By Scott Cantrell

To anyone who’s seen Robert Shaw in front of a chorus, it will come as no surprise that the man alternately browbeating and cajoling his charges started out as a preacher. That was nearly 60 years ago, and Shaw has long since given up any such career goal. But his single-minded dedication to making the world a better place hasn’t changed one whit.

Nor has his preacher’s gift for spellbinding an audience. Violinist William Preucil, who during seven seasons as concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra worked closely with Shaw, describes him as “a teacher and inspirational speaker. To hear him speak about music—about anything—is hypnotizing and mystifying and moving. I could sit and listen to him talk all day.”

You might say that Shaw stayed in the sanctuary, but his medium of choice became neither sermon nor sacrament but choral singing. And if there’s any one man responsible for professionalizing the life of the choral director, it’s Robert Shaw. The Collegiate Chorale, which he founded in 1941 and conducted for 13 years, was widely recognized as setting a new standard in American choral performances, and it brought Shaw to the admiring attentions of Arturo Toscanini, George Szell, Serge Koussevitzky, and William Schuman. Still more standards were set by the Robert Shaw Chorale, a professional chamber choir that toured and recorded extensively from 1948 until l967.

But Shaw proved to be much more than “just” a choral conductor. After guest gigs with Toscanini ‘s NBC Symphony Orchestra and Koussevitzky’s Boston Symphony Orchestra, he went on to become one of Szell’s assistant conductors with the Cleveland Orchestra.

Then, in 1967, he astonished plenty of podium-watchers by becoming music director of the Atlanta Symphony, then a part-time outfit of barely 60 players. By the end of his 21-year tenure it was no secret that Shaw’s orchestra was well into the major leagues, and by common consent his Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus was second to none.

That Shaw, now 75 and going strong, should be named Musical America’s Musician of the Year should raise nary an eyebrow. Neither was it a surprise that Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts named Shaw one of seven 1991 recipients of its Kennedy Center Honors. As early as 1943, he was cited by the National Association of Composers and Conductors as “America’s greatest choral conductor.” Shaw proves that a prophet needn’t be without honor in his own land.

Nor is he a prophet to rest on his own laurels. Although he gave up the Atlanta Symphony’s music directorship in 1988, he remains the orchestra’s director of choral activities; as music director emeritus, he still conducts four weeks of concerts each season, and he will continue to record with the orchestra and chorus. He’s also immersed in a new summer course for choral conductors in France, and he maintains a busy schedule of guest-conducting dates, not to mention courses and Master Classes for singers 10 and choral conductors. So much for Shaw’s “retirement.”

Shaw’s messianic zeal—and his gift for making better folk of his charges—came naturally. Born April 30, 1916, in Red Bluff, California, he was the son and grandson of preachers. Entering Pomona College in 1934, he studied English literature, philosophy, and religion; he figured he’d end up teaching philosophy or religion in a university. But he also got involved in the college’s glee club, and when the director took a year-long leave of absence, Shaw was tapped to fill in.

It was during that year, in the spring of 1937, that the Pomona College campus was used for the filming of the motion picture Varsity Show. Appearing in the film were Fred Waring and The Pennsylvanians, a chorus well known for its radio broadcasts. While on campus Waring heard the glee club, and he was sufficiently impressed to offer its young director a job.

By now, Shaw was thinking of becoming a minister, and declined. A year later—being short of money and having second thoughts about the ministry—he wrote to Waring and asked to observe his work. Waring replied by inviting Shaw to come to New York and form a new glee club for a series of radio broadcasts. Suddenly, at age 22, virtually untrained in music, Shaw was working in New York as a professional choral conductor.

Shaw picked up a wide range of professional experience during his years with Waring, in radio, films, and theater. But he yearned to work with more serious literature, so in the fall of 1941, in collaboration with Gordon Berger, he founded his own choral group; some 185 singers were selected from 500 volunteers. The group, which was to rehearse at Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s Marble Collegiate Church, was dubbed the Collegiate Chorale. When the church’s consistory requested that the chorus be trimmed to 100 members, and that its Roman Catholics, Jews, and blacks be removed, Shaw and company moved elsewhere, but the name stayed.

One of the singers present at the Collegiate Chorale’s first rehearsal was contralto Florence Kopleff. “He was a bundle of energy,” she recalls of her first impression, “and very charismatic—likable, knowledgeable and very infectious with his enthusiasm.”

Reviewing one of the Collegiate Chorale’s first performances, critic Henry Simon observed that “Robert Shaw conducted in a violent and unconventional manner,” but he “made it at once apparent that here is a new, major chorus.” At about the same time, composer William Schuman was sufficiently impressed to ask Shaw and his chorus to participate in a concert of his music. But Schuman recognized that the young conductor needed some coaching, so he was sent off for lessons with George Szell, who was then teaching at the Mannes School. Shaw subsequently applied for, and got, a Guggenheim Fellowship, which he used for a year of concentrated study with Julius Herford, a German emigrant who later would direct the doctoral program in conducting at Indiana University.

The Collegiate Chorale’s reputation grew quickly, and in September 1945, Shaw’s charges were hired to sing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Toscanini. When the fearsome conductor showed up for his first rehearsal with the Chorale, far from throwing one of his infamous tantrums, he pronounced himself delighted. To NBC’s Samuel Chotzinoff he declared, “I have at last found the maestro I have been looking for.”

This was to be the first of many collaborations, and within a year, Toscanini invited Shaw to conduct the NBC Symphony in a challenging all-orchestral program: Beethoven’s Second Symphony, William Schuman’s Fifth, and Peter Mennin’s Festival Overture. That same year, Shaw spent the first of three summers at Tanglewood, teaching classes in choral conducting and preparing choruses for Koussevitsky’s Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts. In the fall, William Schuman hired him as the Juilliard School’s new director of choral music.

In 1948, Shaw formed the select professional chorus that would carry his name for 20 years, touring 47 states and 29 countries and recording extensively. Both the Robert Shaw Chorale and the Collegiate Chorale performed regularly with chamber orchestras, and on the side Shaw continued to hone his conducting skills in sessions with Julius Herford; in 1950, he worked with Pierre Monteux and Arthur Rodzinsky.

Then, in 1953, he was offered the position of music director of the San Diego Symphony. His five-year tenure there included a major expansion of the orchestra’s season—and it gave Shaw a concentrated workshop in which to learn orchestral repertory and rehearsal techniques. With the press of these responsibilities, he gave up direction of the Collegiate Chorale in 1954; a year later, he was given Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award, honoring his contribution of “a new vitality to choral music in the United States.”

In 1956 came a big surprise: George Szell invited Shaw to become an associate conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, to develop a symphony chorus and conduct some of the orchestral concerts. With more than 80 concerts to lead during his first season, Shaw got another baptism by fire. But, for 11 years, he had what he dubbed “the hottest orchestral property in the U.S. to learn on,” and for a mentor, he had one of history’s most formidable orchestral technicians.

What Shaw learned from Szell was the importance of meticulous editing of orchestra musicians’ parts—that and the cultivation of a kind of chamber-music mentality within a symphony orchestra. “Szell developed the first symphony-sized chamber orchestra in the world,” Shaw says. “He prepared their parts, and he made them listen.” From watching Toscanini he had also learned “the severest sort of concentration on the music during performance, and economy of choreographic movement.”

For all his growing orchestral experience, though, Shaw continued to be thought of mainly as a choral conductor. So it was quite the talk of the orchestral world when, in February 1966, he was named music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The ASO had been formed as recently as 1945, originally as a youth orchestra. Under the guidance of Henry Sopkin it had gone professional—and adult—but it remained a part-time outfit. By the middle 1960s, with a Ford Foundation grant forthcoming and a new arts center about to be built, the orchestra’s board figured it was time to take a major step forward.

Like a whirlwind, Shaw arrived in Atlanta in August 1967. In his first season, the orchestra was enlarged to 87 musicians, the season was expanded to 30 weeks, and salaries were raised. The following season, for the first time, the orchestra became a full-time occupation for its musicians, with rehearsals during the day. Shaw lost no time in creating the 60-voice Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus, and three years later he formed the 200-voice Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus. In October 1968, the orchestra moved into the new 1,762-seat Symphony Hall, in what was subsequently named the Robert W. Woodruff Arts Center.

With appearances in Washington, D.C., and New York in May 1976, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra began to attract national attention. The orchestra and chorus participated in President Carter’s Inaugural Concert at the Kennedy Center in January 1977, and a year later, with Telarc, it made the first-ever digitally-mastered commercial recording, of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and selections from Borodin’s Prince Igor. Since then, the orchestra has made more than 30 recordings with Shaw, many with the ASO Chorus; still more discs are planned. The most recent release, on Telarc, is of the Mahler Eighth Symphony.

During the years with his New York-based choruses, Shaw made a point of championing contemporary music; for the Collegiate Chorale, he had commissioned Paul Hindemith’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed. And he continued to give his attention to new music in Atlanta, to the chagrin of some patrons. In the middle of his fifth season, the orchestra’s board decided it was too much and asked for Shaw’s resignation. It was duly tendered, without recrimination, but the community rose up in protest. The board rethought its position, and soon Shaw was negotiating a new contract. The orchestra went on to commission new works by composers such as Karel Husa, Henry Brant, Donald Erb, Ned Rorem, John Harbison, Alvin Singleton, William Schuman, Stephen Paulus, and Leonard Bernstein, and to win repeated ASCAP awards for adventuresome programming.

“What is important is that music for ‘thinking’ be encouraged and supported and promoted as industriously as music for ‘forgetting,’” says Shaw of the contemporary- music issue. “If there is ever to be a flowering of American ‘serious’ music, it must be sought and promoted by audiences as well as musicians. But the musicians must lead the way.”

Having taken the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on its first European tour in May and June of 1988, Shaw retired as the orchestra’s music director. He was weary of the administrative duties, and he reasoned that “the orchestra and its audience deserve some variety.” And, at age 72, he wanted to spend more time with his wife, Caroline, and son, Thomas. Yoel Levi was named his successor.

For several years, Shaw and his wife have summered in the Dordogne Valley of France. With the sponsorship of Emory University, in 1988 Shaw was able to realize a dream of establishing a three-week choral seminar at Quercy. “We found some churches,” he says, “and we ran into a wonderful setup with a technical college there that had fabulous living conditions, with food prepared by the chef’s school. It’s a scholarship situation , with some 60 really first-class singers given their transportation and lodging there. It’s sort of like the Curtis Institute: You can’t get in just by paying tuition.”

The revelation for Shaw was the experience of working in richly resonant French churches, an atmosphere far removed from that of American concert halls. “The 16th- and 17th-century music was written for this kind of reverberation,” he says, “but I’ve never had the chance to hear it. Our recording of the Rachmaninoff Vespers was done in our favorite church there, which enhances the sound without destroying the enunciation. When we got in this large, large romanesque church of the 12th century, with its reverberation, people just began sobbing. We really had to stop. The acoustic, which you would think would be a purely physiological characteristic, became a very emotional thing in itself.”

Emory sponsored the festival again in 1989, and then it was taken over in 1990 by the Robert Shaw Institute, now an independent organization. The 1991 festival was cancelled because of the Gulf War, but the 1992 incarnation will be under the sponsorship of Ohio State University, which will now be the home of the Robert Shaw Institute.

But the Quercy project is far from Shaw’s only academic commitment. In years past, Shaw directed a number of popular summer courses at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. During the coming year, he will spend several weeks working at Ohio State. He also has a visiting professorship at Clayton State College in Morrow, Georgia, where there’s a superb new concert hall: The Spivey Foundation has commissioned a series of concerts to be presented in the hall during the next three seasons, for which Shaw will form a new professional chorus and offer lectures, seminars, and public rehearsals. In New York, following the success of a Brahms Requiem last season, he’s continued to do annual choral workshops culminating in performances at Carnegie Hall. The Beethoven Missa Solemnis is scheduled for January 1992 and the Berlioz Requiem for 1993. In his “free” time, if one can imagine such a thing, Shaw is talking about doing a couple of books on choral techniques.

No rest, indeed—but that’s Shaw, a man as demanding of himself as of the singers and players in front of his baton. And Shaw, that preacher’s kid from California, does acknowledge a kind of religious mission to his life’s work.

“Though intellectually uncommitted to any of the world’s religions, I am committed to the possibility of ‘first cause’ and the presence of mystery. I also cannot ignore in whatever mind/will I possess that I am an inheritor of and formed by the Christian tradition of European civilization. Though in church services I am silent when others recite the creed, I believe in the B-minor Mass of Bach, I believe in the C-minor Mass of Mozart.

“I love voices and I love ideas—the poetic, philosophic and narrative texts that have been central to the religious traditions of Western civilization. I love also the spirit and human commitment of the volunteer chorus. The ‘amateur’ spirit that flowed from musicians such as Serkin, Casals and Hindemith has led me to believe that the arts—when they are at their absolute finest—are inspired by this noble and ennobling amateurism, a shared love of beauty and reciprocal human respect.”

Amen.

Scott Cantrell is classical-music editor of The Kansas City Star and a frequent contributor to national publications.