Interlochen's history is inextricably linked to radio.
Radio was an integral part of Joseph Maddy's vision for Interlochen. Radio helped the National Music Camp survive the Great Depression with national publicity. Radio elevated many students' experiences on campus with an enriching source of education and novelty.
Music Supervisors' Journal, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Mar., 1927), pp. 71-72 (link to full text)
Given the ongoing tradition of live broadcasting concerts at Interlochen, radio in the National Music Camp's earliest years set important precedents for the century to come.
Music education with recording and broadcast technology
Even before Interlochen, the National High School Orchestra’s founders used noncommercial radio as a means of making music education publicly accessible.
In the early 1920s, Joseph Maddy served as director of the Morton High School Orchestra, where he created several recordings of the youth ensemble on the Gennett Records label. The orchestra’s first recording in December 1921 partially funded the orchestra’s trip to the Music Supervisors National Conference the following spring — a financial model that perhaps taught Maddy about enhancing and sustaining music education through recording.
Several years later, Maddy would again conduct the orchestra at the 1924 Music Supervisors National Conference in Cincinnati. This time, a number from that performance was aired by the local radio station WLW, becoming possibly Maddy’s earliest broadcast performance.
His involvement in radio only grew from there. He went on to lead the National High School Orchestra in Detroit — the first of many NHSO concerts — in a historic 1926 performance with selections aired on WWJ.
Also of note, one of Maddy's founding collaborators, businessman Charles Milton Tremaine, had a prolific role in promoting classical radio among youth almost a decade before Interlochen's founding.
In 1916, Tremaine launched the "Music Memory Contest," a highly successful national program in which students would study and recognize a publicized list of repertoire, and compete in a tournament-style competition in their schools and regions. Radio stations widely promoted the contest by programming selections from the list.
The program was such a success that Tremaine created the National Bureau for the Advancement of Music to continue operating the contests. This association helped build his reputation among music educators, leading to his eventual involvement in the founding and financing of Interlochen.
Broadcasting at Interlochen
Radio broadcasting quickly found its flagship role at Interlochen with weekly broadcasts of the National High School Orchestra.
Maddy had built a radio broadcasting room backstage of the Interlochen Bowl. Two years after the camp's founding, the first on-campus NHSO broadcast on July 6, 1930 aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System's (CBS) weekly "Majestic Theatre of the Air" show, reaching 53 network stations.
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) took up the following twelve years of NHSO concert broadcasts starting from 1931, amassing 127 programs total. The camp continued to refine its radio broadcasting practices through the decade of Depression-era performances, including the trademark "Interlochen Theme."
"Interlochen on the Air," an essay published in the 1935 edition of "Scherzo," the National Music Camp yearbook, describes the technicalities of broadcasting from the Interlochen Bowl.
Transcripts of radio announcements were also published in "Scherzo."
Michigan's Secretary of State Orville E. Atwood spoke to radio listeners when he visited Camp in the summer of 1935. He praised the impact of the radio and openly promoted the National Music Camp.
"Music lovers of the nation owe a debt of gratitude to the National Broadcasting Company for giving the nation an opportunity to share this musical luxury with Michigan. In its series this summer the National Broadcasting Company will make a definite contribution to the cultural life of our country.
"To the people who may be listening to my voice on the air I make this suggestion. Many of you plan to come to Michigan this summer. If you do come — visit the National Music Camp near Traverse City and hear one of the concerts in the beautiful Interlochen Bowl, the natural amphitheater under the stars, where all nature is in tune with the music you will hear," said Atwood.
Letters from listeners were excerpted and published in "Scherzo" beginning in the 1935 yearbook. Starting from 1936, weekly "Scherzo" publications contained a featured "From the Interlochen Mail Bag" page with questions, compliments and insights from listeners across the United States — including National Music Camp alumni.
Bob Fisher, a 1936 Camp alumnus, for example, reflected on a broadcast program in a letter published in the July 4, 1937 edition of "Scherzo": "There is no hiding the truth, there is a huge hole in me left by NBC. Even now when I hear pieces we played there, people wonder at the glazed and far away look in my eyes."
Dr. Maddy's Band Lessons on the Radio
Broadcasting even allowed Dr. Maddy to air music lessons to the public.
Maddy first started teaching band lessons on the radio in 1931 through the University of Michigan, aired over Detroit's WJR.
His lessons would become part of NBC's Red Network educational programming in the fall of 1936. By 1937, his half-hour program was listed on NBC's schedule as "Dr. Maddy's Band Lessons," airing Tuesdays at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.
Listen to one of "Dr. Maddy's Band Lessons" on May 11, 1937. He guided listeners through the NBC Band Lesson Book with a play-along program suitable for people of all ages.
"The lessons have been an inspiration to many thousands of music lovers across the country, even extending across the border to Canada and to our English listeners across the sea," said the announcer preceding Maddy's final radio lesson of the 1936-1937 academic year.
Radio workshops
Radio and recorded media were present in Interlochen's earliest classrooms, too. At camp, electronic devices and recordings were used for ear training. Radio workshops and Radio Drama courses, beginning in 1938, taught students to script, program and produce shows with state-of-the-art equipment.
Although the workshops in 1938 were initially intended mainly for college students and adult camp supervisors, high school students became eagerly involved.
Published in the July 17, 1938 edition of "Scherzo" was a script of a radio play broadcast over the NBC Blue Network, performed by two National Music Camp students and a camp counselor.
The AFM Ban in 1942
James Petrillo, then-president of the local chapter of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), argued that the presence of amateur musicians from the National High School Orchestra on the airwaves posed a threat to the livelihoods of professional musicians in the union.
Petrillo and Maddy and had feuded over such matters since the first National High School Orchestra broadcasts in 1928. Tensions came to a peak during the 1942 camp season, when AFM revoked live radio broadcasting at the National Music Camp. That season's weekly Sunday evening programs were replaced by an NBC studio orchestra.
Banning school broadcasts did little to increase AFM jobs. Petrillo's controversial decision ended many high school orchestra broadcasts and sparked an outrage among music educators — and even professional musicians represented by AFM.
The National High School Orchestra would not be broadcast live on a network as mainstream as NBC again. Over the next few decades, the camp's programs were broadcast independently from stations such as WKAR in East Lansing and WTCM in Traverse City.
It was only until the late 1950s that correspondences with the FCC yielded plans to construct an FM broadcast station at Interlochen. WIAA was established in 1963.
Radio's impact
Maddy had noted that students benefit from broadcasting in several educational and developmental ways: "(1) the actual knowledge of broadcasting techniques; (2) the inspirational results of having the family of the individual student, the members of the school, and the members of the musical organizations ‘back home’ hear the broadcast of which their representative is a part; (3) the lessons of discipline and cooperation imposed by being a member of such a broadcasting group; (4) the advantages gained through the association with the important personalities attracted to the National Music Camp because of the broadcasts."
Radio broadcasts each week motivated campers to hone their musical craft. Auditions would be held for coveted spots on the program, particularly for soloists and chamber ensembles to perform on air during stage changes.
Maddy's on-air lessons reached tens of thousands of music enthusiasts.
"My aim is to stimulate interest and discover talent," Maddy declared in a speech at the Music Educators National Conference in 1936. "For this purpose radio has no equal."
These nationwide programs, however, also kept Interlochen resilient and intact during the Great Depression. NBC's reach publicized the National Music Camp widely in a time of diminished enrollment and debt. Though the extent of how much radio had directly influenced the Camp's enrollment numbers is not known, the network broadcasts promoted the institution much more than it could have otherwise afforded to do so in that decade.
Live broadcasting of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra on summer Sunday evenings is more than a simple tradition. Maddy's embrace of radio undoubtedly magnified the impact of his visionary and innovative forms of music education across the nation and worldwide. Radio strengthened the National Music Camp — and Interlochen Center for the Arts as we now know it.
Additional Sources
Austin, Henry Root. "History of Broadcasting at the National Music Camp." Interlochen, Michigan, 1929-1958.
Boal, Dean. Interlochen: A Home for the Arts. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1998.
Hash, Philip. “The National High School Orchestra 1926-1938.” Journal of Research in Music Education 57, no. 1 (2009): 50-72. DOI:10.1177/0022429409333376.
Maddy, J. E. "Just an Idea." Music Supervisors’ Journal 13, no. 4 (1927): 71–72. https://doi.org/10.2307/3382592.
Amanda Sewell, Leo Gillis and Eileen Ganter provided additional support for this article.
