Robert Shaw
Memorial Concert
March 12, 2000
Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church
The Glenn Chancel Choir
The Meridian Chorale
The Chancel Choir of Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church will present its spring concert on Sunday, March 12, at 4:00 PM at Glenn Church on the Emory Campus. There is no admission charge – an offering will be taken. This concert is offered in memory of Robert Shaw, who died January 25, 1999 (born 1916). Also participating will be Todd Skrabanek, accompanist, and the Meridian Chorale. Soloists will include Patricia Nealon, Glenn Soprano Laureate, and Atlanta Mezzo soprano Kate Murray – both featured soloist with Robert Shaw’s choral groups. Steven Darsey, Music Director for Glenn Memorial UMC and the Meridian Chorale, and Wes Griffin, Associate Music Director for Glenn Church, will conduct.
Focusing on Mr. Shaw’s contributions to sacred music, the program will include choruses from JS Bach’s B-minor mass, American folk hymns and spirituals arranged by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker, and the southeastern premier of La Terra by Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973). The program will also include an original setting of Sidney Lanier’s “Life and Song,” composed by Steven Darsey especially for this concert.
Robert Shaw, Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra from 1967-1988, was arguably the most important conductor America has yet produced. The Robert Shaw Chorale, which he conducted from 1948-1966, set unprecedented standards for the choral art. Over his orchestral career, culminating with his 32 year association with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, he set the unchallenged international standard for choral orchestral music. Robert Shaw raised choral music from mere ditties, entertainments, and worship service amenities to the level of international diplomacy and prophecy - the world looked to Atlanta for truth through choral music.
Robert Shaw’s work addressed virtually every choral genre. From Broadway to opera to Americana to Glee Clubs to sacred music of many periods and forms, Shaw comprehended the music and set the standard for taste and excellence. From the 1950’s, Mr. Shaw became the cult hero of discriminating choral musicians, and each follower strove to emulate his standards of excellence. Informed by his unrelenting pursuit of truth through music, Mr. Shaw’s recordings and performances evince a winsome profundity that is irresistible. Thus, he has influenced all choral musicians- including church musicians – and thereby indelibly raised the standard of church music performance and thus enhanced the character of worship itself. “God likes right notes,” he was fond of saying.
Mr. Shaw had a long-standing relationship with Glenn Church and with the Chancel Choir. After coming to Atlanta as Music Director of the ASO in 1976, he brought the orchestra several times to Glenn. Mr. Shaw is quoted as saying that Glenn was one of the greatest rooms for music in the Southeast. Later, as Woodruff Professor at Emory, he conducted several concerts at Symphony Hall with all the Emory choral forces and the Glenn Chancel Choir, including Honneger’s King David, Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Haydn’s The Creation.
Anecdotal evidence says that the Robert Shaw Chorale appeared at least twice at Glenn, once with the St. John Passion and once, where Mr. Shaw directed “Listen to the Mocking Bird” and shouted under his chin to the audience – “He ain’t sleepin,’ he’s dead!” His touring repertoire with the Shaw Chorale, while including sacred masterworks, also included Glee Club songs like “Old Tom Wilson,” drinking songs like “The Pope,” and stunts, such as holding the choir on a climactic chord while he raced around the podium several times before returning to cut them off – this the same man who was renowned as an artist statesman.
Mr. Shaw was a constant champion of contemporary classical music. Addressing this aspect of his career, our concert includes the Southeastern premier of Italian composer Francesco Malipiero’s (1882-1973) La Terra – a setting of portions of Virgil’s Georgics. Robert Shaw- at age 31- gave the world premier of this work during the 1947 Symposium on Music Criticism at Harvard, where he also premiered Hindemith’s Apparebit Repentina Dies and Copeland’s In the Beginning – all done with his Collegiate Chorale of Manhattan.
The program will also include an original work written by Steven Darsey in memory of Mr. Shaw specifically for this concert. Scored for clarinet, soloists, choir and piano, this work sets Sidney Lanier’s “Life and Song.” Shaw strongly promoted traditional American forms like the African-American Spiritual and the American folk-hymn. The arrangements from these genres made by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker have become staples of American choirs and are heard frequently in American worship services. Mr. Shaw had the unique ability to infuse greatness in vernacular forms, such as glee club songs and sea shanties – represented in this program by the shanty - lament, “Lowlands.” Through most of his career, Mr. Shaw championed classical choral masterpieces, and thus our program includes such Shaw signatures as the second Kyrie and the Dona Nobis from J.S. Bach’s B-minor mass, and we close with the poignant final chorale from Bach’s St. John Passion, in Mr. Shaw’s own translation.
It has often been said among Shaw’s singers that his rehearsals were better than his performances; because, in rehearsal, he and the singers were more relaxed and he was free to share his prodigious musical-philosophical insight. It was in the crucible of rehearsal, in Mr. Shaw’s musical inner sanctum, where he transformed countless singers into new musical beings. The tools of his trade were the singers themselves, a fine room, a brilliant pianist and himself. Honoring this rehearsal model, this performance uses solely piano accompaniment. Todd Skrabanek, accompanist for the Glenn Choir and the Meridian Chorale, well embodies this tradition of accompanying genius.
Mr. Shaw was famous for these musical-philosophical insights and for drawing conclusions therefrom regarding the human condition. While rehearsing Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis in France the summer of 1988, he observed that the quiet Kyries concluding the opening movement indicated that God had removed himself from humanity – the absence of God. He said this was also the case in the Biblical account of Jacob wrestling God. Elsewhere he said that the Missa Solemnis is more questioning than Bach’s B-minor Mass, and the B-minor more so that the masses of Palestrina.
Mr. Shaw was a reluctant confessor. While always obfuscating belief when asked directly, his rehearsal commentary belied his theological reticence through constant references to God and the divine human relationship. Theological ruminations permeated his musical curiosity and were uttered with oracular force.
Thus he wrote:
“Music is Order.
Out of the void
Out of Chaos
the creative spirit
moving over the face
of the waters.
Out of the random a rule
Out of darkness a light
Out of multitude and muchness
integrity, the one
entire whole and holy.”
The Glenn Chancel Choir
The Glenn Chancel Choir sings for worship at the Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church on the Emory University Campus of Atlanta, Georgia. Composed of amateurs and professionals, the Chancel Choir strives to profess Christian faith through the finest sacred literature. In addition to leading worship at Glenn, the Chancel choir presents special concerts for the Atlanta community and has sung under the direction of Sir David Willcocks and the late Robert Shaw. Recent concerts have included Aaron Copland’s In the Beginning, Paul Hindemith’s, Apparebit repentina dies and Handel's Coronation Anthems. In 1997 they gave the American premiers of four contemporary Irish sacred works. For information and membership information: 404 634 3936 - info@glennumc.org
The Meridian Chorale sings principally sacred literature and strives for the highest standards of performance. Steven Darsey is Music Director. The Meridian Chorale performs in a series of events annually. They can be heard in the just released CD - Higher Ground: Camp Meeting Service with Fred Craddock, preacher. They also appear in the soon to be released Folk Advent Service, also with the preaching of Fred Craddock. They next sing in a worship service exploring the interface of science and theology, with Sir John Polkinghorne – Cambridge physicist turned priest – as preacher: April 3, 7:00 PM, at Cannon Chapel on the Emory Campus. For more information, see
www.orpheusdei.com/meridianherald
Singers of distinguished vocal artistry are invited to audition. There are no fees and rehearsals are limited to brift periods prior to each event. Rehearsals are held in the Druid Hills Baptist Church. Auditions are ongoing. Please call 404 525 4722, email meridianherald@orpheusdei.com, or visit our web site at: www.orpheusdei.com/meridianchorale.htm to arrange an audition.
Katherine M. Murray is a sought-after
recitalist and soloist for orchestras and choruses in the Southeast.
A student of the renowned contralto Florence Kopleff, Murray is well
known for her warm delivery and sensitive attention to text.
Murray is the choral music
teacher at the Paideia School; soloist and musical associate at Trinity
Presbyterian Church; and former director of the Collegium Vocale, a community
choir in residence at Emory University. She
earned her bachelor of music degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and
her master of music degree in voice performance from the Cleveland Institute of
Music. In her last solo appearance with the Glenn Chancel Choir Choir, she sang
the daunting Mezzo part to Aaron Copland’s In the beginning.
Patricia Nealon has been soprano soloist for Glenn UMC for the past 19 years. During her tenth year, for her artistry and loyalty, she was named Soprano Laureate. A graduate of Michigan State University, Ms. Nealon toured the United States with the Norman Luboff Choir before moving to Atlanta. She has performed leading roles in opera and operetta, including Susanna in Marriage of Figaro, Yum-Yum in The Mikado, and Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore. She sings with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus and Chamber Chorus, and was heard on national radio as soloist in Poulenc’s Tenebrae. She is featured soloist in Robert Shaw’s recording of Cantata Profana by Bartok, which recently won two Grammy awards. Ms. Nealon directs the elementary children’s choir at Glenn and resides in Atlanta with her children Chris and Kadie D’Ambrosio.
Born and raised in Atlanta, Wes holds a BS degree from Emory University, and MM from Florida State University, and an MBA from Georgia State University. He has performed with numerous sacred and secular vocal groups and is currently the Director of Youth Music and Associate Music Director of Glenn Memorial Church, where he has built a strong classically based youth music program with increasing participation. Mr. Griffin is also an accomplished tenor soloist. Last spring, he performed Britten’s virtuosic Serenade for Tenor Horn and Strings at Glenn with members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Glenn Music Director Steven Darsey was introduced to Robert Shaw’s work while a Freshman at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory in 1972. There he was dumbstruck on first hearing Mr. Shaw’s 1966 recording of Messiah, setting him on a lifetime search for the mysterious truth and beauty he heard in this, and subsequently other recordings and performances by Mr. Shaw. He was privileged to sing with Mr. Shaw three times while at Cincinnati and then again, ten years later, while a graduate student at Yale. In 1986, Mr. Darsey came to Emory’s Candler School of Theology as Director of the Choral Program and also as Music Director of Glenn Memorial UMC. In these capacities, he prepared choruses for Mr. Shaw several times and, for two years, he was administrator of Mr. Shaw’s activities at Emory. Mr. Darsey was also part of the Robert Shaw Festival Singers in France the summers of 1988 and 1989.
A life-time church musician, Steven Darsey has spent his career planning scripture based music for worship. He holds the Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and has studied musicology with Peter LeHuray at Cambridge and conducting with Helmutt Rilling at Stuttgart. He has conducted numerous performances of both amateurs and professionals and has prepared choruses for Sir David Willcocks as well as Robert Shaw. Mr. Darsey is founding music director of Atlanta’s Meridian Chorale.
He lectures and publishes on the history and practice of church music and on Georgia's famous tunebook, The Sacred Harp. Active as a composer, he has written and arranged some 70 works that have been presented in numerous worship services and concerts and has commissions from churches and publications with Lyra Sacra, Lawson-Gould and World Library music publishers.
Mr. Darsey founded and runs Orpheus Dei, a company providing quality music for churches and is Administrator for Meridian Herald, a non-profit corporation presenting worship services, concerts and lectures. Mr. Darsey is in his 13th year as Music Director of the Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church on the Emory University Campus, Atlanta, GA.