It’s pretty unusual for a radio music program to stand the test of three decades’ worth of time and still attract a sizable, growing audience. As listeners’ tastes change, so do the programs that follow.
So the fact that here at WSHU Public Radio, we’re marking 30 years of a once local classical music show that’s still growing and now heard on 175 stations across the country, not to mention online worldwide, is pretty impressive.
Sunday Baroque is a weekly national program, self-described as "featuring beloved and appealing music, composed in the Baroque era, 1600 to 1750, and the years leading up to it."
There has to be to it, though, more than that to keep tens of thousands of people listening 30 years later.
To find out what that is, WSHU’s Morning Edition Host asked Sunday Baroque Host Suzanne Bona to stop by and tell us what the magic ingredients are.
Below is a transcript of their conversation.
Good morning, Suzanne.
Good morning. Wow, what a lead up!
So, let’s define a little more clearly, first of all, the kind of music we’re talking about. I’m sure lots of people would recognize the names of the composers and some of the melodies, even if they’re not familiar with the term Baroque.
Yeah, absolutely. So the Baroque era was a period in history, and it applies not only to music but to art and architecture...so it would be the years 1600 to 1750, as you said, and typically the thing that marks Baroque art or architecture or style in general would be things that are very ornamented, very elaborate, and the composers would be people like Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi and you know, as you say, I think those names are somewhat familiar to people if they’re even remotely familiar with the classical tradition, but a lot of the music is familiar to people even who know nothing about classical music because so much Baroque music is used in movies and advertising and elevators and so it’s very, very common in popular culture, and again, maybe without people realizing it.
So let’s talk about the program for a moment. How did this all start? Did you sit down back in 1987 and say, ok, I’m going to put together a program that I know will be around into the 21st century?
Oh no, no. That’s what so funny about it because as you know, Tom, since you were here at the beginning back in the day, I was a complete novice in radio. I was armed with a degree in music, as a flute player, I have a performance degree from the University of Connecticut, but I’d literally never set foot in a radio station before I started here. And I wasn’t even a full-time announcer. I was the underwriting director, helping to sell sponsorships for the station and then the management at that time was nice enough to say, “Alright, you can be on the air on Sunday morning.” And literally the only instruction I was given was, “Play Baroque music.” And it was 90 minutes, and it was a local show, and I was basically running a reel-to-reel tape, yes, a reel-to-reel tape from 7 to 8:30, and then I was allowed to sort of have this, my little sandbox and play Baroque music from 8:30 to 10.
It was just this very sparse, seat of the pants description of what to play and what to do, what my parameters were. And then I kind of, you know, being young and being completely unversed in what to do with radio, just kind of did whatever came to my mind. So that was really how it started. It was really kind of a happy accident.
Well, clearly there’s something about the way you put this show together and something about the music, too, that rings true with a lot of people. So what’s the attraction of a sound that composers left behind 270 years ago?
Yeah, well I think one of the things, that’s a question I ask myself all the time. So, I don’t know. If you asked me 15 years ago, or 25 years ago, I’d probably have a different answer, but I think one of the common themes that keeps coming back is that there’s a sort of familiarity to the music, even if you don’t know that particular tune, there’s a certain sort of melodic path that the music often takes, that’s sort of comfortable. And I hesitate to use the word predictable because that sounds almost pejorative. It’s sort of like, you know you’re way home, you know what I mean, you get to a familiar neighborhood and you can kind of find your way around, you don’t even need to even think about which left turns and what not. There’s a familiarity, there’s a comfort, like a pair of comfortable old jeans. And I think it’s the harmonic progression, as well. It’s a very rock ‘n’ roll similar kind of harmonic progression, often.
You know, if you’re someone who listens to popular music or grew up listening to pop music, like I did, there’s a certain familiarity and comfort level with Baroque music, harmonically and melodically, that makes it not such a tough sell.
Now I understand there was a time, quite long ago, after what’s now considered the end of the Baroque era when the music of the composers that we know so well now, like you mentioned Bach, were pretty much all but forgotten. What happened to it and how did it become popular again?
Yeah, in the days that these guys were writing this music, it was not expected that it was going to be something that people would keep in libraries. And you know of course, they couldn’t even imagine the recording technology and radio technology and internet technology. It literally didn’t occur to them that this music was going to be heard and saved and performed again in 50 years, 100 years, and certainly not 250, 300 years later. They were doing it because there was a church service or there was a celebration or some king or some patron needed music for a particular ceremony or party. And so it was much more transient to them. They just didn’t really think of themselves in those ways.
I don’t think Bach thought, “Oh, I’m going to put this profound body of work out that people in the future…” You know, we think in those terms now, we make time capsules, we worry about our browser histories, and you know, we think much more in terms of the future. Back then, they were really in the moment. And they just, you know, they had jobs to do and they just sort of did it.
Well, Suzanne, thanks for stopping by this morning.
Thank you so much.
And congratulations on 30 years of Sunday Baroque and perhaps on 30 more.
Thanks.
Read Suzanne’s blog for her perspectives on this amazing milestone in Sunday Baroque history.