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COPYRIGHT 2002 University of Washington
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 exclusively of their own compositions. Stefan felt that the program was too short and suggested that they should each write a short piano piece for this concert using certain musical parameters in common. According to Ralph, they had a discussion and decided that they would both use the same parameters but write their compositions independent of one another. However Ralph no longer remembers what these parameters were. (Having analyzed both Forms, I think the parameters of a pitch series and the idea of symmetries must have been part of the plan.) This concert then was the impetus for both Forms for piano by Ralph Shapey and Stefan Wolpe. (1)
Ralph further explained that this concert was especially important to him. He was well known and respected as a conductor of new works on the New York contemporary music scene, but as a composer he had always been referred to as "little Wolpe." This concert changed all that for Ralph, and he emerged, he feels, liberated from Wolpe's shadow with his own powerful voice, recognized as important and independent of Wolpe's. Apparently, according to Ralph, Stefan came screaming to Ralph backstage at the intermission of the concert: "You are killing me, killing me with the audience." Ralph interpreted this outburst on Stefan's part as signifying his own moment of independence from Wolpe's compositional influence as heard in concert by everyone present. Ralph claims that no one in the Wolpe circle ever dared to refer to him again as "little Wolpe."
If one compares the opening of the Wolpe Form (Example 2) with the Shapey Form (score page 7, system 3, first six notes) one sees the pitch-set relationship between the two works. In both pieces, the initial pitch space is subject to rapid expansion (compare Examples 2 and 3). However, Wolpe works with six notes and gradually fills in the remaining pitch classes in a manner very different from Shapey's. And while Wolpe uses the technique of a continuous development of material through the use of highly contrapuntal textures and the alternation of the two hexachords that freely circulate and gradually interface and merge with one another, Shapey employs a more traditional format, variation form. Shapey uses 5/2/5 partitions of what I will identify as the original row in contrast to the hexachordal procedures used by Wolpe. Both composers are inspired by serial techniques, but each uses these ideas in vastly different ways. (2)
The large structure of Shapey's Form for Piano is a set of variations. However, as we shall see in the details, this is no ordinary set of variations. I shall describe each of the six sections of the variations in moderate detail followed by a few observations on Shapey's compositional strategies for this composition.
Each...
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