Main: Music of the 40s

Today we continue the theme begun yesterday, and move on from the music of the inter-war period to cover the music of the Second World War and the immediate post-war period.

The bulk of today's performances are original recordings from the war years, with other performances from later in the decade. The programme will run from 2am to approximately 4pm Pacific Time (10:00–00:00 in the UK) and will be followed by a programme of classical music and additional programming to be detailed here later, including the Riel Radio Theatre and Sekai No Discoteque.


Today's programme is presented by Elrik Merlin and produced by thap gump in conjunction with our friends at the Alexandrian Free Library Consortium of Second Life. You can listen to the programme in-world now at http://main.radioriel.org, or simply click here to start your player, if your browser is configured to do so. Listeners in the United States are encouraged to tune in using this link: http://loudcity.com/stations/radio-riel/tune_in


For more information on the Alexandrian Free Library, current exhibits and the work of Consortium members in general, please visit the Alexandrian Free Library website, or one of their branches in-world.
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One Night in November

On the full-moon night of Thursday, November the 14th, 1940 – 70 years ago tomorrow – the city of Coventry in the heart of Britain suffered one of the most intensely concentrated air raids of the Second World War, code-named "Operation Moonlight Sonata", after which 568 people were confirmed killed, 863 seriously wounded and 393 injured.

The ancient city of Coventry was unusual in that industries had grown up within the town rather than in suburban industrial areas, making the relatively small city centre a target. It's also suggested that Hitler was angry about the recent bombing of Munich.

In any event, an estimated 449 bombers reached Coventry that night. The bombing continued for 11 hours, from the first incendiaries falling at 7:10pm until the "All Clear" sounded at 6:16am the next morning. The night was one of terror, repeated over and over.



The great St Michael's Church, only relatively recently (in 1918) made a cathedral, was destroyed, leaving only a shell (right) and its towering spire. The image shown at the top of this article is typical of the devastation: it shows Earl Street looking towards the Town Hall (which was relatively undamaged), whose clock tower is visible in the distance.

It has been suggested that Coventry was not as well defended as it could have been: that the code-breakers at Bletchley Park had discovered that Coventry was going to be the target that night, but that Churchill decided no additional action could be taken to protect the city in case it signalled that Britain had cracked the German coded messages. This idea is hinted at in Coventry-born Alan Pollock's powerful and moving play One Night in November (from which we take the name of today's programme), which premiered in 2008 and has been staged each November since at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry – it ends its current run tonight. However, this suggestion is in fact incorrect, as is evidenced by this article from Bletchley Park and this piece from the Churchill Centre.

After the war, the city of Coventry was rebuilt – virtually from scratch – and since then it has been at the heart of movements of international reconciliation, particularly centred around the Cathedral, which has reached across the world to others touched by the destruction of war.




Today we are remembering the city and people of Coventry, and the victims of war. We'll be playing music of the Second World War years plus some additional material, including Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and Clive Richardson's London Fantasia – originally titled The Coventry Concerto, which tells the story of a day in wartime Coventry in music, with the piano played by the composer, along with the famous Warsaw Concerto by Richard Addinsell, whose success inspired the former work. We will also be playing two songs written about that night in November, Greg Harper's November Sky and Nigel Cuff singing Mike Cooper's Moonlight Sonata. We'll also be playing Symphony No. 3: Sorrowful Songs, by the Polish composer Henryk Górecki, who passed away yesterday, and Philip Glass's Violin Concerto, which appears in the incidental music for the play One Night in November.

You can read more about the Coventry Blitz – and about many other aspects of this great city's history –on the Historic Coventry web site.


Today's programme is presented by Elrik Merlin and produced by thap gump in conjunction with our friends at the Alexandrian Free Library Consortium of Second Life. You can listen to the programme in-world now at http://main.radioriel.org, or simply click here to start your player, if your browser is configured to do so. Listeners in the United States are encouraged to tune in using this link: http://loudcity.com/stations/radio-riel/tune_in

For more information on the Alexandrian Free Library, current exhibits and the work of Consortium members in general, please visit the Alexandrian Free Library website, or one of their branches in-world.
Source URL: http://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/Second%20World%20War
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From the Library: The Battle of Britain

An Observer Corps spotter scans the wartime skies over London
from a rooftop, with St Paul's Cathedral in the background.
Photo courtesy of the US National Archives & Records Administration
Seventy years ago this week, the Battle of Britain was at its peak, characterised by the most intense period of Nazi Luftwaffe bombing of Britain that took place between 10 July and 31 October 1940. The name derives from a speech by Prime Minister Winston Churchill: "The Battle of France is over... the Battle of Britain is about to begin".



HMSO poster echoing Churchill's
famous words of August 20, 1940
"Never in the field of human conflict
was so much owed by so many
to so few"
Initially, from around July 1940, the target was British ports and shipping; the Luftwaffe then moved on to target RAF airfields and infrastructure in an attempt to take control of the air; and finally London and other major cities were targeted. The objective was to defeat the Royal Air Force and establish air supremacy, and thus either force British surrender or make an invasion ("Operation Sealion") possible. Hitler's failure to achieve this was a major turning point in the Second World War.

Today we'll be remembering the Battle of Britain with music of the war years, extracts from famous speeches and news broadcasts, and actuality recorded at the time including interviews with pilots, along with classic film music from movies depicting the events, including scores by both Sir William Walton and Ron Goodwin for the 1969 film The Battle Of Britain.

Then at 11am Pacific Time (7pm UK time) we'll be broadcasting the moving hour-long documentary based on the poem  For Johnny by John Pudney, and first broadcast on the BBC Home Service in 1965, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

You can read more about the events of this critical period in European history here.


Today's programme is presented by Elrik Merlin and produced by thap gump in association with the Alexandrian Free Library Consortium of Second Life. You can listen now at http://loudcity.com/stations/radio-riel/tune_in.


For more information on the Alexandrian Free Library, current exhibits and the work of Consortium members in general, please visit the Alexandrian Free Library website, or one of their branches in-world.
Source URL: http://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/Second%20World%20War
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