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From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored, this is the Radio Free.
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Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education.
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Of the college to listeners across the country. One way that people who study instruments classify it is how it produces its sound. And that means it's actually a wind instrument. It looks like a keyboard instrument because that's how the player activates the sound compared to a piano, which might be classified more as a percussion instrument because the hammers are striking strings inside the piano.
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This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast network. That was Dr. Derek Stoff, Associate professor of music here at Hillsdale College. We'll talk with him later on in today's program about the organ as a musical instrument. First, we're joined by Joe Concha. He's a FOX News contributor and the author of two bestsellers this past decade. The new one will make it three. It's out now. The Greatest Comeback Ever, inside Trump's Big, Beautiful Campaign. Joe, thanks so much for joining us.
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C
Oh, thanks for having me. This is an exciting week. And when I heard you guys reached out, I'm like, I've always wanted to be a part of Hillsdale. Like, can I be like a teacher there? I've always wanted to be a professor.
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B
If you'd like to come out, Joe, I know the guy who can arrange that for you.
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C
So, yeah, we'll talk about it after. Go ahead.
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B
The Greatest Comeback Ever is a wonderful walk back through the Trump campaign, the 2024 presidential campaign, very early on. I think it's even in the introduction you had identified the very moment it should have been obvious that Donald Trump was going to win in 2024. And that's when the Biden administration placed him under indictment. Why in your mind, is that the turning point for Donald Trump and his campaign?
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C
Because we've heard Donald Trump complain very loudly and rightly for that matter, about the weaponization of the justice system and taking out your political opponents not at the ballot box, but through rogue judges and the type of trials that would exist in Washington, D.C. and New York, which overwhelmingly are liberal. And once I saw they were trying to go down that road and I saw the public's reaction to it, which was to rally around Trump. I'm not saying everybody did, of course, but certainly he suddenly became the victim. And that's a different kind of place for Donald Trump to be. So between that and the fact that Joe Biden's brain had turned to applesauce some time ago. Right. I mean, we're not talking at that June 27th debate that I was at in Atlanta, but well, before that, like, during the 20, we were talking about it on Fox, and I'm sure you were here, too. Those two combinations just made me say, I gotta write a book. This is gonna be an historic comeback, and I think Trump's gonna win. And sure enough, I was proven right. Thank God, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.
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B
We'd have a different conversation. Still have a book out, but a different conversation.
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C
Indeed.
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B
The first two chapters deal with the debate performance, the first debate performance by Joe Biden and then the assassination attempts. If the. If the indictment is perhaps the moment, are the debate performance and the assassination attempt maybe 2 and 3 in terms of the defining moments of this campaign.
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C
Yeah. Well, obviously the first debate, that one in Atlanta where Joe Biden, again, we had been talking about how he shakes hands with the air, oddly, after speeches or can't find his way off a stage, which is also odd for somebody who's been doing these kind of political speeches for 50 years, or when he's like that kid from the Sixth Sense who could have conversations with dead people. When Biden would talk, he was talking to Francois Mitterrand, and he said, meanwhile, Mitterrand, like, died, like, many years ago. All of those indicators, plus, obviously, physically falling down on stage, falling up the stairs at Air Force One, needing a list of reporters to call on the rare times that he took questions, or the fact that he spent 40% of his presidency on vacation. Yeah, that all came to fruition that night at Georgia Tech on June 27. But then also the vice presidential debate, we're talking about another debate. Usually, vice presidents don't really help decide elections too much, especially vice presidential debates. But in this case, Tim Walls, after weeks and weeks of calling JD Vance oddly weird, came across as the deer in the headlights, as somebody who you watched and listened to him and said, this guy has no business being one heartbeat away from the presidency. And then you saw J.D. vance and how intelligent he came off and how possessive he was in terms of the issues and pushing back on those debate moderators from CBS who more than biased that night. And then you said, you know what, Boy, they look like the normal ones, Trump and Vance and Kamala and goofy Tim Walls look like the weird ones. So I think that was a big turning point as well.
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B
We'll hop around a bit here. So on the Vice Presidential question. Tim Walls was an unusual choice when he was announced and became more unusual along the way. Why do you think it was him? Was it the fact that he had just stumbled upon this weird talking point that the Democrats glommed onto? Is it because they could not choose Governor Shapiro because he was Jewish, that their options were then limited? Why did Kamala decide Tim Walls as the guy?
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C
Both of your answers are correct, right? First, the weird thing went viral and the media loved it. They thought he was like, really cool. And the Kamala campaign, I guess, thought that, why don't we go with him? Because he's kind of, you know, he has the jazz hands, he's got a lot of energy and, you know, maybe this could be the guy that could appeal to Midwest voters because he's governor of Minnesota, grew up in Nebraska. But yeah, the second part is true. You had the Democrat Party that was petrified of the anti Semitic wing of the party and also petrified to lose the state of Michigan, especially the city of Dearborn, because that has a high Muslim population, by choosing Shapiro. They thought that that would cost them too many votes. Meanwhile, Josh Shapiro is at something like 62% approval in a state that was absolutely crucial for her to win. And he's pretty good on the stump, but he's somewhat moderate. So that may have normalized the tick a little bit. Instead she missed that two inch putt and went with that again, goofy 80s sitcom dad, who is Tim Walls, who only lied about carrying weapons of war, only lied about being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre. And then oddly, when he was playing AOC in like Madden, like, you know, the video football game, said that AOC runs a real mean pick six. And as a football coach myself, I'm like, you don't run a pick six. It just kind of happens. There is no plan. It just. It's a tip ball. You jump the ralph. When I heard that, that was a bridge too far for me and I talk about it in the book. So yeah, that was. That was her one decision she had to make during the campaign. Kamala Harris. And boy, was it the wrong one.
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The greatest comeback ever is the new book by Joe Concha Inside Trump's big beautiful campaign. Democrats had to make a decision once Joe Biden exited the race and they essentially said, nope, we don't want any challengers. It's Kamala Harris you mentioned in the book part. It could have been because of the massive war chest that was already put together. $350 million. Do you think that after Kamala Harris raised a billion dollars, some Democrats maybe looked and said, man, if she could raise a billion, anyone could have raised a billion. We actually could have had a better candidate here.
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C
Oh, God, yeah. Because it wasn't so much for Kamala and rallying around her candidacy. It was all about taking out Trump, you know, as far as him not getting back to the Oval. So you could have just. It's a variable, like in a math equation. Anybody could have been X in this equation, and they would have raised. I saw a number that even said it was as 1.5 billion. But either way, that's in 100 days. They blew through that money and actually had a deficit. After the election, they're asking for, like, for more campaign funds just to pay it off. And you're thinking, where did that money go? Exactly. So we talk about that in the book how Oprah Winfrey, who's supposed to be a big Kamala supporter, they paid her production company a million dollars. And I'm thinking Oprah's worth, like, a billion herself. And wouldn't she just take one for the team here and say, hey, we got to defeat Hitler, so, you know, free of charge? No. So a million goes there. To the who's your daddy podcast. They. They spent $500,000 on, like, fixing up the studio for the host. And you're like, why would they have to do that? And meanwhile, they didn't even go on Joe Rogan in the process. And then they paid off all these celebrities to perform at her rallies to boost the attendance, to make it look like there was this groundswell of support for Kamala Harris. And obviously, all, again, that got them no swing states and popular vote, and they lost the Senate. So I just never seen a more craptastic campaign than this. But, hey, again, it helped the book write itself, that's for sure.
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B
On the other hand, you've got Donald Trump back running for president. And I admit, and I have previously on the show, I was concerned because I was worried that this time around, Trump's been through two campaigns previously, that perhaps you've burned through your A lists campaign workers and your B list campaign workers and who's left to run this campaign? And I was worried, and I shouldn't have been, because this was a brilliant campaign behind the scenes by President Trump and by those he had working for him. Who do you credit behind the scenes for really sparking Donald Trump and pushing this campaign forward?
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C
So when I went to the Wildwood rally, and that was In May of 2024, that was Wildwood, New Jersey. And I'm from Jersey. Never been to a Trump rally before. Cause they simply just don't come around here. So I asked the Trump campaign, hey, you know, can I get backstage this rally, talk to the president? And they arranged everything right down to I got to fly on the Trump plane, which was cool. And they served Wendy's, which I thought was appropriate on some level. Not McDonald's, but apparently the airport only had Wendy's. But anyway, so on that plane, answer your question, was Chris Lacivita. And he was one of the top campaign advisors, and he's been around the block forever. And he just ran, I think, a flawless campaign, along with Susie Wiles, who's now the president's chief of staff. So he hired the right people this time. I think 2020, he didn't have a very good campaign, or at least it wasn't run very well. And obviously, Covid just put everything upside down and took away all of Trump's strengths as far as rallies and the like. So, yeah, La Civita and Susie Wiles, you didn't see a lot of leaks out of this campaign this time. And they made all the right moves, including instead of, I don't know, doing a speech at the Ellipse like Kamala Harris did, which was forgotten, like five minutes afterwards, Trump decided to go to McDonald's and work, right? Be the fries guy and be the drive thru guy. And there's a picture of him on the COVID of the book waving goodbye to one customer. And when my publishers were like, but we're going to go with the assassination photo, right? Like the first one with the blood on his face. Fight, fight, fight. And his fist in the air. I said, now we got to go at McDonald's. They're like, okay, why is that? And I said, because that was the whole campaign right there. This is the billionaire who could relate to people. And he got his message out. That photo, Trump told me when I interviewed him, went more viral than any other photo outside of the assassination photo. And he said, but more importantly, it went to people that you don't pay attention to political campaigns or vote because it got into places on people's phones and on social media. The way Kamala Harris speech at the Ellipse goes away in two minutes because no one cares. So that, I thought was such a huge moment in the campaign. The McDonald's visit and the Al Smith dinner, which Kamala blew off and Trump went to. And the Catholic vote obviously broke nicely for Trump.
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We will continue in a moment and talk more with Joe Concha about his new book, the Greatest Comeback Ever. Inside Trump's Big Beautiful Campaign. I want to tell you first about the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. If you're enjoying this show, well, there's much more where this came from at the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. Find older episodes of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, plus a ton of other great Hillsdale College audio. Find the Larry Arn show, where Hillsdale President Dr. Larry Arne talks with esteemed guests of the College of. Also find the Hillsdale dialogues, conversations between Dr. Arne and radio host Hugh Hewitt. The Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast is available there, as well as the audio version of Imprimis, The Hillsdale College K12 classical education podcast, and more. Podcast Hillsdale. Edu. Go there, find all of these programs and click the subscribe button to subscribe to any of these shows via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music. You can find these programs anywhere you find your audio, including YouTube, the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More info at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu. You're gonna love it. We continue with Joe Concha, his new book, the Greatest Comeback Ever Inside Trump's Big Beautiful Campaign. Joey talked before the break about that McDonald's photo. It's on the COVID of the Greatest Comeback Ever. You've got Trump also driving that garbage truck after the comments by President Biden.
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C
That's right.
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B
He did well with UAW type people you mentioned. The endorsement that Kamala lacked was not necessarily the Washington Post, but the Teamsters who refused to endorse Harris in this presidential campaign. Why are the blue collar workers, the Teamsters, the uaw, so attracted to this rich guy who's been in business all his life and buys and sells skyscrapers, Right? And wears cufflinks like he does on the COVID What is that connection? Why does that happen?
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C
I think ultimately, you know, he's maybe seen as a builder, a construction guy first. Not that he's building the buildings, but Trump doesn't have a cross as a billionaire. I mean, sometimes he does and sometimes he's very relatable. But the minute, and if you see the back of the book, there's all predictions on how Trump's going to get, you know, smoked and just he's going to lose. And then the last prediction is, for me, October of 2024, I said on Sean Hannity's TV show, I said, Trump's gonna win this. He's gonna win it quite easily. Save the tape. This is how it's gonna end. And Sean's like, oh, you're the most bullish person on this. I said, yeah. And then I explained why. And the reason primarily was because the Teamsters had internal polls in terms of who the rank and file were gonna vote for. And when Joe Biden was in the race, Biden was leading in that category by 10 points. And then when Kamala came into the race against Trump, then Trump was up 30. I'm like, that's a 40 point swing. The Teamsters, they're huge in Pennsylvania, for example. And then you heard about the UAW and those workers as well, breaking for Trump and US Steel and restaurant workers. No tax on tips. Beautiful. Again, that was just a stroke of genius. And then three days later, Kamala says, oh, yeah, I'm gonna. I like that idea too. It's like, okay, there's no original thought here. So, yeah, once I heard that the. That rank and file union members were breaking to Trump and you saw the black vote going more towards Trump and Latinos, definitely towards Trump, I said, who is left to vote for Kamala Harris outside of single young women? And that's when I was as bullish as I was and said, I don't see how he loses. If Democrats can't get those votes, they can't win elections, and it's that simple.
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Joe Kancher with us, the new book, the Greatest Comeback Ever, inside Trump's big beautiful Campaign. You ask a question in the book, when did the media get so out of touch? And point to the Dan Rather document incident in 2004, which I think is a good answer. I go back to 2000, and the idea in the media that, you know, Bush 41 could win, Bob Dole losing was their kind of guy. But you have Bush come in, the cowboy from Texas, didn't talk like them, didn't think like them, and, you know, there's not a lot of comparison between George W. Bush and Donald Trump, but they are outsiders in kind of a similar way. And when Bush beat Gore, the ultimate government insider, you know, left wing Democrat guy, his dad is a senator, right? He's a senator. I think that broke them in some way. And it just has carried over now for virtually 25 years.
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C
You're so right about that. And even you can make the same case for Barack Obama. An outsider, right? Like he was in the Senate for five minutes before he ran for president. But he was seen as somebody different, not just because of the color of his skin, just in general, right? Not your typical kind of Democrat, obviously, electric on the campaign trail. So Obama was an outsider. George W. Bush, you know, baseball owner also as well. You're right. A guy you could relate to. Outsider. And then obviously, Donald Trump, outsider. So I dismissed the 2020 election just for the sake that Covid was so rare. And without Covid, Trump beats Biden. And I actually do say in the book that it's better that Trump lost 2020 because he would have had a hostile House and Senate waiting for him, and then Peachman just would have gone on forever right here. At least he was able to pick, like, a whole new Cabinet, all the people that he wanted around him. And he has a House and a Senate that's working with him, as we've seen in these first 100 days. So you're right about that, though. Outsiders tend to win more. And that's why the Democrats now, they can't run Kamala Harris again or a Cory Booker or, you know, they're gonna need somebody from the outside, and maybe they see AOC as that person. But then they'll lose 51 states, which is mathematically impossible. But that they'll find a way if she is the candidate. But maybe it'll be somebody like Jon Stewart, like somebody we're not even thinking of right now. Mark Cuban, maybe he'll get talked into doing it. I think that's the only way they win is if they go outside the establishment. And Republicans, for that matter. That may be the same case. But I think JD Vance is seen as an outsider as well.
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Very interesting. Let me follow on that. So all this jockeying by current Democratic governors and Gavin Newsom being apologetic in some ways, and J.B. pritzker embracing the far left element of the party and the AOC wing of the party, and Gretchen Whitmer saying, well, you know, I can kind of work with Trump here, even though she covers her face with a, with a, with a folder when she's inside the Oval Office, is all that for naught? Do you think Democratic voters will look for someone not, not, not a politician in 2028?
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C
I hate to say it, but I think that you need a celebrity aspect to a certain extent to win a presidency these days. Right. And Obama had that, and obviously Donald Trump definitely has that. So I don't know. Like, I look at Andy Bashir, for example, and he's the governor of Kentucky, and Kentucky obviously is a fairly deep red state, but Bashir is a Democrat.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And he won reelection easily. And then I look at his approval rating, 68% approval. She's like, they should probably run Andy Beshear because he seems to have Some crossover appeal. He comes across as normal. He's boring. Yeah, but in the end, maybe people will want boring. But no, I think they want more Democrats to, at least in primaries. Right. I remember Michael Bloomberg ran in 2020, and I liked Bloomberg as the mayor of New York, having lived in New York, worked in New York, he ran an excellent city. Like Rudy gets the credit for cleaning up the city, Giuliani. But Bloomberg just was smart to just continue Giuliani's policies, but then bring a businessman's aspect to running the New York City government. And he had not one, but three terms in there. And so when he ran, I go, yeah, they're going to nominate him. I mean, he's a slam dunk. And then he was out like in a couple of weeks because I guess he came across as too boring and he wasn't radical enough. So that's where I wonder, like Kenneth Bashir, can a Jared Polis, those type of people's governors, as you mentioned, can they win? And I keep thinking of Bloomberg and I'm like, no, they're going to go for the sizzle over the steak every time.
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B
Joe Concha, his book, the Greatest Comeback Ever. What do you see as the biggest differences between Trump 1.0 his first term, Trump 2.0 his second term. We've got 100 plus days now under our belt. What do you see as the differences in his governing style?
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C
This is Hillsdale. I can't use the word I want to use, but so I'll just shorten it to he doesn't give an F this time. Like, he was way too concerned about fighting every battle his first time in and was somewhat paranoid and rightly so, because the minute he got in, all he heard about was that he was an agent of Russia. Right. For example. And then obviously impeachment starts. And, and, and he was just reading way too much press reports, thinking that they were objective, I guess maybe on some level. And there were a ton of leaks out of his, out of his White House because he had a lot of people around him who were working against his agenda. So the difference is this time, as I mentioned before, he has the cabinet that he wants. You don't see the leaks coming out as much anymore. And he's playing a long game where he's governing like a guy who isn't going to serve a third term. I know he jokes about that, but he's doing this tariff thing, knowing that, yeah, you're going to break some eggs in the beginning and there's going to be market volatility, and it may upset some things within the economy, but ultimately in the long run, it's the best thing to do. So right now, he just doesn't give an F. And he's just moving forward with his agenda and he's not worrying about fighting all those little battles like he did in the first term. And I think that shows maturity and the show's experience.
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B
Very quickly, Joe, you made the early prediction that Trump was going to win in 2024. I'll ask you to put on the prediction hat one more time. I'm curious if Republicans and conservatives can stay on the correct side, the right side of these 8020 issues, because if you do, that's an easy roadway to another victory in 2028. Can Republicans continue to have this sort of cultural advantage on Democrats for the next three years?
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C
Yeah, because it would be political suicide otherwise if they didn't. Right. And it's not that hard to be on the 80 side of these 8020 issues. Like, yeah, I don't think my daughter should compete against other boys in sports. That's pretty easy. Hey, I don't think that we should bring back those who entered the country illegally, who were engaged in human trafficking and beat their wife like the Maryland man that we hear so much about, Abrego Garcia, or I don't think that we should have sex changes for those who are here illegally and in prison. Like is all these things. As long as they just keep doing what they're doing, they'll be fine. I think if J.D. vance is your nominee, and I believe he will be, then I think that's a pretty unstoppable person to beat because we saw how impressive he was in that vice presidential debate and, and more JD the better. And I mean, could you imagine like an AOC JD debate? I mean, boy, talk about like Mike Tyson versus Michael Spinks, you know, over 91 seconds kind of thing. So, yeah, I think they can win the 2020 election. Just keep doing common sense things, let Democrats implode the way they are, and they're going to be out in the wilderness for a very long time.
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B
Joe Concha, FOX News contributor, author of the brand new book the Greatest Comeback Ever, Inside Trump's Big Beautiful Campaign. Joe, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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C
That was fun. Thanks so much. Have a good one.
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B
Up next, we talk with Dr. Derek Stoff from Hillsdale's music department about the organ as a musical instrument. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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C
This show is a part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network.
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B
If you like what you hear, please.
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A
Subscribe to your favorite.
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C
You'll get brand new episodes of all your favorite shows sent right to your device and you'll help us know that you're out there listening. Never miss another episode by going to Podcast Hillsdale.
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B
Subscribe.
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C
That's Podcast Hillsdale.
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B
Edu subscribe or click the Follow or.
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C
Subscribe button on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.
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A
Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss.
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Topics of enduring relevance.
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A
And from time to time they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at Podcast Hillsdale Eduardo, that's podcast Hillsdale Edu or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your audio.
- [24:08]
B
Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. Be sure to check us out on X. We're at Hillsdale Radio for updated and guest information. We're joined by Dr. Derek Stoff. He is associate professor of music here at Hillsdale College. Dr. Stoff, thanks for joining us.
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A
It's a pleasure to be here talking.
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B
About the organ as a musical instrument today. Many of us in churches, of course, have heard the organ. Many of us in everyday music have heard the organ. I hear it at home occasionally because my son plays the organ, which is why I'm interested in some of this. So the organ is a musical instrument. Let's start with how it operates. How does an organ produce sound and what are the different types of organs might have been we might have heard through our time?
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A
Well, if you're talking about the traditional pipe organ, one way that people who study instruments classify it is how it produces its sound. And that means it's actually a wind instrument, although it looks like a keyboard instrument because that's how the player activates the sound compared to a piano, which might be classified more as a percussion instrument because the hammers are striking strings inside the piano, in this case, all of the sound that an organ producer, most of it is produced by pipes blowing wind through these pipes and you get a sound. So the basic components of that organ, if it's a traditional pipe organ, are this first, this mechanism that controls the supply of wind into the Pipes, and that's somewhat complicated, but then there's the pipes themselves which produce the sound. And then these pipes generally sit on these big chests in rows. And most of the time you don't see them. You only see just a handful of facade pipes. Sometimes they're shiny and tall and most of the pipes are hidden behind there. And then third component, besides the winding and the pipes are the mechanism that allows those pipes to play, of course, the keyboard. And then whatever system, mechanical or electronic, that connects the keys and the pedals with the mechanism that allows air to speak through those pipes.
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B
Dr. Stoff, how would you compare the organ to the piano? Both have keys, but both operate, I'm sure, very differently.
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A
There's certain similarities, but it's smaller in range. The keyboards of an organ tend to have, say 61 keys, is a, a fairly common compass as we call it. And a piano of course has 88. So the piano is much wider when you sit at it. But there's also a pedal board on an organ. Most organs nowadays have this pedal board. And of course those pedals are much larger than the keys that your hands play because your feet can't handle such small keys trying to play. You'll get in trouble. If you play a keyboard sized piano with your feet, your teacher will yell at you like I will yell at my daughter if she ever tried that. There are 30 or 31 pedals. And so imagine this. We have the, the simplest organ could consist of one pipe for every one of those keys. And if it's a manual of 61 keys, you're going to have 61 separate pipes. And that's what we usually call a rank. And if you, if, if they were spread from lowest to highest, right in front of your eyes, you would see a kind of slope of pipes from tallest down to the smallest. You might have a pipe that's, that reaches the ceiling here and then the lowest one might be less than a foot tall. And that's just one rank or what we eventually call one stop on an organization. And organs usually have many, many stops. And that means that if you have an organ with 30 stops on a particular manual, that means 30 ranks of these pipes usually, and possibly more, that would be at least 1800 pipes hidden behind you most often and, or in front of you, depending on the direct direction you're playing. And that it's usually more than that because there are some stops that involve more than one pipe per key that you push down. The only way to create variety in this case is for the organ Builder to add new stops that offer contrast or that can be added to the existing or fundamental stops to make the instrument louder or fuller. We use these different ways of describing the sound. They're not always just loud, but also a sense of fullness or a sense of even kind of empty or hollow sounds that you can produce by artfully selecting from among the different ranks of pipes available to you.
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B
Dr. Derek Stoff with us talking about the organ as a musical instrument. If you were to go behind what people can't see from the outside, what would the insides of an organ look like?
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A
If you were to go back into behind the organ case, you can get there if you're a special privileged person who needs to actually do there. But we don't let people back every day. But it. You. You have to get back there to tune and serve as the instrument. And if you would go back, you would see two basic types of pipes. One is the most familiar one that we call flus. These are like recorders.
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B
Okay.
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A
The other one is. Are reeds. But. But flues are the most iconic. In fact, they're the ones that, if you look at most pipe organs, the builder has placed several or at least a rank of these out front and shine and polished them up so they're nice and shiny. And these speak essentially like recorders. You've got air blowing through a tube, and there's a mouth, what we call a mouth, a kind of opening in the bottom of the pipe close to the foot, the very bottom. And when air hits that, the air column is split. Some air goes out of the pipe and most stays in, and that creates a kind of turbulence, and that's what produces this sound. And then the length of the pipe determines the pitch. So very tall pipe will be lower. A very short pipe will be closer to a dog whistle. And we have that kind of range on many organs. The largest of these flue pipes, if I refer to the Christ Chapel organ here on Hillsdale campus, the largest of our pipes, flue pipes, are third, around £450.
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B
Wow.
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A
Made of wood. They sit at the very back of the organ, and they had to be specially installed on the back before the rest of the organ went in, because they couldn't be just carried into the organ case and placed where they need to be. But. But we also have pipes the size of your index finger, your pinky, and that sound like dog whistles. You don't use those pipes most of the time alone by themselves, but in combination with others, they can add a sign of kind of brilliance to it.
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B
Can you give us a very brief history of the organ? When do we see this becoming developed?
- [31:50]
A
You can actually find organs in late antiquity, in the Greeks and Romans, this idea of a water organ. And we've got imagery of what these looked like. And the water here is used instead of what we might think of as the air reservoir. In a modern instrument, you've got to keep that air regulated, that air pressure, because as soon as the air pressure increases, the pipes start speaking differently and will eventually stop speaking because they're either overblown or underblown. So the ancients found this idea that using this tank with water in it, in which the bellow pumper can push the water in and keep it bit even. We don't really have a. We don't think that those kind of instruments could have done very much. The imagery shows them only with a few pipes. The real sort of ancestor of our modern organ started in the Middle Ages, where that water mechanism was replaced by air reservoirs. And if you go into the back of an organ, a modern pipe organ, you'll still see these reservoirs. They often have big weights on them to keep the air pressure at a uniform rate. Because when you have an organ, especially if it's pumped by hand, the airflow into that reservoir is going to be uneven. As the bellow pumper steps on or pushes the bellows, air is going into this reservoir, and then it's also going out when the. When the key, the player plays. And if there's. If you're playing a very large sound with lots of stops, the airflow out of the instrument is. Is pretty large. And. And you can tax the wind system if you don't play it correctly or don't draw on the right combination of stops. And so that you need to have this kind of buffer zone for the air, which is the reservoir. And that developed in the Middle Ages. The most important development of, say, let's say the 15th century, was when people started figuring out how to stop the sound to certain ranks. Before then, the organ consisted of this huge chest with lots of pipes, and it was E all on or all off. And so the sound could be very loud, but it couldn't be anything other than that.
- [34:03]
B
Okay.
- [34:04]
A
And so builders began to figure out that if you put a kind of strip of wood with holes drilled into it underneath the pipes where the pipes sit, you could move that strip back and forth and cut off the air to certain ranks of pipes. And that's the origin of this. This notion of stop. The stop is Literally stopping air from going to certain pipes on the chest until the organist pulls out that stop and then the air is let in so that the expression pulling out all the stops. Yes, and that's basically in the late Middle ages, the development of that plus the development of the keyboard, a kind of what we think of as a normal keyboard with black and white notes and the pedal board developed. And from there the organ has changed mostly not, not so much in timbre, although that does vary too. But in say, the industrial revolution, organs start getting bigger and bigger. And then with electricity comes the advent of a, an electric blower, before which you had to play the organ with at least two people. So practicing in church meant bringing someone along to pump the bellows or trading off with your fellow students. And now you can, at a flip of a switch, have this done by an electric motor that provides a continuous stream of air. And, and that is helpful.
- [35:38]
B
Yeah, I imagine so.
- [35:40]
A
But in any case, if you were, if you were want to assess the major revolution in that electricity and digital technology has made for organ building. Nowadays we can have organs that are pipe organs, but they have no pipes. And they're kind of in some ways like a flight simulator. But we can still experience them as an organ. And people can have in their house an instrument and they can put their headphones on and sound like they're in a big cathedral. In some ways it's fun. And it also opens up opportunities for individuals and churches without financial resources to actually afford to have an instrument. The downside is that as some people think, that there's a kind of loss of authenticity when it's no longer real pipes making those sounds. But there's always going to be trade offs when you have new technologies like that.
- [36:39]
B
You told us earlier, Derek, that the piano was more of a percussive instrument. The A organ, a wind instrument. Does that mean that pianists can easily transition to play organ? One of the different kind of, I guess, techniques that would be different from playing piano to playing the organ.
- [36:56]
A
Yeah, it's a, it's a wind instrument. But being able to play a recorder or a flute gives you no advantage in playing the organ. Right, the.
- [37:04]
B
Right.
- [37:04]
A
The skill set for playing it is entirely keyboard technique. And that's. That means that pianists are really in the best position to take up the organ. And usually as a teacher, I ask that my students first have many, many years of piano study so that we can concentrate when we learn on the organ, the things that are most unique to the organ. So kids learning their basic Scales, harmonies, finger techniques, all that can be done at a piano. And learning piano repertory so that when we get to the organ, you can concentrate on other things. The biggest difference is when you. When you approach the organ is that unlike the piano, the organ has several manuals, several keyboards, and sometimes you have to learn to move between those keyboards within a piece, which you would never do at a piano. So the skill of jumping between these. There are even pieces where you actually can play on two manuals at the same time, with your thumbs playing on the lower manual and the rest of your hands playing above it. And you could actually repeat that for three manuals in which I have a. A top keyboard that I'm playing, say, with my left four fingers, the middle keyboard, which I'm playing with my left thumb and right four fingers, and then my right thumb is down on the bottom. I get. It's conceivable that there are pieces where you need to do some com like that. You would never do that at a piano.
- [38:44]
B
Sure.
- [38:45]
A
But also, of course, the big. The big hurdle for pianists is to learn to use your feet like another keyboard. And that takes time, and it's best done when you're young because your brains are still flexible. But kids have to be tall enough to actually reach the pedal board to do that. So usually kids don't start on the organ until they're fairly tall, and then they're in, like, high school age. This is when I started. But you have to then break a bunch of habits.
- [39:13]
B
Sure.
- [39:14]
A
From piano, you learn that the bass is always your left hand. Practically. Practically all repertory and organists have to learn that the bass can sometimes be the pedal and that you don't want to mimic your left hand and pedal. Your left hand tends to instinctively reach for the notes that your feet should. But then you've got to break other habits because the organist can sometimes play the melody in the pedal. The left hand might play the bass on a manual. You might play the alto and tenor lines and bass on the manuals and play the soprano line on in the pedals. And that's a very disorienting experience, even for experienced organists who look at a hymn as notated in a hymnal and try to play the melody with your feet. You have to kind of bend over backwards mentally to make that work. Those are the kinds of things we try to get our students to do, but that you would never think to do on a piano.
- [40:22]
B
Are there any famous composers known primarily, perhaps, for their work on the organ? Composing on the organ There are lots.
- [40:31]
A
Of composers from the 19th and 20th century who mostly wrote for the organ or who are famous mostly for the organ, but they aren't generally as famous in broader music history. If you want to hear the sort of most household names or most famous composers, you'd have to go who happened to write a lot of organ music. You'd have to go back to the 18th century and usually to the 17th century, which is really the heyday for the leading composers who happen to be organists, leading composers of the age. And, and Bach is one of the most famous, probably the best example here. Someone in his day who was actually known more for his organ playing than he was for many of the compositions that he subsequently become famous for, like the Brandenburg Concertos or his passions, which were barely known in his day. Outside of his family circle, but within central Germany and within the broader German speaking lands, Bach was, was pretty well known as a leading organist. And before Bach you can find people like the famous composer from north Germany, from the city of Lubeck, named Dietrich Buxtehude, whom Bach visited as a youth to hear and presumably to study with. And Buxtehude is a famous composer. There's plenty of other not household name composers of the 17th century that I know and I teach because I teach 17th century music. And those composers are still famous today, but famous also for their organ music. When we get into later ages, there are composers that are famous that wrote, that sometimes dabbled in organ music that are in. That is interesting. Mendelssohn of course wrote a number of organ works that are still in the repertory. But there begin to be a lot of famous composers in. Well, there's always been famous composers who haven't written for organ that we kind of wish did. Mozart who apparently played, and Beethoven who certainly played the organ, never really wrote anything down. One of the most famous players of the 19th century was the composer Anton Bruckner, who's famous for his symphonies but made a reputation of improvising. And because no one ever wrote any of that down, as far as I know, we don't have any of his famed organ improvisations. In the 20th century you get a lot of composers devoted to organ music and most of them are professional organists who happen to also write music. And that as we'd expect in the 20th century, the sheer variety and breadth here is hard to describe. And listeners might not necessarily want to go to some of the most adventurous of 20th century organ music. I try to get my students to play some of this as a sort of Getting a sampling of these composers. But if you had to choose one, the most sort of famous modernist composer who happens to write a lot for Oregon and whose works are infused with the spirit of Catholicism is Olivier Messien. He's a French composer who lived in up to 19, I think 1986, and whose music is very adventurous. He was respected by the sort of leading avant garde radical composers. But his music is in many ways also interestingly traditional, even as it is sometimes difficult to listen to. It engages with important elements of theology. And so that's made and made him one of the exceptions, which is in music history we rarely teach organ music from the 20th and 19th centuries. By that point, it really doesn't play a part in the story that we teach in, in music history classes about music. But Messian is an exception. He's managed to be a composer who's also writing religious works that end up getting. Being respected by the leading sort of avant garde or modernist composers whose music would otherwise seem to be at odds with that. And that's an interesting thing, but in some ways an anomaly.
- [45:09]
B
Yeah. In what ways would you say the organs influence cultural or musical traditions?
- [45:17]
A
The organ has had a huge impact on the experience of congregations in worship. It's primarily associated with church, even as there are or there have been over the past century or two, well known venues for, for the. For organs outside of the church. There's of course, an interesting tradition in the early age of theaters, of theater organs, sometimes to accompany silent films. But that has by and large now become kind of just a novelty. It's fun to go watch those things. But people across history, the majority of at least Christian worshipers in certain areas of Europe and the New World, have encountered the organ, mostly in church. And that's probably speaking the obvious. It wasn't always that case. The organ wasn't used, especially when we talk about congregational singing to accompany the congregation. That's probably a kind of Protestant development that we see first in 17th century Lutheranism and eventually in some Reformed churches. And then in the 18th and especially the 19th century is really when the broader range of, of Protestants, Anglicans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians started to pick up the idea of using the organ to accompany hymns. But before that in, in Catholic Europe and in among the magisterial Protestant churches, the organs in the 16th century especially would be used either by themselves at particular points in worship or in tandem with the choir, but not even usually that, playing a very simple accompanimental role to the choir. And it's not until really the 19th century and really the 20th century that the organ becomes used to do very elaborate accompaniments to the choir to accompany lots of congregational singing. And really, it's not until Vatican II that the Catholic worship started to use the organ in a similar way to accompany congregational singing. And you can see that older organs in Catholic churches are often smaller. It depends. When you go to France, you see these big organs in the back, but they're not used or they weren't designed to accompany congregation singing. They were designed to either alternate with or provide particular music at certain points in the Mass, but generally weren't there to to give the singers, whether the congregation or even the choir, a kind of accompaniment.
- [48:37]
B
Dr. Derek Stoff, he is associate professor of music here at Hillsdale College as we talk about the organ as musical instrument. Dr. Stoff, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Joe Concha, his brand new book, the Greatest comeback ever, and Dr. Derek Stoff from Hillsdale's English department. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast. Find it at Podcast hillsdale Edu or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.