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THE ROBERT SHAW READER

Yale University Press

Contents

Preface by Robert Blocker...........................................................viiIntroduction by Tim Page............................................................ixPart I ORGANIZING AND SUSTAINING THE CHORUS........................................3Part II THOUGHTS ON MUSIC, SINGING, REHEARSAL, AND PERFORMANCE.....................47Approach, Analysis, Preparation.....................................................51Warm-Up, Rhythm and Tempo, Phrasing.................................................60Quiet Singing and Count-Singing.....................................................82Enunciation, Language...............................................................96Part III CONDUCTING THE MASTERPIECES...............................................119Part IV PREACHING THE GOSPEL (OF THE ARTS).........................................335Part V CELEBRATING THE RITUALS OF LIFE.............................................413Awards and Citations................................................................417Eulogies............................................................................425Letters.............................................................................435Verse...............................................................................445Index...............................................................................457

Chapter One

Half-ideas are transient-shaped Or else they must dissolve somehow each into each. If only they would stand completely still Until one found the words their size. "I see, your measurements are thus and thus -That's clear enough." You inventory your entire stock "Now this should fit"-and turn to find It really doesn't fit at all. You have a cubed suit For a sphered thought.

You were sure that thought had corners.

I tried to get down on paper some of the things that are jamming my mind with reference to music and the spiritual qualities.

We have, almost from the beginning of the COC, assumed the function-if not the particularized truths-of that relationship, and now with a frightening clarity and in a flood of specific detail I begin to understand that music is spirit. I guess the first Bible verse I learned "by heart" in the Beginner's Class at Sunday School was "God is love." It must have been at least twenty years later that it occurred to me that what it probably meant was "You know what God is-Love." And the same thing happens now with "Music is spirit"-but this time in overwhelming detail.

We began years ago by assuming that song was a story-it had a tale to tell, an argument to deliver, or a mood to convey. Its function was dramatic. Song was drama. Our first understandings of spirit in music were limited then to understandings of the text; and our techniques centered around systems of enunciation and a practical speech discipline, if also text was seen to qualify tone and sonority.

We understood spirit, too, as synonymous with our own corporate enthusiasm for the music we sang. It was very evident in concert performance that here was a group of people who loved to sing together and who somehow believed their song.

But at this point and from this time on the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus begins. I have never felt so sure of anything in my life. The ends for which we have assembled take shape; the pace and manner of their achievement grows more conscious and clear.

I believe that the essential musical properties-harmony, melody, rhythm, tone, and dynamics-under whatever critical microscope-are to be understood finally only as relations of qualities.

I believe that the relation of a note to its octave is the relation of one-ness to two-ness (which it is in terms of vibrations per second) and that at the same time the fact of their recognizable unity is a qualitative symbol knowledgeable only to men's spirits.

I believe that when voices switch functions for even the span of two notes, so that one voice sings what the other sang and what the second sang the first now sings the human spirit is involved. And the fact of a fugue wherein voices propose identity in alteration is a spiritual phenomenon.

I believe that form in music is a symbol of relations and values, not a blueprint of construction technique.

I believe that intervals have quality; that good intonation is the result of sensitivity to truth and untruth in tonality.

I believe that the voice is fantastically responsive to musical understanding, and that in every instance the sense of What must be precedes the How.

And I am no longer so concerned about the inability of any choir (including the COC) to master the long line of a long piece in a single sitting; for there are a hundred miracles in every measure worthy of the whole of a man's understanding.

I believe, then, that spirit in music is not the wholesale emotional orgasm that weeps appropriately in public, but rather the marshalling of one's keenest, most critical intellectual and moral forces to the point of complete consciousness-'til one hears in terms of values and the movements of values, until the most pedestrian minutiae of pitch and rhythm are heard inwardly in relation to adjacent minutiae; and finally in relation to wholes of form, tonality and intent.

I believe that we are only at the beginning. I believe we can scale and direct every rehearsal to this end, and that in those hours will lie the "life we have lost in living-the wisdom we have lost in knowledge-the knowledge we have lost in information."

December 2, 1948

In the last three weeks I've been reminded of the importance of the time-consuming non-musical mechanics of building and maintaining a chorus. Chief case in point would be this business of increasing membership, and the operation is as far removed from the golden glow of art as one could get. You need fifty new members-mostly men; so you send out 1,500 letters with 3,000 announcements knowing a few hundred will find a small response, you send announcements to 7 newspapers knowing 2 or 3 will find space for it, you post 80 or 90 posters understanding that they may be taken down in twenty-four hours; and from all this you get 30 to 40 hours of auditions, of which a fourth to a third are men. During the auditions it seems like it's women, women, and more women; but at the end of the day, you discover you've found 3 baritones and 2 tenors-and it's all worth it. - Because all the noble musical dreams don't make a choir. People make a choir. If you have people, you sing.

On the road this fall, it seems to me that I did my most important work not conducting but during the 3 or 4 hours before every concert setting the stage-moving platforms, improvising ceilings, back-drops and walls, setting up chairs, altering seating arrangements.- More productive, I'd imagine, than dreaming beautiful sounds and admiring the dream.

So also it is with all of us in the Chorale. All of us have unromantic and non-artistic responsibilities, things that have nothing to do with the music-but there's no music if they don't happen. The first one would be the simple legwork of rehearsal attendance. I've known many of our people to come to rehearsal when they couldn't sing a note-laryngitis or something. Well, that makes sense in ways other than the possibility of learning while listening. All of us are disturbed by empty chairs. If the room is packed, we know we're ready for work. At least we have 11 men on...