Uneasy Listening

Uneasy Listening examines three challenging composers – Karlheinz Stockhausen, Morton Feldman and John Cage - who, as mid-20th century artists, were responsible for turning classical music upside down and discomforting audiences.

Once the height of sophistication, they’re now seen as vibrant music usurpers of the past. Their legacies are increasingly obscured by a contemporary reluctance to perform challenging or unwieldy works, with mischievous or taboo breaking behaviour and an embrace of what is perceived as difficultness, in pursuit of artistic originality.

Uneasy Listening explores why that is and how rehabilitation of these ‘troublemaker’ artists and others like them, through a bold defence of their challenging work and personalities, may help to lift the shadows that have fallen over their complicated artistry.

For listeners, it will be a chance to understand why the difficultness matters, why it is integral, why a reluctance to engage with the complexity may reveal something about contemporary musical prejudices, and how we might overcome those.

Presenter: Jude Rogers
Editor: Nick Romero
Producer: Andrew McGibbon

A Curtains For Radio production for BBC Radio 4