Stefan Wolpe
Encyclopedia
Stefan Wolpe was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

-born composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

.

Life

Wolpe was born in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. He attended the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory
Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory
The Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory was a music institute in Berlin, established in 1893, which for decades was one of the most internationally renowned schools of music. It was formed from the existing schools of music of Xaver Scharwenka and Karl Klindworth, the Scharwenka-Konservatorium and...

 from the age of fourteen, and the Berlin Hochschule für Musik in 1920-1921. He studied composition under Franz Schreker
Franz Schreker
Franz Schreker was an Austrian composer, conductor, teacher and administrator. Primarily a composer of operas, his style is characterized by aesthetic plurality , timbral experimentation, strategies of extended tonality and...

 and was also a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...

. He also studied at the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

 and met some of the dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

ists, setting Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...

's poem Anna Blume to music.

In 1928, Wolpe's first opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

, Zeus und Elida, premiered in Berlin. This soon was followed by two more operas in 1929, Schöne Geschichten and Anna Blume. The music Wolpe was writing between 1929 and 1933 was atonal, using Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

's twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...

. However, possibly influenced by Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

's concept of Gebrauchsmusik (music that serves a social function) and, as an avid socialist, he wrote a number of pieces for worker's unions and communist theatre groups. For these he made his style more accessible, incorporating elements of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 and popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

. His songs became popular, rivaling those of Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...

.

When the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 came to power in Germany, Wolpe, Jew and convinced communist, fled the country, passing through Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

 and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 en route to Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 in 1933-34, where he met and studied with Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...

. He later moved to Palestine in 1934-38, where he wrote simple songs for the kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...

im. The music he was writing for concert performance, however, remained complex and atonal. Partly because of this, his teaching contract with the Palestine Conservatoire was not renewed for the 1938-39 school year.

In 1938, Wolpe moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in the United States of America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. There, during the fifties, he associated with the abstract expressionist painters. He was introduced to them by his wife, the poet Hilda Morley
Hilda Morley
Hilda Morley was an American poet associated with the Black Mountain movement.-Biography:She was born Hilda Auerbach in New York City to Russian parents. Her father, Rachmiel Auerbach, was a doctor, and her mother, Sonia Lubove Kamenetsky, was a feminist and Labor Zionist...

. From 1952 to 1956 he was director of music at Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College, a school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was a new kind of college in the United States in which the study of art was seen to be central to a liberal arts education, and in which John Dewey's principles of education played a major role...

. On January 24, 1956, he was appointed to the faculty at the C.W. Post College of Long Island University in Brookville, New York. He also lectured at the summer schools in Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...

 in Germany. His pupils included Jack Behrens
Jack Behrens
Jack Behrens is a Canadian composer, music educator, and writer of American birth. A member of the Canadian League of Composers and an associate of the Canadian Music Centre, his music has been performed throughout North America and on CBC Radio and radio stations in he United States...

, Herbert Brün
Herbert Brun
Herbert Brün was a composer and pioneer of electronic and computer music. Born in Berlin, Germany, he taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1962 until he retired, several years before his death.-Career:...

, Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...

, Matthew Greenbaum, M. William Karlins
M. William Karlins
Martin William Karlins was an American composer of contemporary classical music....

, Robert D. Levin
Robert D. Levin
Robert D. Levin is a classical performer, musicologist, and composer, and is the Artistic Director of the Sarasota Music Festival.-Education:...

, Boyd McDonald
Boyd McDonald
Boyd McDonald is a Canadian pianist, fortepianist, composer, and music educator. An associate of the Canadian Music Centre, his compositional output includes works for choirs, bands, orchestras, and art songs...

, Ralph Shapey
Ralph Shapey
Ralph Shapey was an American composer and conductor. He is well-known for his work as a composition professor at the University of Chicago, where he founded and directed the Contemporary Chamber Players...

, David Tudor
David Tudor
David Eugene Tudor was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.- Biography :Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan Wolpe and became known as one of the leading performers of avant garde piano music. He gave the...

, and Charles Wuorinen
Charles Wuorinen
Charles Peter Wuorinen is a prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. His catalog of more than 250 compositions includes works for orchestra, opera, chamber music, as well as solo instrumental and vocal works...

.

His works from this time sometimes used the twelve-tone technique, were sometimes diatonic, were sometimes based on the Arabic scales (such as maqam saba) he had heard in Palestine and sometimes employed some other method of tonal organisation. His work was radical, but avoided the punctualism
Punctualism
Punctualism is a style of musical composition prevalent in Europe between 1949 and 1955 "whose structures are predominantly effected from tone to tone, without superordinate formal conceptions coming to bear"...

 of composers such as Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

 (in his works of 1951–53), instead employing more conventionally expressive gestures.

Wolpe developed Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...

 in 1964, and died in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in 1972. Elliott Carter
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...

 commemorated Wolpe with the following comment: "Comet-like radiance, conviction, fervent intensity, penetrating thought on many levels of seriousness and humor, combined with breathtaking adventurousness and originality, marked the inner and outer life of Stefan Wolpe, as they do his compositions."

Chamber Works

  • Blues, large mixed ensemble
  • Chamber Piece No. 1, chamber orchestra
  • Chamber Piece No. 2, chamber orchestra
  • Duo fur Zwei Geigen, violin duo
  • From Here On Farther, mixed quartet
  • Musik zu Hamlet, flute, clarinet and violoncello
  • Piece for Two Instrumental Units, large mixed ensemble
  • Piece in Three Parts for Piano and Sixteen Instruments
  • Quartet for Trumpet, Tenor Saxophone, Percussion and Piano
  • Seven Pieces for Three Pianos
  • Three Short Canons, viola and violoncello
  • Three Studies from 'Music for Any Instruments' , large mixed ensemble
  • Trio in Two Parts, flute, violoncello and piano

Vocal Works

  • An Anna Blume von Kurt Schwitters for piano and musical clown, high voice
  • Cantata, medium voice and ensemble
  • Decret No. 2 'An die Armee der Kunstler' , high voice
  • Drei Lieder nach Bertolt Brecht, medium voice
  • Drei Lieder nach Heinrich von Kleist, high voice
  • Four Pieces for Mixed Chorus
  • Fuenf Lieder nach Friedrich Holderlin, medium or low voice
  • Fuenf Vertonungen aus "Gitanjali" von Rabindranath Tagore, medium voice
  • Lieder mit Klavierbegleitung, various vocal ranges in one collection
  • Music for the Theater, medium voice
  • Psalm 64 and Isaiah Chapter 35, high voice
  • Quintet with Voice, low voice
  • Songs (1955-61), medium voice
  • Street Music, low voice and ensemble
  • Two Chinese Epitaphs op. 25, mixed chorus
  • Yigdal Cantata, low voice/mixed chorus and ensemble
  • Zwei Lieder aus Gedichte von Berthold Viertel, medium voice

Piano Works

  • Battle Piece (1942–1943, 1947)
  • Enactments for Three Pianos
  • Klaviermusik 1920-1929
  • Leichte Klaviermusik aus Aller Welt: Israel
  • March and Variations for Two Pianos
  • Music for a Dancer
  • Music for Any Instruments, Vol. I
  • Piano Music 1939 - 1942
  • Sechs Klavierstucke (1920-1929), Vol. 1
  • Sechs Marche
  • Sonate Nr. 1 "Stehende Musik"
  • Toccata in Three Parts for Piano
  • Waltz for Merle

Further reading

  • Stefan Wolpe: Das Ganze überdenken. Vorträge über Musik 1935-1962 Hg. v. Thomas Phleps (Quellentexte zur Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts Bd. 7.1). Saarbrücken: PFAU-Verlag 2002, 262 S.
  • Thomas Phleps: "An Anna Blume" - Ein vollchromatisiertes Liebesgedicht von Kurt Schwitters und Stefan Wolpe. In: Zwischen Aufklärung & Kulturindustrie. Festschrift für Georg Knepler zum 85. Geburtstag. Band I: Musik/Geschichte. Hg. v. Hanns-Werner Heister, Karin Heister-Grech u. Gerhart Scheit. Hamburg: von Bockel 1993, S. 157-177.
  • Thomas Phleps: Stefan Wolpe – Von Dada, Anna & anderem. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 155. 3/1994, S. 22-26.
  • Thomas Phleps: Stefan Wolpes "Stehende Musik". In: Dissonanz/Dissonance Nr. 41, August 1994, S. 9-14.
  • Thomas Phleps: Stefan Wolpe – Drei kleinere Canons in der Umkehrung zweier 12tönig correspondierender Hexachorde für Viola und Violoncello op. 24a. In: Klassizistische Moderne. Eine Begleitpublikation zur Konzertreihe im Rahmen der Veranstaltungen "10 Jahre Paul Sacher Stiftung". Hg. v. Felix Meyer. Winterthur: Amadeus 1996, S. 143f.
  • Thomas Phleps: Wo es der Musik die Sprache verschlägt... – "Zeus und Elida" und "Schöne Geschichten" von Stefan Wolpe. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 158. 6/1997, S. 48-51.
  • Thomas Phleps: "Outsider im besten Sinne des Wortes". Stefan Wolpes Einblicke ins Komponieren in Darmstadt und anderswo. In ders. (Hg.): Stefan Wolpe: Das Ganze überdenken. Vorträge über Musik 1935-1962. (Quellentexte zur Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts Bd. 7.1). Saarbrücken: PFAU-Verlag 2002, S. 7-19.
  • Thomas Phleps: Music Contents and Speech Contents in the Political Compositions of Eisler, Wolpe, and Vladimir Vogel. In: On the Music of Stefan Wolpe: Essays and Recollections. Ed. by Austin Clarkson (= Dimension & Diversity Series 6). Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press 2003, S. 59-73.
  • Jeffrey Sussman: He Taught the Birds to Sing. Jewish Currents Magazine and The East Hampton Star.

External links


Listening

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