Customer Reviews

Dear People . . . Robert Shaw (HMB206)

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This book is a wonderful summary of Robert Shaw's extensive career. It reads almost like an autobiography as the book is filled with letters that Shaw wrote to his many choirs throughout the years. Along with a detailed history of Mr. Shaw's rise in history, the book gives you several touching and often humorous insights into his personality. Robert Shaw's career spanned such a long time period that simply describing the events of his early days is a walk back in time, back to the days of oil company sponsored radio shows and pre-television entertainment. This, along with the unmatched wit of Mr. Shaw's own words makes this book an entertaining and fulfilling read for everyone from the choral music fanatic to the junior high chorus dropout! Read and enjoy!

The late Robert Shaw had an incredibly long and distinguished career. This authorized biography by Joseph Mussulman, a one-time Shaw chorister, covers Shaw's life and career up to 1979 in detail, with a Foreword added in 1996 which briefly covers those later years. But a revised edition, with full detail in the period 1979 to Shaw's death in January, 1999, would fill in a lot of blanks for those who know him best through his Telarc recordings with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and his Chamber Singers and Festival Singers, or through his Carnegie Hall Choral Workshops and Tanglewood appearances in the later years of his career.

I came by my appreciation of Shaw relatively late in life, and by a somewhat unusual means. When he founded his Collegiate Chorale in 1941, I was all of two years old. I was still way too young to latch on to him seven years later, when he had disbanded the Collegiate Chorale and founded the Robert Shaw Chorale. For three decades after that, I had a somewhat different musical agenda, and he was a musical "ship passing in the night" for too many years.

The signal event which brought Shaw to the forefront of my musical consciousness was the launching of Telarc's digitally-mastered LP's by Bob Woods and Jack Renner, in 1977. The second of these LP's was a performance of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite and Borodin's Polovtsian Dances by Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Shaw had earlier assumed the directorship of the ASO in 1968, and Woods and Renner had been associated with Shaw during the period when he was assistant conductor and choral director for George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. In a very real sense, Woods and Renner were, by bringing this new technology to Shaw, thanking him for past friendships and associations. And the history of his role in leading the ASO, and bringing it to prominence with its recorded repertoire, was dramatically changed by this event. But much of this later history, and what followed Shaw's "retirement" as active music director of the ASO, has unfortunately been compressed into the all-too-brief Foreword, and the last three years of his life are not documented at all.

It is fair to say that the Telarc "gift" which Woods and Renner presented to Shaw made the difference between a career which would have been insufficiently documented by recordings (except for a handful of earlier RCA Victor recordings of the Robert Shaw Chorale) and one which will now stand the test of time. The ASO, good as it became under Shaw's leadership, served as much during his tenure as the recording instrument which would provide support for the "ultimate" Robert Shaw Chorale, the remarkable, and totally amateur (in the best sense) Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, as it would as the civic orchestra for the greater Atlanta area.

I could wax eloquent about the dozens of recordings this orchestra and chorus produced over a 20-year period of Telarc support. But there is one recording which stands out above all, of a work which was the closest thing to a cornerstone for Shaw's career: Bach's B Minor Mass. His professional life with this work is well-documented in Joe Mussulman's book. There is a wealth of anecdotes about how his performances of this work could reduce folks to tears, from Alaskan Aleuts to college kids everywhere to Soviet apparatchiks at the height of the Cold War.

One anecdote stands out above all others regarding his mastery, as well as his unassuming modesty in the face of it all, regarding the B Minor Mass. It occurred after a performance that must have really come together in a very special way. Following the concluding "Dona Nobis Pacem" of the Mass, Shaw left the podium and darted behind the curtain, awaiting the applause. He waited, and waited some more. Finally, not understanding why it was that the applause never arrived, he poked his head out from behind the curtain, only to find both the audience and the musicians facing each other and bawling their eyes out from what must have been a rendering of the final "Dona Nobis Pacem" of the Mass for the ages. Those who were at that performance carry a very special event around in their memories.

This single, simple paragraph of an anecdote says volumes about Shaw's largely underrated mastery. When you read this book, you too will cry. And you will laugh. And you will likely do both simultaneously. For all the right reasons.

Now, if only someone would fill in the final missing 20 years or so of "Dear People," we'd have it all.

Bob Zeidler

People who think Robert Shaw was something special and who come across this book will be delighted with its readability. While it certainly captures Shaw's unique ability to command your respect and warm your heart, it is especially successful in putting the phenomenon that was Shaw into the context of music in America in the Twentieth Century. One often doesn't think much about what it must have been like, especially in the earlier part of the era, to champion and perform the "modern" serious music repertoire; this book forces us to think about it, to put ourselves in the places of those who felt, like Shaw, compelled to do it. Along the way, there's a good overview of the evolution of recording, and how Shaw fit in there, not so much exploiting the medium as using it to serve the larger purpose of his art. Compelled throughout his career to make popular recordings, Shaw's final one for RCA ("Irish Songs," August `67) is in fact finished by a capable associate while he runs off to do more important things with his latest love, the Atlanta Symphony. The "popular" Shaw was to always dog the "artistic" Shaw throughout his career. He was once stung by a critic who said of his light encores, "They drew lots of applause mingled with the soft plash of the cognoscenti being quietly sick in their hats."

Everyone will have their favorite quote from Shaw after reading this book. Mine is a long, affectionately comic poem on Mahler's Eighth Symphony, which concludes, "So, grieve not, Gus! Our new Apollo! // Where you lead us, we will wallow!" Indeed, the many quotes from Shaw as he speaks and writes to his choruses are the principal glories of this book.

But always, always the music. You can feel the march of performances as they are roll-called before your eyes. This may not be the most authoritative, most definitive book on Shaw possible, but it is the one I wanted most to read. A real five star recommendation, and no apologies to the cognoscenti!

I purchased this book as a gift for a friend who is a choral director and Minister of Music of my church. I had originally read the book in the early '80's, soon after the first edition was released. I had despaired of finding a copy to give to my friend, and was overjoyed to find that Hinshaw had picked it up after it was no longer available from the University of Indiana Press, its original publisher. It is a wonderful book, giving great insight into the personality and accomplishments of Robert Shaw, one of the great choral conductors of our time. Thanks to Amazon for making this edition available.

When we left the Atlanta scene of ASO and Robert Shaw's profound influence on that whole city, even the state of GA. It was as if Choral Culture flew out the window of our Church Lives! When his Minneapolis Homily on "Worship and Fine Arts" appeared on NPR in 1984, I made an effort to write Sir Robert's ASO Secretary, Nola Frink, please send me a copy of "Dear People?" Within one month the Postal Service shipped an Autographed copy of Dear People... Robert Shaw! Even using my favorite spacing of three holy dots!

In addition to several personal family pictures of the Shaws in different time frames and settings, there are noteable shots of Robert with his Glee Club in San Francisco and Fred Waring Workshop! Next an early rehearsal picture of Collegiate Chorale, calling-it "...the melting pot that sings." An early Tour Poster from the 1950-51 season, introducing that yet famous Robert Shaw Chorale wearing dress-black outfits, until they began wearing Choir Robes or Tuxedoes.

His most collectable pictures included, Norman Dello Joio, Fred Waring, Robert Merrill, Paul Hindemith, Serge Koussevitsky, and Pablo Casals. Many singers & Soloists became known and 'oft used in Major Symphony concerts. When Florence Kopleff had retired from teaching at GA State University, in the audience sat Alice Parker, Adele Addison, Saramae Endich, Clayton Krehbiel of FSU, John Wustman, Pianist++ other names from Robert Shaw Chorales.

My most fun Amazon reviews included, Brahms' German Requiem, The Bach B-Minor Mass, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Mozart's Requiem, Schubert Masses, Choral Masterpieces ++ other CD's. All of these musical giants became known to us and admired through rehearsals with an artistic creative, immanent touch of the only one whose choral genius will be missed, yet always an invisible Spirit in choral rehearsals, especially in Georgia! With grandioso thanks, Retired Singer and Chaplain, Fred W Hood

This book is welcome principally because it is the only systematic discussion of the life (or a good portion thereof) of one of the important musical figures in the second half of the 20th century. Unfortunately the author fails to capture the essence of what made Robert Shaw successful as a performer and how his inspiration largely fueled the "choral renaissance" in this country. The definitive critical biography of this singular talent remains to be written.