About the podcast

Tim The Composer is a podcast about 1000 years of music, told from a composer’s perspective. Each episode focuses on a single work: the circumstances of its composition, the life of its composer, and how the music itself works. Episodes run to around an hour and assume no prior musical knowledge.

The subject is Western notated music, the tradition that runs from the earliest reliable notation of around 900 AD to the present day. The podcast calls this literate music rather than “classical music”, because the defining feature of the tradition is that it is written down: each generation of composers can read, study, and build on the work of those who came before.

Episodes so far have covered Beethoven, Bach, Guido d’Arezzo, Monteverdi, Haydn, Tallis, Tchaikovsky, and Mozart, with much more of the repertoire to come. Every episode ends with three recommended recordings of the work discussed.

About Tim Benjamin

Tim Benjamin is a British composer and orchestral player. His work includes opera, orchestral and choral music, and music for film and television. He writes, presents, and produces Tim The Composer, and plays the musical extracts heard in each episode.

More about Tim and his music, including his catalogue of works and discography, is at timbenjamin.com. To get in touch, use the contact page at timbenjamin.com/contact.

Where to listen

Tim The Composer is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcast platforms. You can also subscribe directly to the RSS feed in any podcast app.