Full Robert Shaw Obituary

Robert Shaw, who as leader of the Robert Shaw Chorale and the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus raised the art of choral conducting to new heights, died early today. He was 82.

Shaw died early this morning at a hospital in New Haven, Conn., where he had been to see his son in a play at Yale. He had suffered a stroke Sunday night, said Meredith Harris, spokeswoman for the symphony.

Shaw first gained fame as conductor of the Robert Shaw Chorale, which he founded in the late '40s. He also held posts at the San Diego Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra. He was appointed music director and conductor of the Atlanta Symphony in 1967, keeping the post until his retirement in 1988.

After he retired in 1988, Shaw founded the Robert Shaw Choral Institute and began to concentrate on choral performances without symphonic accompaniment. He conducted a series of summer festivals in France and made recordings with his Robert Shaw Festival Singers.

In New York, he conducted choral workshops at Carnegie Hall that drew directors and singers from across the nation for week-long sessions that culminated in performances.

On his 80th birthday, Shaw conducted Mahler's "Symphony No. 8" at Carnegie Hall. He also conducted a Carnegie Hall performance of Handel's "Messiah" on the 250th anniversary of that work's premier.

"Robert Shaw was a most respected and loved colleague who changed the level of choral conducting forever in the United States," the famed violinist Isaac Stern said Monday. "In addition to the exalted music he made, we will miss his unique, profound humanity."

In 1997, France awarded him its Officier des Artes et des Lettres medal. Shaw was appointed by Carter to the National Council on the Arts and was a 1991 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, the highest U.S. honor for artists. When Shaw won one of the 1991 Kennedy Center Honors, center chairman James D. Wolfensohn called him ``the dean of American choral conducting.''

Shaw said at the time that was pleased ``because it's public recognition of the emergence of the choral art.''

``The fact that choral singing has a much higher place in classical music than it did 50 or 60 years ago, I think, is reflected in the Kennedy Center Honor,'' he said. ``I'm not vain enough to think I did it. It's recognition of an area of art.''

He won 14 Grammy awards, and his latest album, with works from Barber, Bartok and Vaughan Williams, had been nominated for a 1999 Grammy for classical album.

At the time of his death, he held the titles of Atlanta Symphony music director emeritus and conductor laureate.

During his tenure there, he led the symphony from a part-time amateur ensemble of 60 players with an annual budget of about $500,000 to a 93-member orchestra with a multimillion-dollar budget.

He led it on tours across the United States, including a Carnegie Hall debut in 1971, and on a tour of Europe in 1988. In 1977, he led the orchestra and its chorus in a performance for the inauguration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, a Georgia native.

"Mr. Shaw was a visionary conductor who brought credit to himself and the city of Atlanta," Carter said in a statement. "It was a privilege to have him perform at my presidential inauguration. His spirit will live on through his many fine recordings that are enjoyed by people around the world."

In the '50s and '60s, the Robert Shaw Chorale made records for RCA Victor and toured extensively, performing in more than 30 countries, including goodwill tours to Europe, the Middle East, South America, and in 1962, to 11 cities in the Soviet Union.

``When we went to Russia, we took 30 singers and 25 instrumentalists,'' he recalled in a 1991 Associated Press interview. ``We did Bach's 'B Minor Mass.' Russia was officially an atheist state and I remember the most extraordinary thing in Moscow. It was broadcast, including half an hour of applause at the end.''

In recent years, Shaw's annual choral workshops at Carnegie Hall drew directors and singers from across the nation. He conducted a performance of Handel's ``Messiah'' at Carnegie Hall in April 1996, on the 250th anniversary of the work's premiere.

Last year, he was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in Cincinnati.

Shaw, a fourth-generation Californian, began singing in church choirs. His father was a minister whose five children were born in different towns during five pastorates.

``All five had home piano study and all five harmonized when we were kids,'' he says.

Before he began the Robert Shaw Chorale, he organized a glee club for bandleader Fred Waring, which he later considered ``the best voices ever assembled in the history of man.'' He had met Waring when the bandleader heard the glee club at Pomona College, which Shaw conducted during his student days.

Shaw was born in Red Bluff, California, on April 30, 1916, descended from a line of evangelical preachers. He first learned to sing gospel music as his mother played the piano.

He later became a clergyman himself, majoring in religion and philosophy at Pomona College, where entertainer Fred Waring heard him sing in the school's glee club. Waring took him to New York and assigned him to form and conduct the Fred Waring Glee Club for weekly radio broadcasts.

When he tired of conducting popular music, Shaw formed the Collegiate Chorale, an all-volunteer chorus that included a racially integrated membership.

The group sang traditional masterpieces and also worked with living composers, presenting premiere performances for many new works. Shaw and his chorale soon came to the notice of NBC Symphony conductor Arturo Toscanini, who invited them to perform Beethoven's "Symphony No. 9" with his orchestra.

Toscanini stopped by for a rehearsal one afternoon and said of Shaw, "I have at last found the maestro I have been looking for."

Choruses began to flourish after World War II, Shaw said, when musicologists discovered the rich choral literature of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries and technology developed to publish and transmit the scores.

``When I was growing up, there were junior high and high school choruses and fraternity sings,'' he said. ``When I got to New York in 1938 the major large choruses were alumni clubs of men who'd left universities and got together to drink beer and sing on Wednesday nights.''

At the time of his death, Shaw was in New Haven to see a play on which his son, Thomas, had worked at Yale University, Ms. Harris said. The play, ``Endgame,'' was Thomas Shaw's senior acting and directing project.

Besides Thomas, survivors include two other sons, Peter and John; a daughter, Johanna Shaw; a stepson; a sister; and a brother.

Shaw is survived by a sister, a brother, four children and a stepson. A private funeral service will be held and his family will receive well-wishers Thursday afternoon in Atlanta. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will host a celebration of his life Friday.