangements for her band The Melrose Quartet. As dusk falls, Matthew visits the remains of the magnificent Hales Hall deep in the Norfolk countryside.
We hear from Stephen Rose of Royal Holloway and Bridget Yates a local researcher and music performed by the Melrose Quartet: Nancy Kerr, James Fagan, and Jess and Richard Arrowsmith.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002br4b

2. Wakefield
Matthew Bannister visits Nostell Priory, a grand Palladian house just outside Wakefield, which was the home of Louisa Winn from about 1819. Louisa was an accomplished musician and transcriber who collected some of her favourite tunes in a book - including piano arrangements of Rossini operas and an intriguing French Canadian song that hints at global connections.
In the grand saloon, Matthew meets Simon McCormack the house’s curator who shows him Louisa Winn’s piano and allows him to pluck a harp string. Andrew Frampton, a pianist and researcher at Newcastle University takes Matthew to the West Yorkshire Archive Service in Wakefield. to see Louisa’s music book and some of her sketches of Mont Blanc. Andrew plays some of her music, recorded especially at SJE Arts, and we hear from Nancy Kerr about her fascination with the song Danse Canadienne which is performed by the Melrose Quartet: Nancy Kerr, James Fagan, and Jess and Richard Arrowsmith.


3. Cornwall
Matthew Bannister is in a pub near Redruth with the singer and Cornish music researcher Hilary Coleman. She tells him about the tradition of carol singing, especially amongst tin miners, which survives in Cornwall today.
She and Matthew visit Kresen Kernow, to look at “Eleanor Morgan’s book”,one of the sources used by the Cornish carol collector Davies Gilbert for his carol collection which was published in 1822.
The identity of Eleanor Morgan remains a tantalising mystery. Caro Lesemann-Elliot from Royal Holloway talks about Davies Gilbert’s failure to credit the people whose music he collected.
There’s a version of one of the carols: Hark Hark, What News the Angels Bring that emerged in Australia. Tin miners from Cornwall emigrated to Australia in the 19th century taking their carols with them. Nancy Kerr brings the original Cornish and migrated Australian versions back together.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002br26

4. Hampshire
Matthew Bannister visits the village of Nether Wallop in Hampshire which was the home of Richard Pyle, a wool trader who collected music into a tune book that is kept at the Hampshire Archives in Winchester. He meets Sarah Lewin the archivist there who is also a musician with a group that reenacts historical music.
Stephen Rose from Royal Holloway University explains why the tune book is so important demonstrating that a small English country village was musically connected to places far beyond its county borders.
Nancy Kerr has created a set for her band the Melrose Quartet that explores the music in the book including a new version of what Richard Pyle calls Evening Hymn which is an arrangement of Tallis' Canon. New words draw on Nether Wallop’s location in the Test Valley, where Richard Adam’s novel Watership Down was set. The new version becomes Silverweed Hymn to Richard Pyle's canon.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002br8q

5. Newcastle
Matthew Bannister is allowed a very rare glimpse of Henry Atkinson’s tune book from 1695. He’s with Steph Carter and Kirsten Gibson from Newcastle University. The book is kept at the Northumberland Archives at the Woodhorn Museum on the site of an old coal mine in Ashington.
Henry Atkinson was a hostman, a member of a cartel of businessmen in Newcastle who controlled the buying and selling of coal. He was also a musician and collected his favourite fiddle tunes handwritten in a small book. Although considered very precious now Steph and Kirsten tell Matthew that books like Henry Atkinson’s were quite common. Music making was a sociable activity and many more people were musically active far away from the big cultural centres of London and the University towns than has been previously understood.
Music from the book has been arranged by Nancy Kerr and is performed by The Melrose Quartet: Nancy Kerr, James Fagan, and Jess and Richard Arrowsmith.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002bsl6

"Kirsten Gibson, Professor of Early Modern Music and Culture at Newcastle University, says This project is vital for reframing our understanding of the musical lives of people beyond London and for telling new stories about music-making beyond the well-studied musical centres and with a broader range of people not studied before."
“From the histories of sacred song, industry and global migration uncovered in Cornwall’s village carol collections, to a 17th-century coal merchant’s “bible” of classic Northumbrian fiddle tunes, across five counties and three centuries – we are sure listeners will hear something new in these musical gems”.

Press Office Newcastle University