Editorial
Remembering Robert Lawson Shaw
I met him when I was fresh out of college, at Tanglewood for the summer, singing the Mozart Requiem and the Beethoven Ninth with the ‘large’ choir (no auditions) and with no inkling of how my life would change as a result. In photos of that summer we both seem impossibly young. . .
In the Fall, I enrolled at Juilliard to be a Choral Conducting student of his - accepted, I felt, only as the token female in the class. Maggie Hillis joined me the next year. Those years were like being on a roller-coaster: singing in the Collegiate Chorale (the Verdi Requiem with Toscanini; the complete Christmas Oratorio at Carnegie on a full blizzard night); attending rehearsals of the Juilliard chorus (The St. John Passion) and the small group which became the nucleus of the Robert Shaw Chorale (radio programs, opera recordings, special performances); superb score study with Julius Herford (my other mentor: I started piano study with him that year); writing program notes, researching repertoire and doing all manner of odd jobs for Shaw.
This was the year of agonizing over whether to form the Robert Shaw Chorale: the first tour was in the Fall of 1948, with a few triumphs and many discouragements. I wrote a ridiculous Cantata 1/2 to cheer them up at a low spot. There followed the recording contract with RCA, and the beginning of our twenty year collaboration. We found that we could work easily together, probably because our styles were so different. My function was to find melodies in the topic (suggested first by him or RCA) and make a whole set of sketches over the course of several months. Then, a week before the recording sessions were to start, we would work together: rewriting, polishing, rejecting-and-replacing, never accepting as-is, always wanting each piece to be just right, worthy of his singers. He said if we did our work right, the piece would sing itself: the excellent musician would have not a second’s hesitation in following the flow of the line.
The memories are crystal-clear: his pointing at the coda of a sketch, saying: That‘s the first idea you’ve had." Listening to my first play-through of the whole set, when I encountered more counterpoint than my fingers could handle, and began to sing: "For God’s sake, don’t crescendo!" Total failure on spirituals: he did them all at first. Changing one note in a phrase; adjusting one duration; listening always to breathing so that it is built into the song; speaking text aloud to capture vowels, consonants, diphthongs, accents, colors; recognizing elements which would unite the whole; "one idea per verse"; enormous care with exact durations and cut-offs; learning that if you have a great melody to work with, you mostly need to stay out of its way (you can afford to be clever with the less-great).
During these years, Tom Pyle and I were married, both of us at the center of the circle around Shaw. My work was mostly at home, behind the scenes; Tom went on every tour except the Russian and South American ones: our youngest daughter was born the night the Chorale opened in Moscow (also the Cuban missile crisis) and we could find no one to baby-sit the other four if he left. (I still feel guilty about that). He was Shaw’s right-hand man, auditioning singers, helping set-up the stage (mostly RLS did it himself, but Tom was his only surrogate), handling payrolls and seating charts, being road manager on some tours and union rep on most of them (on the extensive European tour in 1956, the experienced tour manager deserted during the first week: Tom and Robert’s first wife, Maxine, managed the entire following tour). Not to mention his singing in all those performances and recordings, doing more and more solo work, with memorable performances as the Christ in the Bach Passions toward the end of his life.
And that brings me to Tom’s death, on January 22, 1976, and also Robert’s on January 25, 1999. For Tom’s memorial service, Robert came to New York and conducted a volunteer choir of 500 and a superb volunteer orchestra in the Brahms’ Requiem, during an Evensong service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. (I remember being completely transported by that service). Who can do the same for him? I know there have been and will be many tributes. I know how many lives he touched and changed through his unique genius. I know his influence will live on for years through his wonderful recordings, and his example as a conductor who performed the great classics with elegance, clarity and spirit. I will miss him as a good friend, a tireless pursuer of excellence, a delightful raconteur, and a wonderful teacher.
What did I learn? There’s no holding back - throw yourself in, without counting the cost or time. Be your own harshest critic (I was never as good at that as he.) Listen all the time: the specific word, accent, mouth, voice, person, composer. Capture the sound on the page. In the last analysis (and the first), one can’t separate the text, the melody and the setting: it’s all one. In study and rehearsal one pulls them apart, but only to re-unite them. I learned that the spirit is in the details. That sharing ideas, bouncing them back and forth, is enormous fun, stimulating both players to greater achievement. That almost anything can be improved. That one is always walking a delicate balance-line between thought and action, intuition and craft, work and play, rehearsal and performance, life and art. And that music is one of the greatest gifts and sternest masters. When we enter its world, we must submerge our individuality in its surge and ebb, only finding our own voice through the mastery of its demands.
It’s a lot to live up to. Thanks, Robert - and rest well.
Alice Parker
