The ‘Mother Lode’, the Gottlieb Duo, and Ralph Shapey's Compositional Strategy in the Early 1980s

Abstract

From 1980 until his death in 2002, Ralph Shapey employed a pitch and rhythm structure, which he referred to as the ‘Mother Lode’, to compose almost all of his music. The Gottlieb Duo (1984), for piano and percussion, is a model for Shapey's use of the Mother Lode in the 1980s. This work also occupies a unique position in Shapey's oeuvre, because it is one of the first Mother Lode pieces to employ indefinite-pitched percussion. This article briefly examines the Mother Lode, and looks in detail at how the Gottlieb Duo expresses the Mother Lode structure, while simultaneously placing it in the context of other Mother Lode pieces from the 1980s. It also discusses how the Mother Lode, which is based on a twelve-tone row, affected Shapey's use of indefinite-pitched percussion during this period, and how his use of percussion changed as his treatment of the Mother Lode became increasingly flexible.

Keywords:

• Shapey, Ralph
• Mother Lode
• Gottlieb Duo
• Cantus Firmus
• Isorhythm
• Variation Form

Notes

 [1] Cantus firmi, isorhythm, and modular construction are not limited to the works from the early 1980s. Indeed, they are present both before and after. However, in the works under consideration, their use, to some extent, is a result of the strict employment of the Mother Lode.

 [2] Gottlieb first met Shapey during the premiere of his Evocation II, which Gottlieb performed with Joel Krosnick and Gilbert Kalish. Gottlieb recalls Shapey screaming from the last row of the balcony in the Juilliard Theater, ‘It's f … Zorba dancing on the f … mountaintop!!!!!’ after the conclusion of one of the movements. He called Shapey a maniac, which Shapey called him in return, and the two became fast friends. After that, Shapey dedicated almost every new percussion work to him. Shapey received ‘approval’ from Gordon Gottlieb before proceeding with the recording of the Gottlieb Duo by the Hoffmann-Goldstein Duo. (Email communication and phone conversation with Gordon Gottlieb, July 25, 2007.)

 [3] Finley, 1997, p. 65. Telephone conversation between Finley and Shapey, February 1993.

 [4] Finley, 1997, p. 68. After a short description of the Mother Lode, Finley analyzes the opening of ten of Shapey's pieces written between 1981 and 1987, demonstrating the various ways he employs it.

 [5] As distinguished from the four-note assigned aggregates.

 [6] Greitzer, 2000. Mary Greitzer also points out this feature of the row. Finley, however, mistakenly identifies the interval between pitches 4 and 5 as a minor second rather than a major second, and thus he misses this important point.

 [7] He used extended ranges before adopting the Mother Lode as well, but in the Mother Lode works the desired transposition, contour, and octave of the row is determinative.

 [8] This work in particular has a note to the musicians that he consulted ‘his own players’, who reported that they were able to play the pitches he called for.

 [9] Shapey frequently borrowed from himself, and the CF3 design of the row appears earlier in the Appassionata variation of the Passacaglia for piano (1982), but nested inside triplets throughout the entire passage.

[10] Mary Greitzer uses this term in her discussion of the Fantasy.

[11] Motive y is simply an augmentation of the triplet unit of x, and z is a combination of the dotted figure and the triplet.

[12] Although motive X is unique in its modular phrase construction, it would be incorrect to say that Shapey never again developed unpitched percussion themes in other ways. In Interchange for percussion quartet (1996), for example, the themes are made up of small rhythmic units, comparable to modules x.1 and x.2, but of longer length. All of the themes generally consist of single rather than multiple phrases, which are spun out by the reordering and addition of copies of rhythmic units into longer phrases.

[13] It may be that every single Mother Lode work begins with a variation form, but I was not able to examine them all.

[14] Although this is technically the twenty-first work written with the Mother Lode, three of the works are reorchestrations for larger forces: Songs No. 2 (1984) for soprano and four instruments is a new version of Songs (1982) for soprano and piano; Passacaglia (1983) for piano and orchestra is a new version of Passacaglia for piano (1982); and Psalm II (soprano, oboe, violoncello, double bass, piano and chorus) is a new version of Psalm I (soprano, oboe, and piano). In addition, the Groton Three Movements for Young Orchestra (1984) is lost and was never performed.

[15] Shapey rarely ornaments his themes, but he does favor this particular type of chromatic turn. He uses it in the Passacaglia for piano and the Kroslish Sonata, as well as in other works, possibly as a homage to J.S. Bach.