THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602210061
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 143 lines
ON THIS Monday night the professor is conducting Johann Sebastian Bach's Cantata No. 131. A unique ensemble is seated before R. David Clayton, professor of music, in a practice room at Virginia Wesleyan College. And they're torturing him with their German.
``Und er wird Is-ra-el erloesen . . . ''
``Stop, stop! `Wird,' `wirrrrrrd!' No American `r' here,'' he says, rolling the consonant and cutting them off with hands waving.
They go on only to be stopped again.
``Sopranos, don't get in the habit of singing `er-loh-sen' - wrong, wrong, wrong!'' he bellows, running a palm over his steel-gray hair.
As much as the group seems to annoy him tonight, this is Clayton's crown jewel. It is the Schola Cantorum Choir, the ultimate in what he started last fall - a Schola Cantorum. A school of singing.
By offering four levels of musicianship classes, the professor is reaching from the college campus into the community to give it a song.
Amateurs - community chorus members and Sunday morning choir members - are coming to learn how to read music. No more learning by rote or imitating the voice in the next seat. Clayton wants to teach people to interpret the music themselves - make sense of the notes, lines, spaces, all the musical symbols that have mystified them for so long. They will become better singers, he says, and will give the community more beautiful music to listen to.
``I think this is something we can take into the rec center, into retirement homes - to people who've loved music all their lives but have never learned about it,'' Clayton says.
It is an unusual idea, say colleagues. But the Tennessee native is famous for both his vision and his persistence. Former students call him a merciless perfectionist, a musical workhorse and a true disciple of the arts.
``He's the Don Quixote of music,'' says Ed Harris, director of the Schola Cantorum musicianship classes. He's desperately seeking that quest of teaching good music to the masses and showing them what really good music is out there, and he wants to raise the level of the choral singer to that of an instrumentalist.''
So far, so good. More than 60 people are enrolled in Monday evening classes taught at the college and Tuesday night satellite classes at Foundry Methodist Church in Virginia Beach and Chestnut Memorial United Methodist Church in Newport News.
Members of local church choirs are showing up. And their enthusiasm has area choir directors singing hallelujah.
``It is a big help,'' says Elizabeth Edler, choir director at Tabernacle Church of Norfolk. About half of her 60-member choir can read music, the others wait for her to sing it for them. Six members have enrolled in the Schola Cantorum. Edler says she can already hear the difference during choir practice.
``If all of them could read music, I could do a little more interesting stuff,'' Edler says.
Wendy Breese is one of Edler's choir members. She took Clayton's introductory course last fall. After winter break, she came back with all three of her sons - Kent, 18, Ryan, 15, and David, 13.
``In church, I follow somebody who knows how to sing, which is my original reason for going to the class,'' she said. ``I nearly went into a panic when it snowed and I was the only alto who showed up. Here, I found out that music is a whole language and I didn't know the language.''
Music to Clayton's ears.
``To him, knowing music, what makes it tick, is almost like knowing the Heimlich maneuver - it's not only a good thing to know but it's a lifesaver,'' says Sandra Billy, co-director of the Center for Sacred Music at the college. ``Music is something that lifts you out of the ordinary. It gives you glimpses of glory.''
Billy has known Clayton since she was a student at the college in the early '70s. Clayton was the first faculty member hired for the new music department at Virginia Wesleyan College in 1972. Operating on a shoestring, the resourceful professor introduced what looked like wooden ice cream tubs for his singers to stand on.
``They were each just the size of our feet,'' recalled Billy, then Clayton's first work-study student. One wrong step and the altos would fall like dominoes.
``It was the same with our costumes. Our robes came secondhand from a defunct church. And our informal outfits were horrible,'' Billy said.
A saying got started on campus, ``Never let David pick your clothes.''
To him, everything took a back seat to the music.
``I want to show people how much fun singing can be if you know what you're doing and if you don't have to depend on someone else to show you the way. It's liberating,'' he says. ``It's become almost a mission for me.''
Over the years the mission went forward as the director of the college choral program conducted performances of numerous major works, requiems by Mozart and Faure, masses by Puccini, Schubert, Mozart. In 1988 he began directing the Church Music Summer Conference held at the college.
For years he's had a goal of improving choral singing in the area. But it wasn't until he began the college community chorus last spring that he realized a key ingredient was missing in the area's musical environment.
``Last May we held auditions and we got people who had been singing in choirs for 40 years. In audition, I asked them to do certain things I expected them to be able to do like sing back melodic patterns,'' Clayton says, recalling how many people who wanted to sing with the Schola Cantorum Choir confessed they'd never learned to read music.
``When I asked them when are you going to learn to do this, they would look a little sheepish. Then I realized nobody was saying here are some classes where you can come and learn these things,'' he says.
Clayton's vision for his Schola extends way beyond the college grounds. The 35-member model choir demonstrates the skills Clayton hopes students of his Schola classes will achieve. It performed three concerts last year. This June, the choir will give an a cappella concert in Norfolk at Old Dominion University.
But first there is this midwinter Monday night and the Bach cantatas, scheduled for performance on March 27 and 28 at the college.
For two hours the taskmaster leans hawk-like from the podium, working his ensemble, eliciting better sound, better pronunciation.
``He's quite exacting in what he expects, and rightly so,'' says Anne S. Rio, a veteran of several community choruses, choirs and madrigal groups. She and her husband now sing in the Schola choir.
``He's got an ear for picking out someone who has hidden talent and can bring it out of you if you're not intimidated by him,'' says Nenie Langston Waller, a former student of Clayton's and a choir member. ``A lot of people find him hard to work with because when he directs, he's so into the music that he expects you to be into it, too.''
Clayton is at times part actor, part mimic, part comedian, part tyrant.
Like when he's beating back an overzealous soprano section. ``Not so loud,'' he thunders. ``I'm happy you know it.''
With closely clipped beard and chiseled features, he is a distinguished and an imposing figure. He's also not likely, say friends, to be lavish with praise.
``If he says that was good, write it down,'' says Harris, his colleague, former student and a member of the Schola Cantorum Choir.
At the evening's end, Clayton leans back in his chair, takes off his glasses and says, ``Good work tonight. Good work.''
The singers go home. Clayton can rest. But only until tomorrow.
``The arts, music, are the civilizing forces we have in our society. Without that, the barbaric hordes will certainly assail us. They're already at the gates,'' he says and chuckles at himself.
But only a little. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Virginia Wesleyan College professor R. David Clayton teaches
musicianship sills to amateur singers at his night school,
Cantorum.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY MUSIC by CNB