i am terribly pleased to have rediscovered bbc's music programs. last year, it was yvonne who, in her infectious enthusiasm over chen yi's arrangement of the jasmine flower, first brought the discovering music archives to my attention. i'd listened the episode, and had nearly forgotten about it again, until three nights ago when i suddenly had a desire to hear chinese traditional music. i looked in my asian classical folder and finding an er-hu "jasmine flower" was reminded of chen yi's arrangement of same (performed by the bbc singers) and the interview about the chinese myths cantata (which is a wonderful one, isn't it? i've never noticed that jasmine flower was quoted in turandot if she hadn't pointed it out, but now that she has, it seems obvious.) and so i go to the bbc site and got entirely caught up in listening to the archived episodes - i've just listened to the firebird program - it's one of the narrative ballets i have never seen before - and as charles hazlewood talks about it i can see it before my eyes.

discovering music is a smashing program - i do think - it's very well-produced, and i think it combines the the right proportion of analysis and music, and it's pitched about right for the amateur listener - informative and insightful, carefully explained without being condescending.) and i think the speech component makes such a difference, or else i might just tune in to any american classical station - for the sounds of the bbc always has a steadying influence on me, and it is comforting to have in the background a flow of speech in familiar, comforting accents, even though these days most of bbc no longer uses quite what i think of as "bbc english." but still, when i said, earlier, "rediscovered," it isn't just in reference to yvonne's introduction, but also because the bbc world service was so very much a part of my childhood - it was always playing in the house - always on in my dad's room as he prepared his lessons and marked homework and tidied up, always on at mealtimes too, if my mother wasn't there. (if she was, it was set to a chinese station of course.) i remember the resonance of big ben and thinking this sound has come to me from london, and i remember the five pips before the news. i remember my dad sitting down by the radio same time every weekend to hear alistair cooke's letter from america. and the first poems i've ever heard i heard off poems by post - byron's "destruction of sennacherib" and tennyson's "lady of shalott" and hating lancelot as a child because somehow, even though the feeling was undefined, i blamed him for her death - as if at that age i already knew, or was beginning to know - what christabel and maud and a.s. byatt did. i remember listening to brain of britain and being excited for the contestants, and following any number of radio plays which made me laugh even though i was too young to understand them in entirety. human voices made me so happy not only because of penelope fitzgerald's gentle wit but because all of a sudden i was on the inside of the bbc. and then i always think of my dad, who when he was younger had to stay up secretly with my aunt at 3 in the morning with a radio with the volume turned low just so that they can to listen to one of his short stories being broadcast, because he didn't dare tell my grandfather he'd send in a story to the bbc.

so, bbc, i do love you, though it has been years, and you shall be my radio station again. i will keep you on all the time - what is the point of a t1 connection if you didn't stream music, yes?