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Show Choir organists debated worth of radio broadcasts By QUIG NIELSEN Tabernacle organ music to be broadcast on the radio! During radio's infancy, even the thought of broadcasting broad-casting the music of the already acclaimed Mormon Tabernacle Choir was anathema to many associated with the great organization. "They were fearful that radio could not reproduce the music of the organ and the choir with a fidelity that would do them justice, wrote Earl J. Glade in his "Earl Glade Recalls.' John J. McClelland, the famous Tabernacle organist of the early 1900s, would not permit his talent to be broadcast by radio. "As long as he lived, his music never appeared on any station. His funeral, interestingly inter-estingly enough, was the first to be broadcast from the Tabernacle." Edward P. Kimball, another great Tabernacle organist, was a radio enthusiast, and it was through his help that radio technicians were permitted to experiment, experi-ment, discovering the best ways for reproducing Tabernacle Taber-nacle music on radio. Broadcasting from the Tabernacle has progressed significantly since that first day, July 15, 1929, when a single microphone was held by a technician standing on a tall stepladder. Today "Music and the Spoken Word" with the famed fam-ed Mormon Tabernacle Choir and organ is in its 61st year of uninterrupted broadcasting. Thousands come each Sunday morning to the Tabernacle to attend the live broadcast. It has become the longest running broadcast series in network history anywhere. The historic Tabernacle, with all its electronic equipment installed at a cost estimated at over a million dollars, now has one of the finest broadcasting facilities available. Source: Records of KSL; Glade, "Earl Glade Recalls." (Quig Nielsen is an information officer for the Museum Mu-seum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City.) |