Behind the scenes with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

By Carma Wadley, Deseret News

At 9:30 sharp on Sunday morning, the cue is given and soft music
caresses the Tabernacle: “Gently raise the sacred strain, for the
Sabbath’s come again, that man may rest, that man may rest.”

For the next half-hour, the Tabernacle will be filled with the
glorious sounds of “Music and the Spoken Word.” And not only this
building, but through the magic of radio, television and cable, the
sounds will go out to fill the homes and buildings and centers
served by about 2,000 stations around the country.

Choir members get dressed and prepare for the Oct. 17 broadcast
of “Music and the Spoken Word” at the Tabernacle. The choir will be
inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame next month.

It has been that way, week in and week out, for 82 years now,
the longest-running, continuous broadcast in the country.

Today’s broadcasts, of course, are much different from those in
1929, initiated by LDS Church President Heber J. Grant. On July 15,
as the famous story goes, KZN radio, forerunner of KSL and a
stepchild of the Deseret News, temporarily went off the air so that
its only microphone could be transported to the Tabernacle, where a
technician perched atop a 15-foot ladder could hold it for the
30-minute musical program.

Nationwide radio had only been operating for a few years, but
KZN immediately began lobbying for a coast-to-coast broadcast.
Thirty radio stations received the first NBC transmission. By the
next year, quality of broadcasting had improved to the point that
the New York Telegram noted: “Somewhere in the world there may be
more than one brilliant choral organization other than the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir, but there is no broadcasting in America today to
equal the one that comes from the air over the National
Broadcasting System.”