Odyssey of a Requiem
February 2024 saw the culmination of a project ten years in the making for Hurley School of Music Dean Dr. Cory Wikan, when his scholarly performance edition of American choral/orchestral music legend Robert Shaw’s English translation of the Brahms Requiem was published by GIA Publications. His research on Shaw’s translation of the original German began during his dissertation work at Boston University and evolved over the course of the next decade, as Shaw’s extensive legacy as the “dean” of American choral music continued to weave its way into Wikan’s professional life in unexpected ways.
Robert Shaw was born in California in 1916. His father was a minister and his mother was a talented concert singer, so both parents’ professions exerted a profound influence on his later work as an award-winning conductor and champion for choral music in the United States. In 1941, Shaw founded the Collegiate Chorale (now known as MasterVoices) based in New York City, a group notable for its racial integration and its collaborations with conductors such as Arturo Toscanini and Leonard Bernstein. He then led his namesake Robert Shaw Chorale from its founding in 1948 through 1967, when he became music director and conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. His tenure in Atlanta followed earlier posts with the San Diego Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra, where he helped develop the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus into a stellar all-volunteer choral ensemble that still performs today. Throughout his long career, Shaw mentored many young conductors and was a particular champion of modern music while still revering and preserving classics such as Brahms’ Requiem. He had an incredibly meticulous approach to marking scores for performance, noting the precise pronunciation of vowels and the placement of accents. In the process, Shaw left behind a rich resource for future performances of some of the most beautiful works in the choral music repertoire.
Wikan was initially drawn to undertake a deeper exploration of Shaw’s work in part due to his fascination with the conductor’s rigorous methods and preparation, the primary source evidence of which is preserved in Shaw’s estate housed at the Yale University School of Music. He was led to this line of research and to these primary sources – not only hand-marked scores but also personal instructions written by Shaw to his chorus members – by a series of teachers and mentors who all had some connection to Shaw.
“Although I never got the chance to meet him, all of my musical training has been connected to Robert Shaw,” said Wikan. “One of my professors at Luther College, Weston Noble, had worked with Shaw. I was a member of the Nordic Choir at Luther when Noble was given the Robert Shaw Award, a lifetime achievement award for choral music bestowed by the American Choral Directors Association. When I went to Northwestern University for a master’s degree in voice, one of my professors had sung on a number of Shaw recordings and was well-known to Shaw. I chose Boston University for my doctorate partially because I wanted to study with Dr. Ann Howard Jones, Shaw’s assistant for many years at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, who turned out to have grown up about 45 minutes from my own hometown in Iowa. There were so many small but meaningful associations that seemed to be connecting me to this man.”
When Wikan began to explore possible topics for his dissertation, he was amazed that no one had yet written extensively about Shaw’s methods and process. Through Jones, Wikan learned that Shaw had written to his chorus members on a weekly basis for over 50 years, creating a priceless treasure trove of notes, instructions, and insights emerging straight from the mind of one of the greatest American choral music conductors. These letters, many of which were in Jones’s possession as a former protégé of Shaw, had also not been extensively studied or used to interpret and inform Shaw’s published scores and recordings. Wikan saw an opportunity, but could not have imagined exactly how far he would eventually go down the path onto which he’d been pointed.
One of the works that Shaw had conducted most frequently was Brahms’ Requiem, so Wikan’s original inspiration for his dissertation research was to analyze Shaw’s evolving approach and techniques in relation to this piece. During the research process, Wikan discovered a hand-written manuscript containing an English translation of the Requiem, a treasure that had been recorded by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir after Shaw’s death but never published. Shaw’s translation existed in the liner notes of the CD version of the Choir’s recording, but was not available in formal music publishing and therefore was not widely known or performed. Wikan began work on a side by side presentation of the original German, the original English, and Shaw’s English translation, a process that allowed Wikan to discuss some of the problems with the original translation that Shaw was able to improve.
“Brahms’ Requiem was one of the first requiems in a vernacular language from a vernacular Bible, so it is not the traditional Latin text of most requiem Masses,” explained Wikan. “I believe that Shaw really did the best job of preserving the original German text but also making it work musically, and I think this is because Shaw was so familiar with the Biblical verses and so invested in the piece. He literally spent thousands of hours during his lifetime preparing for and conducting it, and that knowledge made his English translation the best one.”
In 2014, Wikan’s doctoral dissertation, “Robert Shaw and the Brahms Requiem, op. 45: A Conductor’s Approach to Performing a Masterpiece,” won the Julius Herford Dissertation Prize awarded by the American Choral Directors Association. In another instance of Shaw’s enduring presence in Wikan’s career, the prize is named after one of the most influential music scholars in American history, Julius Herford, who was also one of Shaw’s teachers. In the summer of 2015, Wikan traveled to Oxford University to conduct additional research and study with James Jordan, a faculty member at Westminster Choir College as well as an executive editor of his own publication series with GIA Publications, a leader in music publication. Jordan became very interested in seeing the Shaw English translation published, but the process of obtaining copyright permissions from Shaw’s estate eventually stretched to nearly a decade.
Wikan’s critical performance edition of Shaw’s English translation of Brahms’ Requiem was finally published and made available in February 2024. The critical performance edition features Shaw’s translation with an afterward outlining Wikan’s research on the translation and Shaw’s methods, including the original markings and notes that had first drawn Wikan into the project a decade earlier.
“This is really monumental in the choral field,” said Wikan. “Because all of Shaw’s markings are included in the edition, it is an incredibly rich resource for those who want to know how to perform the piece in the way that Shaw intended. The English translation is also so important to Shaw’s overall legacy as a champion of choral music in the United States. Brahms was one of the first composers to choose vernacular language in an effort to make his music more accessible, and Shaw argued that we needed to do the same in order to really reach people and help them appreciate the history and beauty of choral music.”
Audiences in Shreveport were the first to hear a performance of the new critical edition when the Centenary College Choir and members of the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Choir director Dr. David Hobson, joined forces to present the work in the spring of 2023. The Central Presbyterian Church in Clayton, Missouri, and the Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee, collaborated on a series of performances of the Requiem in both cities, and Wikan is aware of plans for the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. to perform the work in the spring of 2025.
Wikan’s decade of research and work, encouraged along the way by so many fortuitous “Shaw connections,” has aided the cause of reaching people and further cemented Shaw’s legacy as the “dean” of American choral music.
A Peek at the Process
Below, Dr. Cory Wikan takes us through a detailed explanation of the time-intensive process necessary to produce the critical performance edition.
“Here are two pages from the very well-known and often sung fourth movement, “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place.” In addition, of course, to the English translation that Shaw created, I provided the original German, both for comparison and utility (an ensemble can use this edition for a performance in either language). Further, anything in [brackets] (generally, also Italicized, as is custom for scholarly, critical editions) are markings Shaw used in performance. So, those consonants between syllables (i.e. [v’] in “lov-ely”) is an indication to the singer of how to produce the “v” sound and when. Shaw was very particular about pronunciation and wrote a lot about it—I dedicated an entire chapter in my dissertation to the subject. You’ll also note tempo markings (how fast the movement should go, according to Shaw), and even indications of when certain parts should join another part to help the overall sound, either in volume or in color (this is particularly true of having altos sing with tenors or vice versa—they tend to sing notes in the same range but have different colors of voice that help with a mood or affect). On page 63, Shaw indicates one-third of the first basses should join the tenors in measure 24. This was probably more volume—balancing a single part against a full orchestra—but perhaps the warmer/darker color of a first bass also adds to the “loveliness” of God’s dwelling. You’ll also note that I included performance markings that are Shaw’s, not Brahms’s original markings. At the same spot where the first basses join the tenors, measure 24, you’ll note a line with a dot above it just below the note where the tenors sing “How.” That is called an articulation, which tells the musician how to start the note and how to sustain it for the given duration. Shaw used this particular articulation (he called it a poco staccato, roughly “a little bit detached,” meaning sing this note slightly less long than a quarter note might normally be sung) quite often to add a feeling of buoyancy. A truly staccato (“detached”) note will sound more pointed, each note feeling popped and less sustained. Adding poco indicates that it should be a bit less pointed or crisp, sustained a fraction longer—yes, musicians indeed get this particular about each sound they create (Shaw often said something like, after all the correct notes and rhythms comes true music, colors, phrasing, inflection, volume; all the things that add feeling and nuance and intelligibility to sounds and text)—to feel a bit more gentle, perhaps dance-like.
I refuse to count, but I would not be surprised to learn that this score has tens of thousands of markings like those I describe above. I put each in one at a time digitally. Shaw would put them in a master score by hand. He had a “copyist” at the Atlanta Symphony, Harry Keuper, who would then meticulously place them in a formal copy that was then distributed to the full choir so they could place them in their scores before the first rehearsal. It appears that over time they would xerox Keuper’s copy to save some time, but that meant the singers had not physically written those markings in themselves. Shaw believed, and I think we all can agree through experience, that having to physically put those markings into one’s music added a level of practice and comprehension that better prepared the singers—while it was a lot of time up front, it saved precious rehearsal time down the road. I use this method with Camerata whenever possible, and it indeed saves rehearsal time and often helps them mentally rehearse as they place those markings in their music by themselves.
