SLD06.26.16 Robert Shaw Emory Presbyterian Church John 1: 1-14, 16 Jill Oglesby Evans

“Robert Shaw – Preaching the Gospel of Music” John 1: 1-14, 16 1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

Have you ever snuck in some place you weren’t meant to be, and wandered around nervously just waiting for someone to catch you out? ‘Hey, young lady, (or, in my case, not-so-young-lady) just what do you think you’re doing here?!’

This is a little how I feel, as a non-musician and indifferent singer, presuming to enter the intense, complex, superior musical world of internationally renowned, award- winning, orchestral and choral conductor, Robert Shaw, founder of the Atlanta

Symphony Orchestra, the ASO Chamber Chorus, the larger ASO chorus, and shaper of a generation of music-makers and listeners. Considered to be the most influential choral conductor in American history, the man is indisputably a legend.

At Shaw’s death in 1999, Nick Jones wrote “The legacy of Robert Shaw will continue to reverberate in Atlanta for years to come. …not only was he the visible

1 symbol of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s aspirations to greatness, he also provided the vision and the leadership necessary to that upward climb. For the ASO and for the city of Atlanta, he was an artistic conscience, prodding, encouraging, insisting, and, when necessary, planting his feet and refusing to budge until the rest of us could catch up with him in the quest for excellence.”1

To mark the 100th anniversary of Shaw’s birth, on April 30, 2016, the Atlanta

Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and Music Director Robert Spano, performed at

Carnegie Hall. When, on October 16, 1942, Shaw made his headline debut, he was 26 years old.2 Indeed, to review the span of Shaw’s career is to thread through “some of the most significant episodes in the history of music in the

United States since the 1930’s: the era of live music on radio, the choral renaissance of the forties and fifties, the florescence of the community orchestra, changes in the recording industry, …the nourishment of native composers and conductors, the multiplication of music festivals, …and the reentry of the South into the mainstream of

American musical life.”3

And then there was the man…Lord, have mercy… brilliant, intimidating, commanding, ferocious even, characteristics apparently belying, and never quite free from, a deep personal brokenness and sense of insecurity. In the 1960’s, one orchestral member described Shaw as having “a shattering wit, a secular imagination, and a practical and executive side …. His satire is unrelenting, and his humor, the indispensable safety valve of an uncompromising seriousness. He has short hair, and he is no saint.” (which, I say, qualifies him for this series.)

1 http://www.atlantasymphony.org/About/Robert-Shaw 2 https://www.carnegiehall.org/BlogPost.aspx?id=4295022826 3 Dear People…Robert Shaw, Joseph A. Mussulman, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1979, ix-x. 2

Ask people today about Shaw and you’ll find some regard him as a god, some, as a tyrant, but most, at least of those who have worked most closely with him, as a breathtakingly gifted shaper of the communal human voice and a musical mediator of the Holy Spirit.

Okay, not everyone he worked with would use language like ‘the Holy Spirit,’ but some would. And under certain circumstances, so would he. Hailing from a ministerial family, Shaw himself entertained notions at one point of becoming a minister. Instead, he pursued a degree in philosophy and literature and sort of backed into his role of choral conductor – a whole ‘nother story.

But for our purposes today, the following comment about Shaw pertains: “The sacred and the secular are in strained alliance in a mind both religious and highly literary, unexempt from either this world or the other.”4 In other words, Shaw had a foot, an expertise, and an uneasiness, in both the secular and the religious worlds.

Fundamentally a secular humanist, yet ‘always there was a centeredness about him,’ remarks Bob Mussulman in his preface to his biography of Shaw. And that center is congruent with the mysterious core of the experience of music.” Mussulman goes on to say that “There is that incredible vitality (in Shaw) which convinces ordinary people who perform under his direction that they themselves possess the capacity to realize an essential life-force through music.”5

For himself, his orchestra, his chorus, and his listeners to realize through music an essential life-force: it was to this end that Shaw aimed all his genius, skill and intensity.

4 Ibid. 5 Ibid 3

But let’s shift now for a moment to Shaw, the philosopher and theologian.

The resource about Shaw with which I spent the most time is a book called The Robert

Shaw Reader, a compendium of Shaw’s personal letters, speeches, and notes about music.6 In a section called “Preaching the Gospel of the Arts,” Shaw references today’s

Johannine text in which, “in the beginning…the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Well, he notes, it is no less a divine miracle when the flesh becomes Word, is it, which is what he proposes happens though the arts. It is through the arts, Shaw believed, that mortal (flesh) becomes immortal Word (spirit.) “All of music is an attempt at communication between human hearts and minds,” he said. “At the very minimum, the creator reaches out to and through the performer, and both of them reach out to the listener.” 7 When he wrote this, he meant the creator of the music. But Shaw’s philosophy and life’s work suggests he also meant the Creator with a capital ‘C.’ That is, what he aimed for under his baton was for the Creator, for God, to reach out to and through the performers to the listeners.

“Music is great,” he said, “not because certain self-appointed Custodians of Art with a capital A have decreed it so, but because it calls out to something deep and persistent in the human (being.) Music is great because it carries something so native and so true to the human spirit that not even sophisticated intellectuality can deny or destroy its miracle.” Therefore was music to Shaw, for the manner in which it illumines and enlightens humanity, a sacred trust.

6 The Robert Shaw Reader, edited by Robert Blocker, , 2004. 7 Ibid. p. 337. 4

“Art is the most pervasive, most persistent, most powerful affirmation of the life- force…,” he wrote. “ .…It is a true transubstantiation: pitch into sonata – form into spirit; paint onto canvas into tears; words onto paper across a proscenium into the heart of (humanity). Essence inferred into substance achieved – in order to communicate that

Essence. Ally through all time of the evolutionary thrust, it is finally the Flesh become

Word.”

This is how Shaw wrote, how he thought, how he taught, how he lived, how he conducted, how he mediated his truth about the Spirit to and through his performers.

Complex, imminent, intense, often overwhelming, but also irresistible. To which no one can attest more convincingly than one who studied and sang with Shaw for many years.

I invite our music director, Paige Mathis, to the pulpit.

Paige speaks of her profound spiritual experience during the St. John’s Passion.

Surely hearing the poignancy and passion of Paige’s testimony offers a glimpse into why, during this season of exploring our own discipleship, we chose Shaw as one of our saints this summer. For like Emory Church, Shaw also had a very high view of the role of arts in worship. ‘Worship,’ which he described as “a certain amount of Space and Time in which to contemplate and to proportion Truth and Beauty, to invoke the rhythms of sight and sound as well as of reason – not only as stimulants to quicken the perception, or as unguents for life’s abrasions, but as factors of worth themselves.”

“To me it follows,” he said, “that if the Church wants to keep in touch with the

Creator, it must provide a home for all that is – and all who are – creative, lest the church itself wither and drift into irrelevance.” 8

8 Ibid. p. 377. 5

Well, I hope you notice how we at this church continually aim to provide a home for all that is – and all who are – creative, in every realm of our ministry. But specifically, given that all our music directors, some of our choir, and a number of our guest musicians over the last decade are protegees of Dr. Shaw, is it any wonder that, small in size though we are, we continue to commit so many resources to our music program here at Emory Church? I invite Paige forward again to speak to how she see music functioning for and through the choir here at EPC.

Paige to speak again to how she sees music functioning for and through the choir at EPC.

Friends, in the beginning, the Word became flesh in Christ Jesus. And on our good days here in this communion, the Word becomes flesh in you and me, as well, through worship, mission, outreach, study, witness, and relationship. This is a miracle, no question about it.. But the flesh becoming Word? Why, this is the miracle of which

Shaw speaks, the miracle of ‘the true light’ lifting and enlightening the flesh of us into the Spirit, through the marvel of music.

To the glory of God. Amen.

6