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Abstract
During the 1950s, Ralph Shapey attempted to reformulate the concept of musical continuity. In a series of works, he gradually abandoned traditional procedures of musical development based on the unfolding of motives or themes. He created a music in which contrast and continuity are produced mainly through variation of register, density, texture and timbre. Although he worked out many of his ideas within the medium of chamber music, he focused primarily on the creation of a new way of writing for the orchestra in which he was able to fully realize the implications of his new musical language. This article traces the evolution of Shapey's ideas from the Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Group (1954) to their full realization in Ontogeny (1958) and the Invocation-Violin Concerto (1958).
Notes
[1]Ontogeny, Invocation-Violin Concerto and Rituals comprise the Trilogy for orchestra. Ontogeny and the Invocation-Violin Concerto were both written during the second half of 1958. Shapey then composed Evocation (No. 1) for violin, piano and percussion, Form for piano and Soliloquy for narrator, string quartet and percussion in the first half of 1959, before completing the Trilogy with the composition of Rituals in July and August 1959.
[2] Shapey conducted the premieres of the following works by Wolpe: Quartet for Trumpet, Tenor Saxophone, Percussion and Piano (original version, 1950); Oboe Quartet (1954); In Two Parts for Six Players (1962); and Piece in Three Parts for Piano and Sixteen Instruments (1961) (see Clarkson, Citation2003, pp. 319–320).
[3] Shapey (Citation1998, pp. 22–23). Shapey played Varèse a recording of his String Quartet No. 2 (1949), which had recently been premiered by the Juilliard String Quartet.
[4]‘[M]y own opinion—which you already know—that your performance of my music has never even been approached before. Even non-musicians felt the difference. Thank you again for your intimate understanding of the heart of my music and for your precise, detailed, and exuberant execution’ (Letter from E. Varèse to Shapey, 4 April 1965, Shapey Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library).
[5] Finley (Citation1997, p. 5); Sessions (Citation1972); Reich (Citation1971, pp. 203–204). In the history of the American reception of Schoenberg, Wolpe must take an important place as one of the earliest disseminators of his music on a sophisticated level.
[6] According to Austin Clarkson: ‘[Wolpe] had previously written pieces for two pianists, but three pianists opened up new possibilities for realizing his emerging concept of diverse and complex actions in an abstractionist, constellatory musical space’ (Clarkson, Citation2002a, p. 116; see also Clarkson, Citation2002b).
[7] Baron (Citation2008[1975], pp. 60–61). The recording, on the Esoteric label, was conducted by Samuel Baron.
[8] Mathieu (Citation1966). Many of Wolpe's composition pupils were jazz musicians (see Clarkson, Citation2003, p. 19).
[9] Shapey (1965–1966); Letter from Shapey to D. Ewen, 27 May 1980, Shapey Papers.
[10] Wolpe characteristically omits one or two pitches when presenting the aggregate in order to generate the dynamic process of aggregate completion (see Clarkson, Citation1993; Morris, Citation2003, pp. 266–267; Antokoletz, Citation1992, pp. 411–415).
[11] For a detailed discussion of the concerto, see the article by Lynne Rogers in this issue.
[12] Never performed, this work was withdrawn by Shapey, c.1980.
[13] There is a suggestion of this technique in the last movement of the Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Group, mm. 214–216.
[14] Shapey discussed similar rhythmic techniques in a lecture on rhythm that he gave at Yale, probably in the early 1960s (see Shapey, n.d. a, n.d. b). The notes for this lecture provide an extended comparison of Shapey's ideas on rhythm with those of Messiaen, as presented in the Technique of My Musical Language.
[15] This may be indebted to Stravinsky's example—see The Rite of Spring, Rehearsal nos. 175–79, trombones and horns.
[16]‘If you ever write an orchestra piece, be a little more practical in your annotation, because I know the troubles I experienced in making the orchestra understand in works of Mr Schnabel, who, in a way, wrote the same asymmetrical and complicated bar division … the tragic result of so much complication is that people like you and Mr Schnabel or Mr Wolpe will have very few chances to bring their message to bigger audiences' (Letter from D. Mitropoulos to Shapey, 25 September 1950, Shapey Papers).
[17]‘[T]he Challenge was read through, when he [Mitropoulos] decided that he just couldn't do it. … Wolpe was in Black Mountain, and he … drove up … and Mitropoulos did go over it for him’ (Perlis, Citation1983, p. 75; Finley, Citation1997, pp. 9–10).
[18] Wolpe's Symphony was not performed in its entirety until 1965 (New England Conservatory, F. Prausnitz, cond.), and it did not receive its first complete New York performance until 1975 (see Carter, Citation1997[1970], p. 235).
[19] Bernard (Citation1987, pp. 128–192; 2006, esp. pp. 151–153).
[20]‘Wolff's major preoccupation in 1951 and 2 was with … pieces which revolved around a very restricted number of pitches. … This is a kind of minimal serialism, used without any perceptible system, by which the selected pitches were shaken up in as many different patterns, rhythms, dynamics and timbres as possible’ (Nyman, Citation1974, p. 50).
[21] Johnson (Citation2002, p. 6). Feldman refers here to the early 1950s. Shapey changed his style several years later. Kohn writes of links between ‘Varèse's and Wolpe's spatial conceits', and of the influence of Wolpe on both Feldman and Shapey (see Kohn, Citation1995, p. 20, n. 9).
[22] Shapey approved of Ashton's characterization of him as a musical abstract expressionist (see Ashton, Citation1962, pp. 200–201; 2003, p. 99; Baron, Citation2008[1975], p. 25).
[23] Shapey removed Songs of Eternity from his work list after 1962 for unknown reasons. He subsequently produced a new work using the same collection of texts: the Songs of Ecstasy of 1967.
[24] The text is taken from Scriabin's Mysterium: Preliminary Action. It was one of many texts used in the Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that Shapey placed at the front of the score of Challenge: The Family of Man.
[25] Ashton (Citation2003, pp. 96–97). Shapey spoke of his interest in ‘it is’ as opposed to ‘becoming’ (see Shapey Citation2000[1960], p. 4, and the discussion of Ontogeny below).
[26] In an undated draft of a letter to Wolpe, Shapey mentioned that he had already written a few measures of the Fifth Quartet while he was still working on the Duo for viola and piano.
[27] The period in which Wolpe developed these concepts was that of his closest association with Shapey, before the gradual deterioration of their relationship.
[28] See Morris (Citation2003, p. 263): ‘Any attempt to hold onto a passage as a fixed and self-enclosed set of relations, akin to a “motive”, “theme” or “section”, will be frustrated by the piece's manifold warp and woof. There are no stable forms, only processes of formation and destruction, of accretion and deletion, intersection and complementation’ (see also Antokoletz, Citation1992, p. 415).
[29] In the New York Times, Raymond Ericson wrote: ‘Mr Shapey's String Quartet No. V seemed almost violently expressive and self-assertive (“I am,” the soprano kept reiterating at the end of the piece). But the composer's feelings ring true. They are stated powerfully by the strings weaving around held tones, and by the evocative vocal line, and it is impossible not to be stirred by the work’ (Ericson, Citation1962).
[30] Shapey began to sketch Ontogeny in January 1958, and completed the score between June and August 1958.
[31] I have reproduced Shapey's punctuation as it appears in his note at the bottom of the first page of the score.
[32] A high-pitched percussion instrument—apparently, cowbells (see Holland, Citation2005, p. 171). Holland lists ‘2 cowbells (written gamelan?)’ in the ensemble of Shapey's Invocation-Violin Concerto. The published score of Rituals for orchestra (1959) specifies ‘cowbell (no clapper)’.
[33] An excerpt from this passage is reproduced in Henahan et al. (Citation1966, p. 501).
[34] This passage is reproduced in Henahan et al. (Citation1966, p. 502).
[35] Zenck (Citation2003, pp. 170–171); see also Perlis (Citation1983, p. 97). Elliott Carter's discussion of the influence of the compositional techniques of Varèse encapsulates Shapey's practice in Ontogeny: ‘What has interested recent composers, also, is that Varèse's music does not depend on thematic motives for its continuity, but rather the relationship between vertical, harmonic structures, instrumental sonorities, spacings, and, of course, the play of rhythmic motives. … Varèse … carried these three phases—rhythmicized orchestra, percussion alone, and a combination of both with each contributing different elements to the total effect—to a much more extensive development’ (see Carter, Citation1997[1975/1979], pp. 148–149). Carter was one of the sponsors of Shapey's grant application to work at the electronic studio in Milan in 1959.
[36] Shapey's practice parallels that of his European contemporaries. See Gable (Citation1990, p. 446): ‘[F]ollowing Debussy, Berio, Boulez, and Stockhausen were the first composers to accept broad tracts of registral space as given. … A breath-taking sense of space is apparent on virtually any page of their mature works’.
[37] Shapey comes close to doing so in Section IV, mm. 94–127, which excludes only the pc, A.
[38] As John Cage had done in 1958 (see Jones, Citation1993, p. 631; Pritchett, Citation1993, p. 128; Scaldaferri, Citation1997; Shapey, n.d. d).
[39] Emphasis added. Note that Shapey's terminology echoes the language of Varèse, Messiaen (Mode de valeurs et d'intensités) and Boulez.
[40] Shapey (n.d. d). There are several drafts for this statement. One is marked ‘Guggenheim’, but this word is crossed out. Another is marked, ‘G’. A third is marked ‘Fulbright’. In a letter to D. Ewen, Shapey stated that he received an Italian government grant for travel in 1959–1960, but that he did not use it because his wife, painter Vera Klement, also applied for a grant and her application was rejected (Letter to D. Ewen, 27 May 1980, Shapey Papers).