Dick
Strawser knows classical music, obviously. He is the music director for WITF, Central
Pennsylvania’s premier classical music station, and has been the evening on-air
personality for the last seven years. Previous to this he was the assistant conductor for
the Harrisburg Symphony. The guy knows music.
When asked to describe what exactly classical music is, you would think he’d have a
concrete answer. After all, before he came to Harrisburg, he was a professor at the
University of Connecticut.We
struggled with this question for some time. I wanted, at least, a flimsy definition that I
could grab on to, but he refused to draw any boundaries around the music he plays.
"It’s really not easy to define," he said. Things like opera, chamber
music, concert music, and orchestral pieces all seem to fall under the heading of
classical. Names of composers varied from people who died over 200 years ago to the
currently living and popular Yo-Yo Ma and Paul McCartney.
One of the nice things about working in public
radio as a music director and personality, says Strawser, is that you don’t have to
worry about sudden changes in format or ownership that occur in commercial radio. While
commercial radio stations are concerned with what is currently on top of the charts,
Strawser has a catalogue of music that includes over 300 years of classics and he chooses
from his "Top-40 Thousand," as he humorously refers to it.
Referring to classical music he says, "It doesn’t suffer the slings and arrows
that the variety magazine does with pop radio, where if it’s two months old nobody
wants to hear it anymore."
But Strawser has his own slings and arrows to contend with. "Some people like
classical music for easy listening," he says. They like something pretty to help them
think or to help them relax. Mostly they like what they already know. Because the general
listenership leans more toward the recognized classics, it’s a bit of a fight to
familiarize people with anything contemporary, but "as a composer I feel obligated to
make it available to those who want to hear it," he says.
A lot of contemporary classical is very aggressive, dissonant, and requires attention.
According to Strawser, "It’s a catch-22; a lot of people don’t really
expand beyond what they already know. I think it’s important because it’s the
end of the 20th Century and there is 100 years of music that people haven’t become
familiar with."
This raises another question. In a society where classical music is looked at as sort of
stuffy, and the format is few and far between on the radio dial, how does one develop an
interest in the first place?
"People who are new to classical music will get turned on by so many different
possibilities," says Strawser, "They might like this little baroque piece, or
they might like that little Mozart thing, or Hayden might put a smile on their face. What
I usually find is that people find classical music somewhere else, like in a
cartoon."
A case example being Disney’s Fantasia, which according to Strawser does some
very good and very bad things for music. Everyone should see it, he claims, although he
dislikes the association of the music with the images that invariably occur. Strawser
draws his first memory of opera from The Three Stooges. Sounding like quite the
classical music guru, he says that once the initial interest in classical is established,
people tend to tune in and branch out.
Being a radio personality has a lot of merits, claims Strawser. There was the death threat
post card from a Mozart hater that was a little bizarre, but beside that he develops
mostly good relations with his listeners. In fact, he was unknowingly responsible for the
marriage of two listeners. A woman called in to request a favorite piece of music for a
recently widowed gentleman friend that she knew he liked, and he never forgot the kindness
of the gesture; eventually the two hooked up.
Another listener who had a brain tumor used to call up when she would go into remission or
had good news, to request some up-beat music. "A couple months later," says
Strawser, "she called and said the report was bad and she wanted to hear the Verdi
Requiem one more time before she died… I haven’t heard from her since."
This is particularly chilling being that this piece of music takes you through the terror
of dying and offers a consolation to the living.
Dick Strawser isn’t just a DJ. He doesn’t even like the term because it
doesn’t seem to fit with a classical format, and as an on air personality he becomes
more of a narrator, guiding his listeners through centuries of history and art.
This may be just a comment on the piece or the composer or historic background, if it
warrants, to develop an interest. These snippets of information may at times seem like
trivia, but consider an opera. It’s vital to have the visuals summarized to be able
to understand the context of the music. This happened recently with York’s own
Dominic Argento. In celebrating the composers 70th Birthday, Strawser played one of his
operas, but first took about five minutes to explain what the stage setting involved.
With such a focus on providing a background in which to listen to classical music,
you might wonder if there is any amount of fun or daring that can be had in this format.
According to Strawser there is definitely room for a little of both. He goes out on a limb
on April Fool’s Day with The Body Parts Hour, in which he selects music by
either composer or title, that mentions a body part. He features composers such as Dennis
Brain, and Arthur Foot, and musical pieces like Prelude to the Nose. All this
happened, says Strawser, "because I found a composer whose name was Buns."
Strawser has also been known to challenge his listeners to lengthy contemporary
classical pieces, such as the recent playing of Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalsticum,
a 5-hour piano piece that was played without interruption. The music was a favorite of
Wick Woodford, WITF station manager, and Strawser says "we did it, just to say we did
it."
So, after an hour and a half with Dick Strawser, do I know the definition of classical
music? No, but I think I understand why he couldn’t really give me a definition in
the first place; after all, as he likes to say, "The music speaks for itself."
Dick Strawser’s program can be heard weeknights from 6:30 p.m. until 12 a.m.
Wednesday night he features listener requests from 7 until 9, and Thursday he plays new
releases. |
