Music as sacrament

Commonweal, Nov, 1998 by Keith C. Burris

Another factor in creating the sound is Shaw's meticulous editing of the scores: he gives dynamic marking to virtually every note, for every voice and instrumental part. The singers never just "hang around." There is always something to do (even if it can't easily be done). Shaw builds an internal unity in the choir from its mutual commitment, effort, and technical drill.

But there still remains an X factor, something beyond the maestro's considerable bag of technical tricks. It has to do with Shaw's teaching style. He has the ability to imagine and then explicate the music for the musicians. With verbal finesse, he inspires them to rise to the very top of their abilities - and maybe a little above them. Voices, particularly, can be manipulated by the power of suggestion, and Shaw's suggestions are powerful. People who sing or play under him describe the process of "reaching for the music" or of "unfolding" it. Shaw gives them a road map to the heart of the composer.

Rather than playing the dictatorial conductor, Shaw approaches musicians as collaborators who must fashion the product among themselves. He does not simply hand them the music, but helps them to rediscover it.

I believe the X factor in the Shaw technique/sound is derived from human awe. When a Shaw chorus sings of the Crucifixion, it lays Christ in the tomb before you. When it sings of the Resurrection, it soars.

Since his retirement as music director of the Atlanta Symphony in 1988, Shaw has spent much of his time teaching in short residences at American universities, and conducting the two ambitious choral workshops that he established for teachers and conductors. One of these is the Robert Shaw Choral Workshop at Carnegie Hall. Held each January, it culminates in a Carnegie recital. The other is the institute at Furman. Through these workshops and recitals, Shaw continues to promulgate his well-honed musical principles:

* Music should be made for love, not money. (This is one reason Shaw is so devoted to working with amateur groups.)

* A choir is a community, in fact a moral community whose activity is akin to what the discourse was for Socrates and his students. For Shaw, a choir achieves a unity generally not possible today in politics or religion: All members work for a greater good, but individuality may still flourish.

* The goal of score study and performance is to get back to the composer's original intent. Performance is not show business but an act of faithfulness.

Thus a whole cohort of music teachers and conductors has been schooled in Shaw's ideas, methods, and passion. This may constitute an even greater musical legacy than Shaw's arrangements and the folk canon of the Robert Shaw Chorale era.

Shaw is not a churchy man, but to me he seems a deeply religious one. He conducts the great sacred choral texts not as aural ornamentation, but as truth. He told Martin Goldsmith of National Public Radio that "music is a sacrament, when it's right."

Shaw's singers know that this man with sixty years of experience (ranging from work with Bruno Walter to Philip Glass), ornery wit, and magnificent humanity, can lead them to the very heart of Bach, or Brahms, or Mozart. One senses they would follow him anywhere. As would those of us who envy them.