Riding the Waves

Radio documentary, BBC Radio 3: Woolf's musically 'modernist' novel, The Waves, was first published in 1931. This Sunday Feature evokes a sense of what Woolf meant by literature's "allegiance" to music and how the rhythm of her writing might carry the reader beyond the word towards "the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing".

The novelist Amy Sackville, watching the sea from a Kent beach, meditates on Woolf's interest in 'rhythm over narrative'; the musician Steve Harley recalls the precise moment this most beloved novel inspired his song Riding the Waves; the dramaturg Uzma Hameed traces the translation of Woolf's language from the page to the stage in Wayne McGregor's acclaimed ballet Woolf Works; the pianist Lana Bode (of the Virginia Woolf & Music project) reflects on the musicality of Woolf's language and the composer Jeremy Thurlow reveals both how Woolf was inspired by music, by Bach and Beethoven, and how her work has inspired his own music.