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COPYRIGHT 2002 University of Washington
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 the singular constellation of his influences, including Busoni, the Bauhaus, socialism, Webern, The Mediterranean School, Abstract Impressionism, jazz, the New York School, the poets of Black Mountain, and Darmstadt. It is the poets of Black Mountain which concern us here. (1)
Black Mountain College was founded in 1933 and closed its doors in 1956. Wolpe was the music director there from the summer of 1952 through April or so of 1956. This small experimental school followed the theories of John Dewey by, among other things, puffing artistic creation at the center of its curriculum. For example, Black Mountain was the first school in the U.S. to hire a refugee Bauhaus Master (Josef Albers). Black Mountain hosted the decadal celebration of Schoenberg in the summer of 1944. During Wolpe's time at Black Mountain, however, the school shrank to an intensely intimate community numbering at one point only 13 and for one winter closed entirely. Also, though the student body included musicians, dancers and painters (one painter was Robert Rauschenberg), the artistic curriculum was dominated at this time by poetry. The poet Charles Olson was rector from 1951 on, dominating the school not only administratively but also through strength of personality, size of ego, and gift of gab. Other facult y during Wolpe's tenure included poets Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and (for the first two months) M. C. Richards. Among the students at this time were poets Joel Oppenheimer, Fielding Dawson, Jonathan Williams, John Weiners, and Ed Dorn, and prose writers James Leo Herlihy, Michael Rumaker, and (for the first two months) Francine du Plessix Gray. In this male-dominated environment there was also a female poet for an extended time, Wolpe's wife Hilda Morley, largely neglected at that time by the other poets. This environment so rich in literary creativity was where Wolpe spent most of his time for four years. (2)
The question of influence can be considered in a number of ways. This paper will address four. What influence did Wolpe have on the poetry of Black Mountain? What influence did the poets have on Wolpe's speech? Did Wolpe modify his compositional style when he set the words of these poets? And, most importantly, did the poets influence Wolpe's compositional style in more general ways?
First, Wolpe does not seem to have influenced the poetic structure of the poets of Black Mountain. This is hardly surprising, since the complexity of Wolpe's compositional thought and his idiosyncratic use of the English language made him hard to understand. Moreover, there was little interest in art music in musical terms on the part of the poets (there was some interest in John Cage and Lou Harrison as embodying an anti-western culture stance). The major exceptions were Jonathan Williams, who was interested in Wolpe's music and apparently continued to learn about music from Wolpe, and Hilda Morley. These two were the only poets who knew Wolpe's music before Wolpe arrived, and the ones in whose poetry Wolpe figures most prominently after Black Mountain. Wolpe does not however seem to have influenced anyone's poetic structure: his presence in this poetry is only as character or topic. In Olson, he is "the man who was about to celebrate his 52nd birthday / the day I learned of your death at 28, [who] said: / 'I lie out on Dionysius' tongue'!" Wolpe is the starting point...
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