Anybody who knows a lick about classical music knows that those "dead guys" (see La Traviata, No. 1, Prelude) didn't make an effort to keep their popular music within an arbitrary time limit (such as 3 minutes, 30 seconds). Pieces of music can run anywhere from eight to eighty minutes and may be Sehr leise beginnend (very soft in the beginning) such that for the first minute or so it sounds like nothing is going out over the air. Because of that, the classical shifts were some of the most tranquil times people could spend at the station. Of course, explaining this always begs the question: what exactly do you during a classical shift?
Well, you're not just sticking in a CD and then running off to play tennis. Like any other three-hour shift, you start by checking and recording the transmitter levels (or signing on the station, for those lucky early birds; see Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125). If you're not the first DJ of the day, hopefully you have arrived a few minutes early to assure the current DJ he or she will be leaving soon and, more so, to pull your music for at least your first hour on the air. And music, more so the length of music, often dictated what you did that day.
I've mentioned the programming clocks (see I see you dancing on the stage of memory), but those didn't really work for this format. If you had four or five short pieces, you would be on the mic a lot, as we were required to come on after each song and identify the previous piece (its name, the composer, and who had performed it). Live breaks would just be a quick backsell of what was heard, maybe some prep (see Boy, you can't play me that way), announcing what was next, and then starting another CD. At least twice an hour there was a stopset where we interrupted the music for more than just a quick talking break and ran some recorded Public Service Announcements and station promos before the next piece. You know, just to break up the constant sound of music. Somewhere in the midst of this we gave a brief weather report and at the top of the hour we made sure to include the legal identification, as was required.
Now, none of what I just explained worked if you had one of those eighty-minute pieces of music. While selections like this were in the control room, we tried to use them for special occasions and not everyday use. Maybe it was near the end of the semester and you needed to study for a test. Maybe you were the program director who got stuck on this shift because someone didn't show up and the PD had other priorities. There was always a reason and usually you could sway student management to allow you to change the playlist.
One of the things we had to always tell new people was that, yes, while we drummed it into your head that the legal I.D. is played near the top of the hour, it doesn't have to hit it exactly. With these long-running classical pieces, we were allowed to forgo the requirement at its usual time, as long as we made up for it at the next natural break in programming. So if I signed-on at 6 a.m. and started off with an eighty-minute piece, you wouldn't hear me until about 7:20, where upon I would fit the legal I.D. into something – maybe the weather.
While this became an easy way to get out of doing anything, I recall more than a few DJs who hadn't mastered the concept of the sixty-minute hour and started a 70-minute piece at eleven o'clock. The problem here was that there was a definite break at noon when we had a newscast and switched formats. The answer: pitch control. Well, not always the answer (see The lily-white cavity crazes). And then a note in the office files that whoever was on the air didn't have the luxury of deviating from the playlist next time.
Here’s a great example of an extended piece: 70 minutes of music by Franz Liszt.
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Études d'exécution transcendante
(Franz Liszt)
Performed by Aquiles Delle-Vigne
From the album 12 Etudes d'exécution transcendante; La Lugubre Gondola
1992
