London

What does it mean to be located in a landscape or use place as a stimulus for composition? Writer, musician and broadcaster Kate Kennedy goes walking with present-day composers in the places that were important to their 20th-century predecessors. They explore how countryside, coasts and cityscapes become part of someone's life, and how years of living with them gradually find their way into music and the influences that continue to shape their own music today.

In this episode, Kate walks from Westminster with the composer Charlotte Bray, following in the footsteps of Ralph Vaughan Williams through the heart of London. More than a century ago, Vaughan Williams walked these same streets before writing his London Symphony - capturing day and nighttime vignettes along Westminster to Bloomsbury and to his house near the Thames at Battersea. You can almost sat-nav your way around London on the strength of the symphony.

We can never recover the London he knew. The skyline has changed, streets are busier, and voices around us belong to a city that’s become immeasurably more diverse. But as Kate and Charlotte discover, Vaughan Williams's London is still quietly present beneath the modern city.

Presented by Dr Kate Kennedy
Produced by Adrian Washbourne
Mixed by Julian Mayers
Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar