Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Eight records
My father, who was a splendid singer, hence most of my records, will be vocal. My father was heartbroken about the fact that I could not sing. He often had singers come to the house, There was at that time at the Dresden Opera this was in Germany where we live A very promising young singer called Richard Tauba. And Tauber came to the house and sang Schubert
My second disc marks the moment in my life when as a young undergraduate at Cambridge, the bottom fell out of the stock market, Europe suddenly became full of unemployment, and all of a sudden you realized that in past ages The terrible hardships of the working classes were not just history, they came home to us. And so I've chosen to recapture moments from the Industrial Revolution from the steam whistle ballads. The song that I've chosen, which still makes a lump come to my throat, is called The Four Loom Weaver.
Napoleon was not foolish when he called the marriage of Figaro The Revolution on the March The Revolution in Action So I have chosen a piece out of the marriage of Figaro the great Aria Savool Ballare.
Record number four represents the sort of Hitler days, the war drums coming up. Um In Germany in the late nineteen twenties, the beginning of nineteen thirties, Bertolt Brest and Kotwal wrote an opera called the Sepni Opera, Die Deikauschen Opera, and in it Lotta Lenia sang some wonderful songs, and one of those, the song about the little girl who thinks she's going to be the bride of a pirate, Die Se Roy Bajeni.
The Wild West Is Where I Want to Be
Record number five commemorates my war years, because we might just as well face the fact that making the bomb is what we did during the war. And uh Never forget it. So this is Tom Lehrer singing The Wild West.
Well, naturally, if we're going to have a record about The things we did during the war that we didn't care for, the bomb, we should have some great piece of modern music about the war, really about the two wars, about the first and the second world war. So I've chosen a piece out of Britain's War Requiem, of which you'll remember most of the words are written by a great poet of the First World War, Wilfred Owen. and which I first heard sung on the night that Coventry Cathedral was dedicated.
I thought that I should choose one record which had no words on it. and which is a piece of modern music. and a piece of modern music with which I regard myself as being in some way associated. It's by Peter Arcine Fricker. Fricker and I wrote an opera together for the B B C, called My Brother Died, but since no records of that exist, I've chosen another piece by Peter Russian Fricker which I'm very fond of, the string quartet number two.
Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt
Well, my last record is Marlena Dittri, the fabulous Marlena, singing Ich bin von Kopf bisfu sauf Lieber Eingestellt from the original Blue Angel.
The keepsakes
The book
Fischer v Spassky: The Chess Championship of the World
Svetozar Gligorić
I've not got to the bottom of Fischer playing Spassky in the last World Chess Championship, and that's the book that I would take
In conversation
Presenter asks
Could you endure extended loneliness?
Yes, I think that I have now stored up enough questions in my head that I have never answered to last me many years.
Presenter asks
Why did you become a mathematician? What did you see as the end product?
I fell in love with mathematics because it is a marvelous language. I regard having become a mathematician as simply an extension of my passion for languages which I developed as a child.
Presenter asks
Was there any sense of bitterness because mathematics in a sense had betrayed you [during the war]?
Oh, mathematics hadn't betrayed us. We betrayed mathematics. We betrayed all our human heritage. We betrayed everything that we had stood for morally and intellectually in those two great catastrophes, of which the first was Hitler's coming to power in nineteen thirty three And the second was the dropping of the atomic bombs in nineteen forty five.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy four, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.
Presenter
This week, our castaway is the scientist and broadcaster, Dr. Pranofsky.
Presenter
Doctor Pronovsky, have you visited any deserted islands?
Presenter
Well, I was on Heligoland immediately after the war when it was deserted.
Presenter
I've been to uh Easter Island quite recently, which is fairly deserted, yes.
Presenter
Could you endure extended loneliness?
Presenter
Yes, I think that I have now stored up enough questions in my head that I have never answered to last me many years. What would you be happiest to have got away from?
Presenter
Committee meetings. There's not a single one in years on the island.
Presenter
Is music important in your life?
Presenter
I'm not a very musical person, but
Presenter
My parents were, my wife is, and therefore some music in the house is second nature to me. How did you set about choosing this allowance of eight discs? Oh, I thought of the moments in my life in which music played some part that I can recognize, and I picked those. What's the first one you've chosen?
Presenter
I've chosen in the first place a moment in nineteen hundred and sixteen when I was eight years old.
Presenter
My father, who was a splendid singer, hence most of my records, will be vocal.
Presenter
My father was heartbroken about the fact that I could not sing.
Presenter
He often had singers come to the house,
Presenter
There was at that time at the Dresden Opera this was in Germany where we live
Presenter
A very promising young singer called Richard Tauba.
Presenter
And Tauber came to the house and sang Schubert
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Again I knew my entrepreneur
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Yeah.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Oh nice.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Good to the team.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Yeah.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Nothing I know.
Speaker 1
I
Dr Jacob Bronowski
It's the mind that I need.
Presenter
Richard Tauber singing Wasserflut from Schubert's Winteriser.
Presenter
What's your second disc?
Presenter
My second disc marks the moment in my life when as a young undergraduate at Cambridge, the bottom fell out of the stock market, Europe suddenly became full of unemployment, and all of a sudden you realized that in past ages
Presenter
The terrible hardships of the working classes were not just history, they came home to us. And so I've chosen to recapture moments from the Industrial Revolution from the steam whistle ballads. The song that I've chosen, which still makes a lump come to my throat, is called The Four Loom Weaver.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Presenter
I'm a
Speaker 3
A following wave, as many one knows.
Speaker 3
Um
Speaker 3
I've now tied, and I've worn out me clothes Me clogs are both broken, and stockings have none.
Speaker 3
That'ardly gimme twopence for all I've gettin' on.
Presenter
Ewan McCull singing The Four Loom Weaver
Presenter
Doctor Pronovsky, you are Polish. You spent most of your childhood in Germany. So English was your third language? That's right. When I came to this country at the age of twelve.
Presenter
I spoke only two words of English that I had learnt on the boat coming over.
Presenter
And uh I had by then learnt and uh was about to
Presenter
Forget two languages.
Presenter
Six years later you won a scholarship to Cambridge.
Presenter
That's right, but it was a scholarship in mathematics. Why did you become a mathematician? What did you see as the end product? What did you want to use mathematics for?
Presenter
I fell in love with mathematics because it is a marvelous language. I regard having become a mathematician as simply an extension of my passion for languages which I developed as a child. In the same way that music is a language.
Presenter
Music is a language in which I stutter.
Presenter
Mm-hmm.
Presenter
After a few academic years, as was the case with most scientists, your skill was turned to destructive purposes during the war, and after the war you changed direction and opened up your interest to cover the whole range of the sciences.
Presenter
That's right.
Presenter
Was there any sense of bitterness because
Presenter
Mathematics in a sense have betrayed you.
Presenter
Oh, mathematics hadn't betrayed us. We betrayed mathematics. We betrayed all our human heritage. We betrayed everything
Presenter
that we had stood for morally and intellectually in those two great catastrophes, of which the first was Hitler's coming to power in nineteen thirty three
Presenter
And the second was the dropping of the atomic bombs in nineteen forty five.
Presenter
And because of that you wanted to
Presenter
Expand.
Presenter
Because of that I wanted to be sure
Presenter
that what I had to say
Presenter
would not be confined to a small circle of specialists, but would touch people
Presenter
where their humanity and their knowledge joined, in the hope that the junction would make a new wisdom.
Presenter
For some years you were Director of Research at the National Coal Board. You are now a Senior Fellow at the Salke Institute of Biological Studies in California. What sort of work are you doing there?
Presenter
The work that I'm doing is in a subject which I have invented, and I've invented its name. It's called human specificity. That means what is specific.
Presenter
or special to human beings, which makes them so different from other animals.
Presenter
I made up my mind that that's what I wanted to do about twenty years ago, and I've stuck to that ever since.
Presenter
Can you elaborate on that a little? In in what way? You don't mean just physically?
Presenter
Well, it begins, of course, with physical differences. For instance, the first and most important physical difference is that we walk upright. As a result of that, our hands are free and we face one another. So that you and I, talking about these records, are sitting face to face across the table. And all human intercourse takes place in that way. But going on from that, we have a remarkable gift of memory, which most animals lack. As a result of that, we have a gift of imagination. That is, we can cast our mind forward into the future as well as back into the past. As a result of that, we are able to form plans. For instance, you know when these programs will go out, a thing which would be impossible in the animal world. But not only that, we are able to form grand strategies, values, ways that we should live. For instance, when my father said to me, because he was fond of some little phrases of English,
Presenter
Honesty is the best policy, my boy. He didn't mean
Presenter
If you never tell a lie, you will make more money. He meant
Presenter
If you stick to truth, by and large, you will lead a happier life. That's very special and human.
Presenter
What's your third record to be?
Presenter
My third record.
Presenter
Fixes the time.
Presenter
Just after Hitler's coming to power,
Presenter
when I began to understand that the four loom weaver, the tragedy of the Industrial Revolution,
Presenter
was a profoundly intellectual movement as well as just a physical one. And then I began to understand that great works of art and literature also record moments when humanity takes a new turn. Such a moment was the French Revolution.
Presenter
And when I began to look at those things I realized
Presenter
that Napoleon was not foolish when he called the marriage of Figaro
Presenter
The Revolution on the March The Revolution in Action
Presenter
So I have chosen a piece out of the marriage of Figaro the great Aria Savool Ballare.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Hilty Hani on S woo er.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Il quit all es follows the Lord.
Presenter
Figueroa's audio Save World Ballardi from The Marriage of Figueroa sung by Giuseppe Tadei.
Presenter
Dr. Brunofsky, your television series The Ascent of Man is getting its second showing on VBC, thirteen fifty-minute films.
Presenter
What were your terms of reference when you began planning the series?
Presenter
Well, the BBC came to me and said, Can you make a series which shall do for science what Kenneth Clark has done for the arts?
Presenter
And I said that uh
Presenter
I didn't know whether I could, but I didn't mean to.
Presenter
And then they said, Well, what would you like to do? And I said, Well, I would like to do something about.
Presenter
The History of Human Ideas in the Making.
Presenter
in the course of which science will be shown to be a natural expression of the human spirit, but only one of many expressions.
Presenter
They said, That's fine, go ahead. And so ahead we went. How long did it take?
Presenter
Well, it took about a year to get ready.
Presenter
It took a year to film and it took the best part of a year to put together when it had been filmed. So it took three years. A tremendous task to make it all understandable to the non-scientific viewer. It really meant coming down to the A B C of each branch of science, didn't it?
Speaker 1
Okay.
Presenter
Well, it isn't about science, it's about how human beings think and how they have new ideas, and particularly what have been the ideas which animated successive civilizations. And yes, one has to come down to a level of really not being simple,
Presenter
But being down to earth, of saying, Now come on, let's cut the cackle, what did the Incas really think life was about?
Presenter
You visited the sites of the principal events in the rise of mankind. That's right. A wonderful opportunity to go to all the places you'll never had time to visit. Absolutely, and I
Presenter
seized it with both feet. Do you, what were the highlights?
Presenter
While I've just spoken about the Incas, there's no doubt that the Inca kingdom in Peru is the most remarkable place that I went to, all the way from the Gold Museum to the marvellous landscape of the great lost city of Machu Picchu. But there were other places just as splendid. I think of the cave paintings in Altamio as being a wonderful moment. I think of the great tower, Jericho, of whose existence I knew but which I'd never seen, and which is just a heap of stone, you know, but it's a heap of stone, nine thousand years old. It's a an intellectual monument to man's effrontery.
Presenter
The series is going to be shown all over the world, and you've also published the programmes in book form. Yes.
Presenter
Indeed, publishing it in book form to me has been just as important as the series because
Presenter
One just has that extra piece of elbow room. That is, the book says exactly what's said on the screen.
Presenter
But it uh just has a little more chapter and verse, a little more matter here and there uh to uh
Presenter
Make it possible for the reader to follow up the subject for himself. Record number four, please.
Presenter
Record number four represents the sort of Hitler days, the war drums coming up.
Presenter
Um
Presenter
In Germany in the late nineteen twenties, the beginning of nineteen thirties, Bertolt Brest and Kotwal wrote an opera called the Sepni Opera, Die Deikauschen Opera, and in it Lotta Lenia sang some wonderful songs, and one of those, the song about the little girl who thinks she's going to be the bride of a pirate, Die Se Roy Bajeni.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
On my zeal,
Dr Jacob Bronowski
On man's back, he has a ring devotee.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Miss A girl.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Until
Presenter
Lattalenia in the original production of the Brechtweil Threpani Opera.
Presenter
Now going back to the ascent of man.
Presenter
At the moment you think he's going up a little too fast for his own good.
Presenter
Oh, come. My grandfather said that to my grandmother. Every generation has said that. There's only one thing.
Presenter
Which has been said for all the 12,000 years or so that the cultural evolution of man has gone on, and that is.
Presenter
Dad nudging Mum and saying, Aren't we going too fast?
Presenter
Is there not a dengue now?
Presenter
With everything going up so fast, communication, education, every one of the underprivileged will want his share. Everyone at the moment living in a mud hut will want his motor car, his central heating, his colour television. Now can the earth take that amount of industrial pollution?
Presenter
Can the earth give everyone its share and at the same time spare the essential effort needed to separate that from pollution? I hope so, because I do not believe for a moment that I am that privileged man who was allowed to come out of a miserable ghetto in Poland.
Presenter
in order to sit here and luxuriate, while some poor black man or brown man is condemned not to rise from his particular ghetto,
Presenter
Because I'm bothered about his pollution. No, I reject that thought utterly.
Presenter
That if we sh have our share, we should take our share of the risk. Surely.
Presenter
Is science making a mistake by not studying metaphysical forces, some of which there there seems reasonable evidence for?
Presenter
In the seventeen hundred and eighties Immanuel Kant wrote a wonderful book which was called A Prologue to All Possible Metaphysics in the Future.
Presenter
And in that prologue he said,
Presenter
One really oughtn't write about metaphysics until one understands what are the physical, biological,
Presenter
Limitations on the human mind.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
He never carried out that program, but that's what I'm carrying out. I regard myself as laying the foundations for new metaphysics because what I study
Presenter
In the way that human beings are special, is exactly the basis.
Presenter
for all possible speculative thought processes such as metaphysics.
Presenter
Let's have record number five.
Presenter
Record number five commemorates my war years, because we might just as well face the fact that making the bomb is what we did during the war.
Presenter
And uh
Presenter
Never forget it. So this is Tom Lehrer singing The Wild West.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Attractive and the air is radioact.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
For the Wild West is where I wanna be.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Mid the sage b
Dr Jacob Bronowski
And the cactus, I'll watch the fellas paractus Dropping bombs through the clean desert breeze.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
My sombrero and of course I'll wear A pair of Levi's over my lead and B V D
Presenter
Tom Lehrer, a fellow mathematician.
Presenter
Let's go straight on to record number six.
Presenter
Well, naturally, if we're going to have a record about
Presenter
The things we did during the war that we didn't care for, the bomb, we should have some great piece of modern music about the war, really about the two wars, about the first and the second world war. So I've chosen a piece out of Britain's War Requiem, of which you'll remember most of the words are written by a great poet of the First World War, Wilfred Owen.
Presenter
and which I first heard sung on the night that Coventry Cathedral was dedicated.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
But in the light church shine, the holy dream does for good eyes.
Speaker 1
I stretch my own.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
A panel of girls' bronze shall be the blood.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
The flowers attend the edge of silent love.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
We sway the sky.
Presenter
An excerpt from Benjamin Britton's War Requiem conducted by the composer.
Presenter
How well could you adapt yourself physically to a castaway's life? Could you fan for yourself? Not at all.
Presenter
What about food? Do you know anything about practical cultivation? Nothing at all. Ever done any fishing?
Presenter
Never. I'm beginning to worry about you. Would you try to escape?
Presenter
You you do know about navigation, obviously. Well, the people on Easter Island were stuck there to our knowledge for fifteen hundred years without being able to get off. No, no, I should be happy waiting for someone to take me off. For your whole fifteen hundred years. Yes.
Presenter
Record number seven.
Presenter
I thought that I should choose one record
Presenter
which had no words on it.
Presenter
and which is a piece of modern music.
Presenter
and a piece of modern music with which I regard myself as being in some way associated. It's by Peter Arcine Fricker.
Presenter
Fricker and I wrote an opera together for the B B C, called My Brother Died, but since no records of that exist, I've chosen another piece by Peter Russian Fricker
Presenter
which I'm very fond of, the string quartet number two.
Presenter
The opening of Peter Racine Fricker's String Quartet No. Two played by the Amadeus Quartet.
Presenter
And now we've come to your last record.
Presenter
Well, my last record is Marlena Dittri, the fabulous Marlena, singing
Presenter
Ich bin von Kopf bisfu sauf Lieber Eingestellt from the original Blue Angel.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Nichols from the coffee food of Lieber Einger.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Then the siege meine veld undont carnisch The field wa solit machin machur.
Dr Jacob Bronowski
Ich can hurt Liebenu undan Skarlisch.
Presenter
Baleno Dietrich Falling in Love Again.
Presenter
If you could take just one disk of your eight, which would it be?
Presenter
Oh the marriage of Figawa.
Presenter
And one luxury to take to the island?
Presenter
Well, in the last years there have been found in various places, in Iceland for instance,
Presenter
Some very ancient chess sets.
Presenter
I would like to play chess when I went to the desert island, and I think that if the B B C is going to send me with one luxury, the most beautiful, oldest set that exists.
Presenter
is what I would ask for. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare.
Presenter
I've not got to the bottom of Fischer playing Szparski in the last World Chess Championship, and that's the book that I would take. That will take a year or two, you think. Surely.
Presenter
Thank you, Dr. Bronowski, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. And thank you for humouring me. Goodbye, everyone.
Speaker 1
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.
Presenter asks
What sort of work are you doing [at the Salk Institute]?
The work that I'm doing is in a subject which I have invented, and I've invented its name. It's called human specificity. That means what is specific or special to human beings, which makes them so different from other animals.
Presenter asks
What were your terms of reference when you began planning the series [The Ascent of Man]?
Well, the BBC came to me and said, Can you make a series which shall do for science what Kenneth Clark has done for the arts? And I said that uh I didn't know whether I could, but I didn't mean to. And then they said, Well, what would you like to do? And I said, Well, I would like to do something about The History of Human Ideas in the Making. in the course of which science will be shown to be a natural expression of the human spirit, but only one of many expressions.
Presenter asks
Can the earth give everyone its share and at the same time spare the essential effort needed to separate that from pollution?
I hope so, because I do not believe for a moment that I am that privileged man who was allowed to come out of a miserable ghetto in Poland in order to sit here and luxuriate, while some poor black man or brown man is condemned not to rise from his particular ghetto, because I'm bothered about his pollution. No, I reject that thought utterly.
“Music is a language in which I stutter.”
“We betrayed mathematics. We betrayed all our human heritage. We betrayed everything that we had stood for morally and intellectually in those two great catastrophes, of which the first was Hitler's coming to power in nineteen thirty three And the second was the dropping of the atomic bombs in nineteen forty five.”
“I do not believe for a moment that I am that privileged man who was allowed to come out of a miserable ghetto in Poland in order to sit here and luxuriate, while some poor black man or brown man is condemned not to rise from his particular ghetto, because I'm bothered about his pollution. No, I reject that thought utterly.”