Perspectives of New Music articles from June 2002

Perspectives of New Music archives from June 2002

Wolpe Centennial essays.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... INTRODUCTION 2002 MARKS THE CENTENNIAL of the birth of Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), who came of age as a composer and pianist in Germany during the 192 Os, influenced by the New Classicality of Busoni, the left-wing modernism of the Melos...

Understanding Stefan Wolpe's musical forms.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2002... IF NOTES ARE ASSEMBLED, a course of direction becomes tangible" ("Any Bunch of Notes: A Lecture," 296). (1) These words from Wolpe's lecture "Any Bunch of Notes" suggest two important directions in his thinking about musical form. The last...

Analysis of form for Piano by Ralph Shapey.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2002... BOTH FORM (1959) by Ralph Shapey and Form (1959) by Stefan Wolpe were composed for the same New York concert (Example 1). The circumstances for this concert were explained to me by Ralph himself. Stefan and Ralph were planning a concert...

Stefan Wolpe's dialectical logic: a look at the Second Piece for Violin Alone.
June 22, 2002... With [Hegel, the dialectic] is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell. --Karl Marx MUSIC HOPES TO DRAW its vitality from nature. A study of this...

Essays in actionism: Wolpe's pieces for three pianists.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2002... BETWEEN 1944 AND 1949 Wolpe composed an extensive series of compositional studies that have been collected as Music for Any Instruments. Many have titles that are concerned with particular pitch-class sets, but Two Studies for Piano, Part I...

Wolpe and the poets of Black Mountain.(Stefan Wolpe at Black Mountain College)(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2002... IN THIS HISTORICIZING PERIOD in which we find ourselves, composers are often identified by their influences: teacher, previous compositional models, cultural influences, and so forth. Accordingly, we take stock of Stefan Wolpe in part through...

Broken sequences: fragmentation, abundance, beauty.(Stefan Wolpe's music)
June 22, 2002... Enduring Individuality in the details is the backbone of strong experience. --Whitehead ON THIS OCCASION celebrating Stefan Wolpe's birth almost a hundred years ago, an occasion that gives us the opportunity to reflect on the force...

Wolpe's inner beauty (a response to Christopher Hasty with three entries for a Wolpe Lexicon).(Stefan Wolpe's music)(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2002... Connections are a great drama, because we didn't know what a dead herring has to do with an aspirin bottle once we put them next to each other. --Stefan Wolpe IN A MEMORIAL TRIBUTE to Wolpe, Charles Wuorinen offered a tidy summary of...

A footnote to Hasty, Whitehead, and Plato: more thoughts on Stefan Wolpe's music.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2002... RATHER THAN RESPOND DIRECTLY to Christopher Hasty's lovely and inspiring paper, I want to think about Wolpe's "ever-restored and ever-advancing witnessing moment" and Hasty's point that we may not know how to think about the "vividness of a...

Hearing pentatonicism through serialism: integrating different traditions in Chinese contemporary music.
June 22, 2002... FOR CHINESE COMPOSERS of the late twentieth century, deciding which musical traditions to integrate has been and continues to be an intricate process. Although it is common to this day to find contemporary Chinese music described as the meeting...

Having your cake and eating it too: the property of reflection in twelve-tone rows (or, further extensions on the Mallalieu complex).(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2002... I. INITIAL CONSIDERATIONS PERHAPS NO TWELVE-TONE ROW has garnered more attention than the "Mallalieu" row. (1) Named after its discoverer, Pohlman Mailalieu, this all-interval, [RT.sub.6]-invariant row possesses a unique property: the...

A response to Rhian Samuel.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2002... RHIAN SAMUEL'S REVIEW of Audible Traces: gender, identity, and music, edited by Lydia Hamessley and me, has many inaccuracies. (See Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 40, no. 1, pages 235-40.) Far more objectionable is Ms. Samuel's negligence:...

Errata.(Correction Notice)
June 22, 2002... The Editors sincerely regret the following errata in PNM volume 40, number I. pp. 236 & 237: Suzanne G. Cusick's name is spelled, wrongly, Susan and then Susanne G. p.238, top paragraph: should read Candye Kane, and Riot Grrrl. ...