Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of Music and the Spoken Word

By Callie Buys

This month the Tabernacle Choir will finish a special yearlong celebration of its famous program Music and the Spoken Word. This program has been broadcast on the radio every week for 75 years—longer than any other network program in the world. Your grandparents and great-grandparents could have listened to it when they were your age!

On 15 July 1929 a radio station in Salt Lake City placed a microphone on a stand atop the pulpit of the Tabernacle on Temple Square to broadcast the first Music and the Spoken Word. A young man stood on a tall ladder near the microphone throughout the program so he could announce each song the choir sang. He couldn’t climb down between the songs because he would make too much noise!

Every week since then, first on Tuesday and now on Sunday morning, people around the world have listened to the beautiful music and peaceful words of the 30-minute program. While the choir usually performs and records Music and the Spoken Word at the Salt Lake Tabernacle, it has also recorded the program in Asia, Australia, Europe, and South America.

Today millions of people in 19 countries hear or see Music and the Spoken Word on radio, network television, cable, or satellite. Have you ever watched or listened to this record-setting program?

To learn other interesting facts about the Tabernacle Choir, go to www.tabernaclechoir.org.

Photograph of Tabernacle Choir broadcast reenactment by Tom Smart, Deseret Morning News, may not be copied