14. Robert Macfarlane on A Quiet Kind Of Miracle - a podcast by WQXR & WNYC Studios

from 2019-09-23T12:00

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“In a scene of such brutality, to have something of such delicacy must have been a quiet kind of miracle.”

Writer Robert Macfarlane remembers how he first read about Chopin’sBerceusein the wartime diaries of Welsh poet Edward Thomas, whose nature writing inspired Macfarlane’s own.

Thomas, who died in 1917 on the Western Front, chronicled how he and his fellow soldiers found moments of peace in musicincluding this lullaby, which helped them find sleep on what would be their final night.

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Robert Macfarlane is an award-winning writer on travel, landscape, nature, and the human heart, and fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University. His latest book isUnderland. 

Did you like the track Robert chose? Listen to the music in full:


Berceuseby Frédéric Chopin

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