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

conductor Conductor or conduction may refer to: Music * Conductor (music), a person who leads a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra. * ''Conductor'' (album), an album by indie rock band The Comas * Conduction, a type of structured free improvisation ...

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, Ma ...

. 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 university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

, 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 warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

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 most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

, 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 universit ...

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 ind ...

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 philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

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 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 ap ...

. 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; harmonical ...

, 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 pitc ...

es 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 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 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, ...

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 ...

, 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 instru ...

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

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, 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 co ...

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