RADIO CHOICE

COMPOSERS get twitchy writing their eighth symphonies, as they have a habit of dying soon after finishing them. Statistically, it’s not surprising — by then, most composers are past their prime and the strain of being in the music business has taken its toll. By the time Mahler was writing his Tenth Symphony, the sands of time had all but run out; he had been diagnosed with a serious heart condition, and had discovered that his wife, Alma, was having an affair. You can hear all this in just one chord in the Tenth Symphony. Ivan Hewett tells the story of what has been called the crisis chord in ALL IN A CHORD (RADIO 4, 9.30AM).

A RENAISSANCE man with a dangerous secret, Nicolaus Copernicus was a polymath who included the study of the heavens among

his many serious, scholarly pursuits. His observations led him to a belief — which had been widely accepted in the ancient world — that the sun, rather than the Earth, was the hub of what we now know as our solar system. This theory was so dangerously at odds with the Catholic Church’s version of events that Copernicus (pictured) only published his life’s work, On The Revolutions Of The Heavenly Spheres, on his deathbed. In

STARGAZING (BBC WORLD SERVICE,

1.30PM), Dava Sobel tells the story of the great Polish astronomer.