By today's standards, the radio signal must have been scratchy and tinny, originating as it did with a single microphone placed high enough to capture the sound of the music as well as the announcer's voice. But when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's nationwide program debuted on July 15, 1929, it was a sound that would resonate across the continent and around the world and influence several generations of listeners.

Seventy-five years later, those associated with the choir — not to mention the rank-and-file Church members who cherish it — are justifiably jubilant over what has become the longest continuous weekly network radio broadcast in history.

A full year of celebration will culminate July 17-18, in the Conference Center with a gala concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and the 75th anniversary broadcast of "Music and the Spoken Word" on Sunday at the usual time, 9:30 a.m. MDT. This landmark broadcast will be the choir's 3,909th.

Previous events this anniversary year have included a prestigious tour of the northeastern United States last summer, the reception of the National Medal of Arts from U.S. President George W. Bush last Nov. 12, and the radio program's induction into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame of the National Association of Broadcasters on April 20 of this year.

Of course, the choir as an institution is much older than its radio program. When the Salt Lake Tabernacle was newly completed in 1867, a choir performed then, stemming from a small group formed by President Brigham Young some 20 years earlier, when the Latter-day Saints had scarcely been in the Salt Lake Valley a month, and a standing choir organized in 1849.

But to trace the origins of the Tabernacle Choir, perhaps we should go back even earlier, to the plains of Iowa in 1846, when William Clayton penned the words to "Come, Come, Ye Saints," the hymn that would soon be on the lips of thousands of pioneers gathering to Zion and which has been for many years one of the Tabernacle Choir's best-loved selections. That hymn, as well as any that could be named, evokes the hopeful outlook, dauntless determination and pursuit of joy that defines the Latter-day Saint spirit and is reflected in each Tabernacle Choir performance.

Through the years, with more than 150 recordings and hundreds of personal appearances at venues throughout the United States and around the world, the choir has exported from Church headquarters the good will, peace and joy that are integral elements of the gospel of Christ.

With a rich repertoire of choral masterworks, hymnody, folk songs, patriotic melodies and popular standards, augmented by the brief but edifying "spoken-word" commentary featured in its broadcasts, the choir is a visual and aural embodiment of the sentiment penned by Joseph Smith in 1842 that is part of our scriptural canon today: "If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things" (Articles of Faith 13).

Along the way, of course, it became "America's Choir," an appellation given it by the late Ronald Reagan, one of five U.S. presidents at whose inaugurations the choir has performed, the others being Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Indeed, millions of listeners have turned to the choir for rejoicing or solace on occasions of collective celebration or mourning, including in recent times the 2002 Winter Olympics, terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the space shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986.

These days, if it is possible, the choir is better than ever, thanks due in part to the frequent presence of its relatively new instrumental component, the Orchestra at Temple Square. This aggregation of professional-caliber musicians is a fitting complement to the choir, which has performed and recorded in the past with some of the outstanding orchestras of the world. The Orchestra at Temple Square is a product of the visionary acumen of President Gordon B. Hinckley, who five years ago revamped the musical organizations on Temple Square into a more unified and focused whole.

Under the leadership of gifted artists and superb organizers, the choir is poised to carry on its tradition of excellence into perpetuity, so long as there are listeners with a yen for beauty and expansion of the soul, indeed, for "anything that is virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy."