How did a college-owned and operated radio station end up playing the most classical music in town? (Trivia: a portion of the first sentence of this paragraph was actually used in a slightly tongue-in-cheek promotional piece one year. In the 200-level Advance Audio Production class, where one requirement was to voice a 30-second station promo, one of the rock DJs made what sounded like a traditional in-your-face spot for high energy rock-n-roll, but instead promoted our playing of "the most classical music" during our "parade of all-star dead guys" like Bach, Wagner, Verdi, and other...well...uh, as he said...dead guys.)
Anyway, as I mentioned before, college-run stations tend to cater to a wide assortment of tastes and trends. While every other station “right” of the dial (92.1 and up) oozed their Top 40-ish tripe, we could promote our eclectic airings of jazz, blues, and folk music. And, yes, classical music. And if you haven’t guessed already, our station played the only classical music in town. That's how trend-setting we were.
From what I recall hearing in later years, I think classical was the favorite format of the head of the department, Ronald Langley Cornish. Dr. Cornish was a short, roly-poly little thing that wore suspenders a lot and sort of had a Commander McBragg thing going on with his wavy gray hair and forthright composure. With his hawkish features and mannerism, Dr. C seldom mingled on the first floor with radio station students but he was known to make calls from his lofty third floor office.
How could you garner such a call from Dr. Cornish? What could someone do to be so honored? Well, first off, he never called the studio directly – it was always to the faculty advisor – and it usually had to do something with the classical format. What else would he be listening to? (Well, the semester before, of course, he listened to rock-themed morning shows. One wonders how much weight he threw around to get these ousted?)
Two sure fire ways to get on his bad side was for a DJ to 1) mispronounce the name of composers, and 2) feign interest in the format. It was fairly easy to identify who was bored and did little more than say "that was Brahms and next is Chopin." If you fell into that category then at some point you were certain to get a call from the faculty advisor and be asked to pep it up a bit. You know, not go in there and be, like, so psyched up about a 18-minute dirge, but rather present yourself professionally with the material at hand. I think the key thing was to make sure the students understood that, once out of college, they might have to adapt their personality (and more so, their wannabe personality) to fit the job they had to take. You see, not everybody walks out with a diploma and becomes a shock-jock-rocker later that month. You may have to make your bones with the classics.
La Traviata, written in 1853, is now considered to be one of Verdi’s most popular works. Wanted to get that out there, too.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
No. 1, Prelude
(Giuseppe Verdi)
Performed by La Scala Theater Orchestra
Conducted by Riccardo Muti
From the album La Traviata, opera
1993
