Proms Extra: Devils and Paganini
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 24 August 2016
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The composer and performer Paganini is alleged to have sold his soul to the Devil in order to become a musical prodigy. The Reverend Richard Coles and poet Imtiaz Dharker discuss the Devil in Christian and Islamic cultures. The discussion is chaired by Dr Christopher Harding from the University of Edinburgh who was selected as one of ten New Generation Thinkers in 2013. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:41.3 | Hello and welcome to this proms extra event. He is a comet, for never did a flaming body appear so unexpectedly in the heavens of art, |
| 0:48.3 | or excite in the course of his long orbit, greater amazement mixed with a sort of terror before it disappeared forever. |
| 0:57.3 | Berlioz, speaking about his friend Niccolo Paganini, whose body was buried in a cemetery in |
| 1:02.8 | Parma 140 years ago this year, and whose musical vision we've just enjoyed as reinterpreted |
| 1:09.0 | by Rachmaninov. Paganini had died nearly 40 years before, |
| 1:14.0 | but the church had refused him a Catholic burial. His friends blamed a rumor persisting |
| 1:19.3 | throughout Paganini's career about the source of his blazing talent with the violin. Paganini himself |
| 1:25.9 | recalled once being confronted by an audience member after a celebrated |
| 1:30.2 | Paris debut. He said he saw nothing surprising in my performance. Since while I was playing my |
| 1:37.0 | variations, he had distinctly seen the devil at my elbow, directing my arm and guiding my bow. He was |
| 1:44.1 | clothed in red, had horns on his head, |
| 1:46.9 | and carried his tail between his legs. The devil then, source of all evil, tempter, whisperer, |
| 1:55.3 | giver of extraordinary talent, latterly lending his image and name to all things naughty but nice. So what are we to |
| 2:02.6 | make of such a magnificently varied career? And do we metaphorise and marginalise the devil at our peril? |
| 2:10.2 | To help us puzzle it through, two people with magnificently varied careers of their own. |
| 2:14.6 | Intias Darca is a poet, an artist and a filmmaker. |
| 2:18.6 | Reverend Richard Coles is a priest, |
| 2:20.4 | a former pop sensation as one half of the communards, |
| 2:23.1 | and a presenter of BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.