Robert Shaw, the dominant figure in American choral music for more than half a century, died Monday in New Haven, Conn.; he was 82 and had suffered a stroke. He was visiting Yale to see a production of Samuel Beckett's "Endgame," which his son Thomas directed and acted in.
With the founding of New York's Collegiate Chorale in 1941, Shaw launched a career that changed the way American choruses sounded -- and wanted to sound. In 1948 he founded the Robert Shaw Chorale, which toured the world and recorded many central masterpieces of the choral literature as well as best-selling albums of Shaw's arrangements of folk songs, Christmas carols, and spirituals. The Robert Shaw Chorale embarked on famous collaborations with Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony (after hearing his first Shaw rehearsal for the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Toscanini cried, "It is the first time I hear it sung!"). From 1956-67, Shaw was associate conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, developing one of America's greatest orchestral choruses and building a partnership with George Szell that rivaled his collaboration with Toscanini; in this period Shaw was also able to explore conducting the orchestral literature.In 1967 he became music director of the Atlanta Symphony, a position he held until 1988; he built the orchestra into an institution of stature and made a long list of prize-winning recordings there, while continuing to make guest appearances elsewhere -- his only operatic conducting was for Sarah Caldwell's production of Berlioz's "The Damnation of Faust" with the Opera Company of Boston in 1978. In the last decade Shaw had continued to appear regularly in Atlanta and elsewere, while supervising annual choral institutes in France and in Carnegie Hall. He had also become an annual guest of Boston University, where the choral program is led by one of his protegees, Ann Howard Jones; over the last few years Shaw had led memorable student performances of Honegger's "King David," Haydn's "The Creation," and the Brahms "German Requiem"; he had been scheduled to return next week.
Shaw served on the faculty at Tanglewood from 1942-45 and returned 50 years later to resume an association with the Boston Symphony Orchestra that resulted in notable performances of the Mozart "Requiem," Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms," and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Shaw's last concert was Dec. 18 when he conducted the Christmas portion of Handel's "Messiah" and Bach's "Magnificat" there.
The son of a minister, Shaw in his own way was always a preacher bearing glad tidings, a musical gospel. Born April 30, 1916, in Red Bluff, Calif., he studied at Pomona College. His first job was as interim conductor of the Pomona College Glee Club during a year when the music director was ill. Later Shaw went to work for Fred Waring, creating a 24-voice glee club for the popular tours and weekly broadcasts of Waring and his Pennsylvanians.