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 Def ...

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. Since ...

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 Stefan Wolpe (25 August 1902, Berlin – 4 April 1972, New York City) was a German-Jewish-American composer. He was associated with interdisciplinary modernism, with affiliations ranging from the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop theater and the kibbutz mo ...

. 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, ...

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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

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 university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

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 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 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 Leonard B. Meyer (January 12, 1918 – December 30, 2007) was a composer, author, and philosopher. He contributed major works in the fields of aesthetic theory in music, and of compositional analysis. Career Meyer studied at Columbia U ...

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 coine ...

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 tra ...

masses, and the outer extremes of pitch space. 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 ornithology, ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th century. His m ...

, 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 s ...

", 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 classes 1 and 6, does adhere to certain organizational features of tonal music, including pitch hierarchy and object permanence. Shapey's Concerto for Cello, Piano, and String Orchestra was a finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Music and shared the top Kennedy Center Friedheim Award prize with William Kraft for ''Veils and Variations for Horn and Orchestra''. In 1992 the Pulitzer Prize for Music 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, and

Harvey Sollberger Harvey Sollberger (born May 11, 1938 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa) is an American composer, flutist, and conductor specializing in contemporary classical music. Life Sollberger holds an M.A. degree from Columbia University, where his composition instr ...

, selected Shapey's '' Concerto Fantastique'' for the award. However, the Pulitzer Board rejected that decision and choose to give the prize to the jury's second choice, Wayne Peterson's '' The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark''. 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,

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 Jona ...

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

, Shulamit Ran, and Melinda Wagner, 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 c ...

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