Ralph Shapey (12 March 1921 – 13 June 2002) was an American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

and conductor.

Biography

Shapey was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

. He is known for his work as a composition professor at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, where he taught from 1964 to 1991 and where he founded and directed the Contemporary Chamber Players. Shapey studied violin with Emanuel Zeitlin and composition with Stefan Wolpe. He served in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

before moving to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, where he worked as a violinist, composer, conductor, and pedagogue. In 1963, he conducted the orchestra and chorus at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

before accepting his position in Chicago."Ralph Shapey, Radical Traditionalist Composer, 1921–2002."
The University of Chicago News Office. 13 June 2002. Web. Shapey was made a

MacArthur Fellow The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

in 1982. Upon hearing the news via a telephone call, Shapey was initially skeptical; he reportedly asked, "Which of my friends or enemies put you up to this?" and slammed down the receiver. Although Shapey's style is characterized by

modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

angularity, irony, and technical rigor, his coincident concern for sweeping gesture, frenetic passion, rhythmic vitality, lyrical melody, and dramatic arc recall

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

. Shapey was dubbed by the critics Leonard B. Meyer and Bernard Jacobson as a, "radical traditionalist", which pleased him immensely—he held a deep respect for the masters of the past, whom he regarded as his finest teachers. The French-American composer

Edgard Varèse Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; he coined ...

was among Shapey's most important influences. Both composers shared a fascination with unusual sonorities,

counterpoint In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...

masses, and the outer extremes of

pitch space In music theory, pitch spaces model relationships between pitches. These models typically use distance to model the degree of relatedness, with closely related pitches placed near one another, and less closely related pitches placed farther apa ...

. The coordination of static "sound blocks" in Shapey's music also reminds one of another French composer,

Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...

, though Shapey reportedly found Messiaen's music saccharine and maudlin. Although comparisons are useful, Shapey's compositional voice is undoubtedly personal and distinctive. Many listeners would call his music "

atonal Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a ...

", but Shapey himself denied the label. He considered himself a tonal composer, and indeed his work, though couched in a highly dissonant harmonic idiom rich in

interval class In musical set theory, an interval class (often abbreviated: ic), also known as unordered pitch-class interval, interval distance, undirected interval, or "(even completely incorrectly) as 'interval mod 6'" (; ), is the shortest distance in pitch ...

es 1 and 6, does adhere to certain organizational features of tonal music, including pitch hierarchy and

object permanence Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be sensed. This is a fundamental concept studied in the field of developmental psychology, the subfield of psychology that addresses the development of ...

. Shapey's

Concerto for Cello, Piano, and String Orchestra The Concerto for Cello, Piano, and String Orchestra is a composition for solo cello, piano, and a large string orchestra by the American composer Ralph Shapey. The work was composed for the cellist Joel Krosnick and the pianist Gilbert Kalish an ...

was a finalist for the 1990

Pulitzer Prize for Music The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted ...

and shared the top

Kennedy Center Friedheim Award The Kennedy Center Friedheim Award was an annual award given for instrumental music composition by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1978 and ended in 1995. The award was given only to Am ...

prize with

William Kraft William Kraft (September 6, 1923 – February 12, 2022) was an American composer, conductor, teacher, timpanist, and percussionist. Biography Early life and education (1923–1954) Kraft was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was awarded two Anton Seid ...

for ''Veils and Variations for Horn and Orchestra''. In 1992 the

jury, which that year consisted of

George Perle George Perle (6 May 1915 – 23 January 2009) was an American composer and music theorist. As a composer, his music was largely atonal, using methods similar to the twelve-tone technique of the Second Viennese School. This serialist style, and ...

Roger Reynolds Roger Lee Reynolds (born July 18, 1934) is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer. He is known for his capacity to integrate diverse ideas and resources, and for the seamless blending of traditional musical sounds with those newly enabled by t ...

, and Harvey Sollberger, selected Shapey's ''

Concerto Fantastique ''Concerto Fantastique'' is an orchestral composition in four movements by the American composer Ralph Shapey. The work was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who first performed the work under the composer on November 21, 1991. It ...

'' for the award. However, the Pulitzer Board rejected that decision and choose to give the prize to the jury's second choice,

Wayne Peterson Wayne Peterson (September 3, 1927April 7, 2021) was an American composer, pianist, and educator. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for '' The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark'' in 1992, when its board overturned the jury's unanimous s ...

's ''

The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark ''The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark'' is an orchestral composition in one movement by the American composer Wayne Peterson. The piece was first performed by the San Francisco Symphony under the conductor David Zinman in October 1991. ...

''. The music jury responded with a public statement stating that they had not been consulted in that decision and that the Board was not professionally qualified to make such a decision. The Board responded that the "Pulitzers are enhanced by having, in addition to the professional's point of view, the layman's or consumer's point of view", and they did not rescind their decision. Shapey created a body of over 200 works, many of which have been published by Presser. Presser also offers his textbook A Basic Course in Music Composition, written after over fifty years of teaching the subject. Recordings of Shapey's music are available on the CRI, Opus One, and New World labels. Shapey's works have been catalogued by Dr. Patrick D. Finley in ''A Catalogue of the Works of Ralph Shapey'', published by Pendragon Press. His students include

Gerald Levinson Gerald Charles Levinson (born June 22, 1951 in Westport, Connecticut, Westport, Connecticut) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Life At university, he studied with George Crumb, Richard Wernick, and George Rochberg. After ...

Robert Carl Robert Carl (born July 12, 1954 in Bethesda, Maryland) is an American composer who currently resides in Hartford, Connecticut, where he is chair of the composition program at the Hartt School, University of Hartford. Music Carl studied with J ...

, Gordon Marsh, Michael Eckert, Philip Fried, Matt Malsky, Lawrence Fritts, James Anthony Walker, Frank Retzel, Jorge Liderman,

Jonathan Elliott Jonathan Elliott is an American composer and teacher. Born in 1962, Elliott grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, studying piano from the age of six. He went on to study composition at Vassar College, where his teachers included Annea Lockwood and ...

, Terry Winter Owens, Deborah Drattell,

Ursula Mamlok Ursula Mamlok (February 1, 1923 – May 4, 2016) was a German-born American composer and teacher. Education and influences Mamlok was born as Ursula Meyer in Berlin, Germany, into a Jewish family, and studied piano and composition with Professor G ...

Shulamit Ran Shulamit Ran ( he, שולמית רן; born October 21, 1949, in Tel Aviv, Israel) is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her th ...

, and

Melinda Wagner Melinda Jane Wagner (born 1957 in Philadelphia) is a US composer, and winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in music. Her undergraduate degree is from Hamilton College. She received her graduates degrees from University of Chicago and University of P ...

, among others. Shulamit Ran dedicated her Pulitzer Prize-winning

Symphony A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning com ...

to Shapey in 1990. The composer Robert Black was particularly influenced by him, and as a conductor he premiered Shapey's ''Three for Six''.

References

Sources

*Carl, Rober
"Radical Traditionalism"
Liner notes to ''Ralph Shapey—Radical Traditionalism''. New World Records. *Finley, Patrick. ''A Catalogue of the Works of Ralph Shapey''. Stuyvesant, New York: Pendragon Press, 1997. Catalogue complete up to 1996. Also contains a biography based on recorded interviews, and a brief analysis of the openings of five of his works with a detailed explanation of his compositional method.

External links

Ralph Shapey's page at Theodore Presser Company

Bierce Library at University of Akron: Smith Archives – Composer Profile of Ralph Shapey

University of Chicago News Office – Obituary for Ralph Shapey

Guide to the Ralph Shapey Papers circa 1930–2003
at th
University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
May 4, 1987 {{DEFAULTSORT:Shapey, Ralph 1921 births 2002 deaths 20th-century classical composers American male classical composers Jewish American classical composers American classical composers Shapeey, Ralph University of Chicago faculty 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews