AN APPRECIATION
Student of the Lurtsema School of Music
Recalls Robert J.

By Edward Shanahan

During short hops on weekends, I'm still tempted to punch the WGBH button on the car radio to pick up "Morning Pro Musica,'' a classical music program from Boston.

I would like to think I could find Robert J. Lurtsema there, but I know I can't. He died almost precisely a year ago.

I recall that morning and my reaction. I put a recording of Gabriel Faure's Requiem, Op. 48 on the turntable as I sat down to read his obituary. I suspect he would have approved of my selection.

For me, the death of Robert J., as he was known to most of his listeners, was equivalent to a death in the family, as I had logged as much or more time with him as I have with some family members.

He and I had, from time to time, minor correspondence and I met him once at a press gathering at UMass, but we were not equals. He was my teacher, my mentor in matters musical and cultural; I was his student and proud to be one.

I attended his classes religiously, at home in Northampton while WFCR carried his program or when vacationing in Maine on public radio there, in the Boston area while visiting family, in Connecticut where I lived briefly and much later on the public radio station in Albany.

News of his death produced a sense of profound loss, not only of him but of my innocence. My appreciation of classical music had grown and deepened because of his influence. He had shaped my tastes, he had taken me on a long and endlessly interesting journey and now he was gone.

It was not just that Robert J. chose an eclectic range of classical music for his program. He selected, edited and read the news several times each morning, which provided consistency and balance. There always seemed to be some overarching intelligence behind the choice of music, the themes they illustrated, the relationship of composers one to another, the competing artistry of the performers presented, the sweep of music and commentary.

Of course, "Morning Pro Musica" was so intelligent precisely because Robert J. worked at it. He devoted countless off-air hours researching and constructing his programs so the five hours he broadcast each day were orderly and relaxed at the same time. The commentary was not off the cuff, unlike most radio chatter. Prepared months in advance, the programs had a solid feeling, the way well-crafted prose reads or a keenly-rehearsed play projects.

I was not a complete dunce about classical music, but I had neglected my earlier exposure to it in favor of the more popular genre, especially the music of the 1960s, Bob Dylan and the Beatles.

What Robert J. did for me was reinvigorate my interest in serious music, nurture it, feed and challenge it and propel me to begin to acquire my own classical music collection to which I could turn when he was not on the air.

In those days the local Caldor's had a surprisingly strong classical record section with frequent sales, which I am certain is where I acquired the Faure Requiem.

Later when, Iva Dee Hiatt, the legendary choral director at Smith College died, I became the custodian of scores and scores of albums of choral works, which prior to my exposure to Robert J. and the every Sunday morning Bach cantata, I would have shunned.

I don't remember the year but I was on my hands and knees washing the kitchen floor one weekday morning when Robert J. played what seemed like six or eight different recordings of Pachelbel's Canon in D, a little-known piece at the time. That was a favorite form of Lurtsema pedagogy, to contrast several artistic interpretations of works. The emotion and beauty of the Pachelbel haunted me as it has millions of others. Robert J. alone pushed the piece to the top of the classical music charts, if there is such a thing.

I recall in the summer of 1981 while vacationing at Hancock Point, Maine, on a deck overlooking Frenchman Bay, listening to several hours of Canto General, highly charged music by the contemporary Greek composer Mikos Theodorakis in accompaniment to a libretto by leftist Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. The intensity of the music and the political narrative was so powerful, I later wrote to Robert J. to find out where I could get hold of the album. Peters International in New York, he wrote back, and thus I acquired the album.

Later in the evening of the day I read the Lurtsema obituary, I cracked open the Canto General two-record album, cranked up the volume, and said a personal good-bye to Robert J.

He was singular, make no mistake.

Skilled as an interviewer, Lurtsema offered a steady diet of "live" performances and discussions with composers and artists, ranging from Ravi Shankar and Jean Redpath to Marcel Marceau and Jean Pierre Rampal. Over the span of nearly 30 years, his circle of musician friends and admirers grew wider and wider, and thus we were exposed to a who's who in the classical pantheon. For many years, he took us to Tanglewood by radio for an the entire opening weekend, describing the lush surroundings; we met the conductors, performers and composers gathered for the summer-long Boston Symphony Orchestra festival.

I recall one Saturday some years back Robert J. introducing us to a new gadget that was about to come on the market - a compact disc player, which he explained and experimented with for the entire five hours, even though at the time very few pieces of music had been recorded in this new format.

Robert J. had his detractors - he seemed to want us to feel sorry for him for working so hard in our behalf; he loved the sound of his voice and played it like the instrument it was; he favored recordings such as Peter and the Wolf on which he was the narrator; and over time some felt he became more important than the music. And what about those chirping birds at the beginning of each day's program?

I recognized some of his failings, but he had done so much to enrich the quality of my life that I could never imagine saying a cross word about him.

We were more or less present at the creation of "Morning Pro Musica." He launched the program - first on weekends - in 1971, just a month before our family moved to Northampton.

I was immediately hooked by Robert J. And when he expanded the program to seven days or 35 hours a week, life was too good. When WFCR dropped him in the late 1980s I was angry; when we moved to North Carolina in 1986 I felt deprived. Back in this area, I was disappointed in 1993 when Robert J. returned to the original weekend format. But at least I could still get a small Robert J. fix.

Not so now. I'm on my own.

Yet, I am not without resources - there are hundreds and hundreds of records and discs in our home to which I can turn. I'll continue to offer up musical tributes to Robert J. Lurtsema from my own collection in order to say ''thank you, Bobby,'' as I used to call him behind his back. He made a profound impact and difference in one person's life. How many of us have done the same?