stefan wolpe society newsletter 2007 greeting

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STEFAN WOLPE SOCIETY NEWSLETTER 2007
Stefan Wolpe Newsletter/2007
© 2007 Stefan Wolpe Society, Inc.
1075 Stasia St., Teaneck NJ, 07666
editor
Austin Clarkson
associate editors
Noyes Bartholomew
Martin Brody
Matthew Greenbaum
Cheryl Seltzer
production
Daniel Foley
Stefan Wolpe Society, Inc.
Directors
honorary president
Katharina Wolpe
president
Martin Brody
vice-presidents
Austin Clarkson
Matthew Greenbaum
secretary
Cheryl Seltzer
treasurer
Noyes Bartholomew
Hannah Arie-Gaifman
James Kendrick
Robert Martin
Robert Morris
Zaidee Parkinson
Paul Sadowski
Fred Sherry
Becky Starobin
David Starobin
Todd Vunderink
[email protected]
http://www.wolpe.org
GREETING
We hope you enjoy this newsletter, which arrives after a lapse of
many years. The article on the Cantata Yigdal is by Stefan Wolpe’s
cousin Gerald, who was attending the Jewish Theological Seminary at
the time. Stephen M. Fry tells the story of the bronze bust of Wolpe
that found a home in the music library of the University of California
at Los Angeles. And the events attending the birth of Wolpe’s one and
only Symphony are recounted by one of the editors of the new
edition. Bruce Pomahac of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization
was most generous in supplying information for the appreciation of
Trude Rittmann, who made an extraordinary contribution to the
Broadway stage over three decades. And Dave Lewis instructs us on
how to access the Wolpe listings that he prepared for the All Music
Guide website. The remaining departments bring news from the
archives, conferences, books, editions, and recordings. The Chronicle
of 2001-2007 and the Bibliography are comprehensive, but surely not
complete, and we would be grateful for additions and corrections. We
also welcome news items from performers, scholars, and enthusiasts
for inclusion in the next newsletter.
Austin Clarkson
with Martin Brody, Matthew Greenbaum,
and Cheryl Seltzer
The “Yigdal” Cantata and its Background
Gerald Wolpe
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
The Yigdal Cantata and its Background
Gerald Wolpe
2
The Birth of Symphony No. 1
Austin Clarkson
4
Remembering Trude Rittmann
Bruce Pomahac & Austin Clarkson
6
A Wolpe Portrait in Los Angeles
Stephen M. Fry
7
A Shout Out from All Music Guide
Dave Lewis
8
REPORTS
Basel
9
Heidy Zimmermann
Chapel Hill
Austin Clarkson
Kassel
9
10
Thomas Phleps
Salzburg
Brigid Cohen
10
BOOKS
11
EDITIONS
12
RECORDINGS
14
CHRONICLE 2007-2001
18
BIBLIOGRAPHY
22
APPEAL FOR DONATIONS
24
The trauma in the World Jewish Community in the mid
1940s was brutal. The full extent of the Holocaust was
emerging from postwar Europe, and the number of the
loss was shattering. I remember hearing Rabbi Kaplan,
the chief rabbi of France, in a lecture to our class at the
Jewish Theological Seminary. A survivor of the camps,
he reported that a million Jews had died. We thought
that his experiences had affected his mind. "A million
Jews — impossible." The true number was yet to be
absorbed.
As the community began to deal with this loss, religious
and cultural responses arose. In the words of one
scholar, we were not going to give Hitler a posthumous
victory. Loyalty to Judaism, or at least to the Jewish
People, became a priority. One priority was the struggle
to establish a Jewish State. A second was to expand
Jewish institutions — synagogue and secular —
throughout America. Allies were sought and talented
Jews were recruited for the effort. We had to prove to
the world that there were people of quality who wanted
to be Jews and be identified without hesitation. Albert
Einstein, Arnold Schoenberg (returning from
Christianity), Leonard Bernstein. and others became
symbols of a new renaissance.
Cantor David Putterman of the Park Avenue Synagogue
in New York City used this energy to introduce new
interpretations of the liturgy. He wanted to leash the
extraordinary talent of modern Jewish composers to
their ancestral heritage. In some cases the effort had
regrettable results. Many composers had had no contact
with their heritage, and their works seemed to be
forced into unacceptable forms. In other cases there
was a meaningful understanding of the ancient and
modern words and compositions. Ernest Bloch was a
pioneer of this new approach, even composing a
complete service for the synagogue. Darius Milhaud and
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco worked from a firm
grounding of their ancient Jewish communities. Milhaud
was from the Provence and its Jewish history began in
the pre-Christian era. Tedesco was from Italy, which
featured major Jewish composers during the Middle
Ages and Renaissance. These communities had
developed distinctive Jewish musical traditions, and the
composers were conversant with their nuances. In both
cases they produced excellent works of Jewish interest.
The Stefan Wolpe Society Newsletter | 2007 | Page 2
Cantor Putterman wanted to enlist composers who had
made their mark on the national and international
scene. He hoped to show them that there was a
meaningful Jewish musical tradition in which they could
participate. Primary in the group was Leonard
Bernstein, who had made a stir in the musical world by
a successful substitution for the ill Bruno Walter. He
quickly became the star of the New York cultural scene
and Putterman was quick to ask for his participation.
I had known Leonard at our synagogue in Boston, and his
father was a close friend of our family. When Leonard
had a “Jewish concert,” his father would call me at the
Seminary and invite me to join him. Bernstein was
presenting his Jewish symphonies, and I remember his
telling me that the fourth movement of his Jeremiah
Symphony — the Eicha Theme — was based on his
remembrance of the Tisha B'Av service at our
synagogue. The congregational musical director, Dr.
Solomon Braslavsky, taught him the ancient chant, a
mourning of the destruction of the Solomonic Temple.
One can imagine the response to any program which was
attended by Leonard Bernstein and which included
works by Lukas Foss, Bernard Rogers, Irving Fine and
others. It became a highlight of the New York cultural
scene. It was no longer parochial for intellectuals to
attend a Jewish program. Now it was fashionable.
It was at this time that I met Stefan. His wife Irma was
a close friend of Judith Lieberman, who was the wife of
one of my teachers. Saul Lieberman was the world’s
leading Talmudist and a legend in our seminary. Mrs.
Lieberman, a noted educator, was the daughter of a
famous rabbi in Europe, and she maintained connections
with noted figures in Germany, Palestine, and now
America. I had dinner at their home a few times, and she
told me about Stefan. I met him at a concert and we
began a short but delightful relationship. A major theme
was the family background. The Wolpe family has a long
history in Lithuania. There is a tradition (later bolstered
by a genealogist in the family) that we were descendants
of Italian converts to Judaism. Many members still
spelled the name as ‘Volpe,’ which is a popular Italian
surname. Stefan and I could not trace a direct
relationship, but we discovered that we were related to
the same Wolpes. We decided that we had to be cousins.
He was pleased to know that we were related to Arnold
Volpe, who was born in Lithuania in 1869 and came to
America in 1898. Arnold was a noted conductor who
founded the popular Lewisohn Stadium Concerts in New
York in 1918. He later founded the University of Miami
Symphony Orchestra in 1926. After his death in 1940, his
wife, Marie, was executive director of the orchestra for
many years. Stefan indicated that he was interested in
meeting with her, but I do not think it took place. On
April 5, 1998, a gathering of the Wolpe family took place
in Washington, D.C. Close to 400 people attended from
Israel, Europe, South Africa, Australia, as well as Canada
and the U.S.A. People spoke of their knowledge of
Stefan’s family in Germany and indeed we were related.
As I went through my rabbinic training, Stefan and I
would meet and discuss specific texts and
interpretations. He surprised me with his knowledge of
Jewish sources, and I noted the extent of his own
spiritual quests. His connection with leftist causes was
clearly articulated, and he had piercing questions about
the meaning of Judaism, as I understood it. He was
clearly sympathetic to my choice of career. Cantor
Putterman commissioned a work from Stefan, and, since
I knew both of them, I was present at many of their
meetings. The Third Annual Sabbath Eve Service of
Liturgical Music by Contemporary Composers was held at
the Park Avenue Synagogue on May 11, 1945. While the
compositions by the other composers — Bernstein,
Milhaud, Tedesco, Binder, etc. — were given complete
performances, only an excerpt of Stefan's Yigdal Cantata
was presented. Some time later Putterman arranged a
concert of liturgical music at the Seminary. It was, to my
knowledge, the first time that he produced a concert
outside of his synagogue. It was an extended program of
instrumental and vocal music. I remember Bernstein's
Hashkevanu and Wolpe's Yigdal. I think it was the debut
of the complete Yigdal. The music was above the
understanding of the general audience. Students from
the Julliard School, which at that time was across the
street from the Seminary, were enthralled. I was uneasy
for Stefan. His ire was not directed towards the
audience, but towards the musicians, chorus and
soloists, whom he felt were not well chosen. We had
coffee after the concert, but it was not one of our more
pleasant meetings. He was clearly upset.
From then on our meetings and contact were sporadic. I
was in the midst of ordination examinations, and I also
had to teach to support myself. I had also begun a
graduate degree at New York University in Renaissance
Art and History. It was a period when I struggled between
the choice of the rabbinate or an academic career in
Renaissance studies. With an activist effort on behalf of
the struggle for a Jewish State, my calendar was
crowded. Stefan and I did write to one another a few
times, but during one of my moves, that archive was lost.
We lost contact and, to my regret, did not meet again.
Gerald Wolpe was for 29 years rabbi of a congregation in Penn
Valley, PA, and has recently retired as director of the
Finkelstein Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary
The Birth of Wolpe’s Symphony No. 1
Austin Clarkson
Early in 1955 Stefan Wolpe received a commission for an
orchestral work from Richard Rodgers and Oscar
Hammerstein by way of the League of Composers and
the International Society of Contemporary Music. At
that time he was music director at Black Mountain
College, but the college was failing financially and the
staff had not been paid in months. The award of $1,350
was a godsend, and Wolpe set to work immediately. He
set aside over 300 bars of a wind symphony he was
sketching and set to work on the piece for orchestra.
Expecting to return the piece in progress, he wrote
“Symphony No. 2” on the cover and laid out an
expansive five-movement design modeled on
Enactments for Three Pianos. Between May and
September of 1955 he drafted three movements in short
score and by the following January had completed the
orchestration. It is not possible to say whether he used
material from the wind symphony, as no sketches have
survived, but he scratched “No. 2” from the cover of
the full score of the Symphony, which suggests that he
did not intend to return to the piece in progress.
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When Leonard Bernstein saw the score, he scheduled
the premiere for the 1963-1964 season of the New York
Philharmonic. He noted, however, that the rhythms
were exceedingly complex and recommended to Wolpe
that he simplify the metrics. The composer resisted
strenuously, but Bernstein persisted and persuaded him
to accept the assistance of the conductor and
mathematician Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg. The revision
process was underwritten by Bernstein’s Amberson
Foundation and was accomplished during the spring of
1962. As the work proceeded Bauer-Mengelberg
recognized that the complexities of the score were not
mere artifice but that Wolpe imagined the music
exactly as he had notated it. This realization led to
making as few changes as possible, and yet alterations
were made to about one-third of the pages of the first
and third movements and one-half the pages of the
second. Bernstein approved the revised score,
scheduled it for a series of avant-garde concerts in the
winter of 1964, and invited Bauer-Mengelberg to
conduct the premiere.
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Wolpe was disappointed that the commission called for
only twenty minutes of music, as the three movements
in hand already exceeded the allotted time. Resolved to
write another symphony, he delivered the score as
requested in January of 1956. Three years went by
before he could afford to have a fair copy made on
vellum masters. The young Japanese pianist and
composer Toshi Ichyanagi accomplished the arduous
task during the summer of 1959. On the title page of the
new score Wolpe wrote “Symphony No. 1, 1955-1956,”
and yet it remained his only symphony.
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A Guggenheim Fellowship provided funds for making the
orchestral parts, and Wolpe supervised their
preparation while residing at the American Academy in
Rome. When the parts arrived in New York late in the
fall of 1963, most were found to be inadequate, and the
premiere scheduled for mid-January of 1964 had to be
canceled. David Oppenheim of Columbia Records came
to the rescue and helped to raise the funds needed for
a crash program by a dozen copyists under Arnold
Arnstein to prepare a fresh set of parts. On December
29 The New York Times announced that the
performance was rescheduled and rehearsals began two
days before the premiere. Bernstein allotted as much
time as possible to the Symphony, but it was soon
apparent that only the two shorter movements could be
prepared in time. Before each of the four performances
January 16-19, 1964 Bernstein read a text that
recounted the symphony’s difficult birth:
© Copyright 2005 by Southern Music Publishing Co., Inc.
International Copyright Secured. Printed in the U.S.A.
All Rights Reserved.
. . . The symphony of Stefan Wolpe turned out
in practical rehearsals to be of such enormous
difficulty that it has proved impossible to
prepare all of it in time for these concerts. . . .
And so Mr. Mengelberg and I have chosen quality
as against quantity and have decided to present
two of the three movements well prepared
rather than all three movements in the rough. .
. . When the score first arrived at my office
some years ago, I was deeply struck by its
intensity, originality, and great musicality, but it
was frankly unperformable. . . . But I still
thought that this music ought to be heard, and
so I conceived the idea of asking Mr. Wolpe if he
would consider re-barring and rearranging the
metrical values of the Symphony in the interests
of practicality. …
The truncated Symphony made a powerful impression.
Eric Salzman wrote in The New York Times that the two
movements were
to say the least, a remarkable, even
overwhelming experience. . . . It is full of a kind
of on-going process of transformation and
change that works itself out in rich, flashing,
kaleidoscopic lines, colors and accents; the
music tumbles, it twists and turns, it plunges
ahead, and stumbles and falls, it darts and
sweeps from top to bottom, from each moment
to the next creating its own unique world of
possibilities and realizations. It ends only by
exhausting itself, by using up its own form, by
destroying its own unique universe, created and
then exhausted by the musical thought itself.
The first complete performance was given in Boston in
April of 1965, when Frederick Prausnitz led the New
England Conservatory Orchestra. The following
September he conducted the BBC Symphony in the
European premiere. Arthur Weisberg made the first
recording in September of 1975, when he led the
Orchestra of the 20th Century in Carnegie Hall (CRI 676).
Perhaps it was a poorly balanced performance that
prompted Wolpe to delete most of the percussion after
bar 106 of the second movement. The Weisberg
recording confirmed that Wolpe’s fears were
unfounded, and that the complete part fulfills the
promise of a fugue in which one of the three subjects
consists mainly of un-pitched percussion. When Prof.
Robert Falck and I prepared the new edition, we
decided to restore the deleted percussion, but the
publisher no longer had a score with the complete
percussion or the original percussion part. We contacted
Mr. Weisberg, who kindly photocopied and sent us the
needed pages from his score. The edition was prepared
in collaboration with Todd Vunderink and Robert Lee of
Peermusic in New York. David Nichol, who has engraved
many Wolpe scores, mastered the challenges with his
accustomed patience and expertise.
A few months after completing the symphony Wolpe
gave a lecture on new music in the U.S.A. at Darmstadt.
He said that “the prevailing style over in America is
becoming radicalized only very, very slowly.” A new
orchestral sound was emerging in Elliott Carter’s
Variations for Orchestra (1955) and the Third Symphony
(1957) of Roger Sessions, but most American
symphonists were uninterested in the models provided
by Ives, Varèse, and Ruggles. They continued to favor
diatonicism, stratified thematic space in which
instrumental choirs move integrally and antiphonally,
and the auras of regionalism, Romanticism, and NeoClassicism. Wolpe’s symphony stands closer to the
symphonic works of Ralph Shapey, Earle Brown, Morton
Feldman, Charles Wuorinen, and Mario Davidovsky, who
regarded Varèse and Wolpe as mentors. In the company
of the painters, jazz musicians, and dancers of New York
and the poets of Black Mountain College Wolpe made a
bold and brilliant contribution to the movement that
shifted the focus of the avant-garde from Europe to
North America. His Symphony No. 1 marks the threshold
of a new era of symphonic music in America.
[From the preface to the new edition.]
References
Bauer-Mengelberg, Stefan. 2003. In Recollections of Stefan
Wolpe, edited by A. Clarkson.
http://www.wolpe.org/Recollections.
Falck, Robert. 2003. A Labyrinthine Universe: The One and
Only Symphony No. 1. In The Music of Stefan Wolpe: Essays
and Recollections, ed. A. Clarkson, 221-232. Hillsdale, NY:
Pendragon Press.
Ichyanagi, Toshi. 2003. In Recollections of Stefan Wolpe.
Peyser, Joan. 1998. Bernstein, A Biography. New York:
Billboard Books.
Salzman, Eric. 1964. The New York Times, 17 Feb. 1964.
Austin Clarkson, professor of music (ret.), York University, was a student
of Stefan Wolpe while studying musicology at Columbia University. He is
general editor of the composer’s music and writings
Remembering Trude Rittmann
Trude Rittmann was a brilliant
pianist,
composer,
and
arranger who played a crucial
role in Broadway dance and
musical theater from the
1940s until the mid 1970s. She
was born in Mannheim,
Germany, in 1908 and began
music studies at the age of
six. Ernst Toch taught her
composition while she was in
her early teens, after which
she went to the Hochschule in
Cologne, where she studied with Philip Jarnach for
composition and Edward Erdmann for piano. She
graduated with the artist’s diploma in both fields in
1932 and the next year joined the group of soloists
performing under the direction of Hermann Scherchen
at the Strasbourg Festival of Contemporary Music. She
premiered a piano work by Alan Bush, who was so
delighted that he brought her to England to teach at
Dartington. In 1935 she was again with Scherchen,
performing and teaching at his International School of
Music and Drama at Brussels. It was there that she met
Stefan Wolpe, who had come from Palestine to study
conducting. Rittmann, though six years younger, was
Wolpe’s coach. She recalled:
I coached Stefan conducting a Bach Suite. He
conducted silently and I watched him with the score.
He was already then a remarkable pianist of his own
stuff. He was so musical, the music dripped out of his
fingers. He had always a magnetic quality in anything
he did, whether he talked or played, such intensity
and drama.
Rittmann stayed on in Brussels as Scherchen’s assistant
at the Théâtre de la Monnaie and also assistant editor
of his journal Musica Viva. She immigrated to the U.S.A.
in 1937 and was soon engaged by Lincoln Kirstein as
pianist for George Balanchine’s American Ballet
Caravan. At first she assisted Elliott Carter, who was the
music director, but when he quit to concentrate on
composing, she took over for the next four years. She
and Wolpe got together at least by 1940, as ten letters
from Rittmann to Wolpe from that year suggest that a
romance had blossomed between them. In June of 1940
Rittmann accompanied Josef Marx in the second and
third movements of Wolpe’s Oboe Sonata for a
broadcast over WNYC. Theodore Adorno, who produced
a series of music programs for the city radio station,
included the Wolpe along with songs of Mahler and the
Berg Piano Sonata performed by Rittmann.
I was supposed to play the Berg Sonata, Op. 1, and
then to end the program Joe Marx and I played
Stefan's Oboe Sonata. Then a terrible thing
happened. I played the Berg Sonata and nobody knew
that I would repeat the exposition part, which I did.
And so when Joe and I started the Oboe Sonata and
played and played and played, we were not done
when the time was finished. So part of it was hacked
off, and poor Stefan had a fit. We played to the end
but didn’t know they had turned off. Adorno was
called out while we were playing and returned
looking very pale and disturbed, and afterwards he
told us Mayor LaGuardia had called to say he didn’t
want any more of that music on his station. He was
very outspoken about it. I still feel very guilty for
having done that to poor Stefan. I made that repeat
which nobody had foreseen. It’s such a short piece
that if I repeat the exposition, it will make it a bit
longer.
At that time Rittmann was touring with Ballet Caravan
through the USA, Canada, and South America. Rittmann
and another pianist performed the repertoire on two
pianos, and in 1941 she commissioned Wolpe to
transcribe the Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings and the
Bach Double Concerto (BWV 1043). That year she
assisted Wolpe with music for the propaganda film
“Palestine at War,” commissioned by the Palestine
Labor Committee. The eight items for flute, violin,
viola, cello, and piano included such titles as “Military
Review,” “Diamonds Shop View,” Top of Saw Mill,” and
“Children at Givat Brenner.” The last, “Jewish Soldier’s
Day,” is a setting of the march song “Rote Soldaten”
that Wolpe had composed ten years before in Berlin.
The song was published in a collection of Communist
songs distributed from Moscow (1935) and reprinted as
“Ours is the Future” in Songs of the People, a song book
published in New York by the Workers Library (1937).
The scoring of that item is in Rittmann’s hand, as are
two other items, one of which is perhaps her own
composition. The materials have timings and other
markings that indicate it was performed, presumably
with Rittmann directing from the piano. Where and
when the film was actually shown has not been
determined. Rittmann provided Wolpe entré to the
dance community. Marthe Krueger (1910-2001), who
had immigrated from Germany in 1933, commissioned
Wolpe to compose a suite of three dances in 1940. It
was through Rittmann that Wolpe met Eugene Loring,
who left the Ballet Theatre in 1941 to form his own
company. The next year Wolpe composed the ballet The
Man from Midian for Loring’s Dance Players.
It was at the invitation of Agnes de Mille and Kurt Weill
that Rittmann worked on her first Broadway musical,
One Touch of Venus (1943). She was soon in demand as
a rehearsal and concert accompanist and choral and
dance music arranger, and through her career worked
on more than sixty Broadway productions. Her first
Richard Rodgers musical was Carousel (1945), for which
she arranged the music to Agnes de Mille’s dances. She
worked on four further Rodgers and Hammerstein
musicals—Allegro (1947), South Pacific (1949), The King
and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959). It was not
until after the death of Rodgers in 1979 that his
daughter Mary, also a composer, prevailed upon the
Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization to print
Rittmann’s name on the music she had composed. She
also contributed to the musicals of Lerner and Loewe —
Brigadoon (1946), Paint your Wagon (1951), My Fair
Lady (1956), Gigi (film, 1958 and Broadway
version,1974), Camelot (1960) and The Little Prince
(film, 1974). And she wrote for the stage, television,
and films, including several productions of Joshua
Logan, the last being Rip van Winkle (1976).
As composer, arranger, and pianist Rittmann made a
distinguished and lasting contribution to the Broadway
musical stage. For some shows she only wrote dance
music, for some only the vocal arrangements, for some
the incidental music, for some she did all three and was
only credited for one or two. The only way to know for
sure is to check the opening night programs for credits.
Then again sometimes she received little or no credit in
the program and was credited later in the published
vocal scores and libretti. In 1953 Agnes de Mille formed
her own Dance Theatre and asked Rittmann to supervise
the musical preparation. Rittmann composed The Cherry
Tree Legend for de Mille, with whom she maintained an
intimate and life-long association until her death in 1993.
In 1997, speaking with a reporter, Rittmann said, “That’s
a story in itself—the development of women in the
theater. We were not too welcome. Agnes had her
difficulties. I guess we both had our difficulties.” She
brought out her score of South Pacific with the signatures
of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. The list of
credits mentioned neither Agnes de Mille nor Trude
Rittmann. Trude Rittmann retired to Waltham, Mass.,
where she died on February 22, 2005, aged 96.
References
Rittmann, Trude. 2003. In Recollections of Stefan Wolpe,
edited by A. Clarkson. http://www.wolpe.org/Recollections.
The Rittmann Papers are in the Dance Division of the New York
Public Library at Lincoln Center.
A Wolpe Portrait in Los Angeles
Stephen M. Fry
Since his emigration to this country in 1938, Stefan
Wolpe has been known primarily as an East Coast
composer with no ties to Los Angeles. Except for one.
His likeness is sculpted in a superb bronze portrait
which rests alongside busts of Arnold Schoenberg and
Ernst Toch in the UCLA Music Library. How this sculpture
came to the library is an interesting and consequential
story. The tale began in 1967 when Austin Clarkson
brought the well-known sculptor Helaine Blum to meet
Wolpe. They talked of her creating a bronze head of the
composer, and she invited them both to visit her studio.
She was attracted to the composer’s personality and
agreed to commence with the work. I interviewed her
about this episode and how the bronze portrait
transpired. She remembers the event of some thirtyfive years ago quite well and offered many details of
her experience.
“Wolpe had a strong
mental energy about him,”
she recalls. “I enjoyed our
conversations while he sat
for the work. I felt there
was a lot of substance
there to work with, and I
immediately wanted to do
the sculpture. We spoke
about his time in Israel,
and also his early days in
New York. However, he was
not an easy subject. He
was a Jewish intellectual
and had a kind of sarcastic
wit, sometimes almost
caustic, which seemed
exacerbated by his ongoing
illness [He was suffering
from Parkinson’s disease.] In fact this was an interesting
aspect of his personality to me, and seemed a common
characteristic of German intellectuals in my experience.
I completed the clay model after several sessions. He
would come around nine in the morning with Mr.
Clarkson. He would sit for about an hour and a half each
session, with a few breaks when I would make coffee.”
— Bruce Pomahac & Austin Clarkson
The Modern Art Foundry in New York cast the portrait in
bronze, she explained. “From my original work in clay
they made a plaster cast, then created a wax mould of
it. It took about six weeks to finally cast the metal
portrait using the lost wax process. The experience of
doing Wolpe’s portrait seemed to come and go very
quickly. I felt the work was an absorbing challenge. This
was a very exciting and active time in my life. I had just
completed a portrait of Walter Starkie, who was Samuel
Beckett’s teacher. This had been an extraordinary
experience. Ben Gurion, Max Weber, and Marcel
Marceau were yet to come. I had done Linus Pauling.”
Blum described the unveiling. “The portrait was
presented to the composer and a group of about twenty
of his friends, colleagues, and students in the Clarkson
apartment in New York. Wolpe liked it very much. I felt
it was a great accomplishment for me. The Weintraub
Gallery was my showcase at the time, and afterward
the portrait went on exhibition there.”
I met Helaine Blum in the spring of 1987 and discussed with
her the letters and other documents by writers and
scientists with whom she was friends. Being a charming and
witty woman and a marvelous conversationalist, we grew
to be friends. She told me about her bronze portrait of
Wolpe after I had assured her that I knew of the composer
and his work. She placed the portrait on loan in the UCLA
Music Library in 1988, and in 1991 the remarkable woman
graciously donated the work to UCLA. Her portrait of Stefan
Wolpe, standing 16 inches high on a 5-by-5-inch ebony
base, now has a permanent home beside the two other
illustrious emigrés in our library.
Stephen M. Fry retired from the UCLA Music Library
several years ago. Currently he writes a weekly column
on music for Blue Pacific Newspapers, and is preparing
for publication transcriptions of songs and dances
published in the 18th Century London monthly The
Gentleman's Magazine.
A Shout Out from All Music Guide
Dave Lewis
As assistant editor in the classical music department at
the All Music Guide in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I want to
congratulate the Wolpe Society on its new newsletter,
which I understand has been a long time in coming.
Some real strides have been made on behalf of Wolpe in
the last couple of years, such as the discs Enactments
on Hat Art, which I reviewed for AMG, and Wolpe in
Jerusalem on Mode, which was reviewed by my
colleague Blair Sanderson. Accessing information about
such recordings on the web or in print can be a daunting
proposition, and part of what we do at AMG is to provide
a platform through which detailed information about
recordings of classical music can be accessed with
relative ease.
In 2001 AMG’s classical department instituted a number
of projects where we unified the work lists of about 200
deserving classical composers. Wolpe was one of the last
of the original series of composers "cleaned," the work
being completed by myself in the summer-fall of 2005. I
elicited the help of Austin Clarkson, who was most
generous with his time and information — I have more
than a dozen emails that we have exchanged dealing
with fine details relating to Wolpe and his works.
Here are some navigational hints to the allmusic.com
Wolpe site. First, you go to www.allmusic.com and type
"Wolpe, Stefan" into the empty box to the right of the
word "ALLMUSIC." Make sure that the tab below the box
is set to "Artist/Group," which it usually is when you
first go there. Hit "Enter" or press the "Go" button to the
right of the box, and that should take you right to
Wolpe's classical page, with photo and bio. Click the tab
above his name that reads "Works." First, it brings up
"Highlights," which singles out those works of Wolpe that
have been recorded with the most frequency. Click on
the tab to the right of the "Highlights" box, and that
leads to a pull down menu that lists "All" below
"Highlights," followed by the various genres in which
Wolpe worked. Clicking "All" will bring you a listing of
everything, which for Wolpe is four pages of works,
which you can navigate by clicking the row of numbers
at the bottom of the page. If you are interested in his
Choral works only, for example, then click on "Choral"
and you will see them on their own page (or pages).
Click on a work and this will lead to that work's dedicated
page, listing the title, forces, relevant dates and, if we
have it, the typical duration of a given piece. If there is
no recording of that work, then this is as far as our
system will take you. However, if there are recordings,
then the "Performances" tab will be shaded, rather than
gray. Click on that, and it will lead you to a listing of
albums that work appears on. There are "Complete" and
"Excerpt" tabs at the top of the listing. In Wolpe's case,
the works are generally "complete," but if either tabs, or
just the "Excerpt" tab, are highlighted, you may need to
look at both to find all of the album listings.
Once clicked through to an album, you should see the
cover scan, titles and timings. A little speaker icon to
the left of a track title indicates a 30-second sample of
that track is available for listening. You can access the
names of performers just by running your cursor over the
top of track titles, and it gives you the option of clicking
for more information of that kind. Sometimes there is a
review of the album, and sometimes there isn't. If the
disc is still commercially available, there should be a link
to available vendors both underneath the scan of the
front cover and through the "Buy" tab above the title of
the album. Track and Credit information for each album
is also available from that same row of tabs, though in
some cases complete track info is already accessible
from the page you are looking at.
And that is how, in a nutshell, to navigate our Wolpe
site, and it extends to every other composer and
performer that AMG has entered into our database.
Happy surfing!
replies were increasingly hampered by the symptoms of
Parkinson’s disease. The two artists shared similar
temperaments and discussed issues at the core of their
aesthetic concerns. The extensive project to restore
Wolpe’s papers is ongoing, and our specialist has by now
treated about one half of the damaged manuscripts.
The many letters that bear traces of fire and water will
be treated in due course. For the moment they have all
been placed in special polyester folders for preservation, and
the whole correspondence has been microfilmed. Scholars
who wish to study at the Sacher Foundation should go to
www.paul-sacher-stiftung.che/practical%20tips.htm
for advice on applying for research stipends.
— Heidy Zimmermann
CHAPEL HILL
Music at Black Mountain
“Festival on the Hill,”
Chapel Hill, March 30-April 2, 2006
REPORTS
BASEL
The Stefan Wolpe Collection was instituted at the Paul
Sacher Foundation when the composer’s papers were
purchased from Hilda Morley Wolpe in 1992. Recent
additions to the collection include the materials of For
Marthe Krueger (1940), dance suite for two pianos,
which were acquired in 2005. Judith Adler, the daughter
of the Bauhaus artist Anni Wottitz, gave the Foundation
four letters from Wolpe to her mother and recently
presented us with the charcoal portrait that the
celebrated artist Friedl Dicker made of Wolpe in about
1920. Ms. Adler also gave a volume of Hölderlin poems
published in 1920. On the flyleaf of the volume Wolpe
inscribed a dedication to Anni Wottitz in 1921 and the
beginning of the vocal part of a setting of "An Diotima,"
which is different from the one he composed in 1927.
We also obtained the correspondence between Wolpe
and the important German painter Hans Kaiser (19141982) from his daughter Anna H. Berger-Felix of Berlin.
The collection consists of 15 letters from Wolpe to
Kaiser and 35 letters from Kaiser to Wolpe that they
exchanged between 1961 and 1969, though Wolpe’s
Festival on the Hill is a biennial event sponsored by the
Music Department at the Chapel Hill campus of the
University of North Carolina. “Music at Black Mountain”
was organized by Professors Severine Neff (Chapel Hill)
and Jonathan Hiam (Univ. of Hawaii), who obtained his
Ph.D. at Chapel Hill with a dissertation on music at Black
Mountain College. They brought together a rich
assortment of scholars, musicians, and former students
of the College for a stimulating and varied program of
concerts, workshops, lectures, and round tables. Mary
Emma Harris gave the keynote address on the work of the
Black Mountain College Project, which is concerned with
the documentation and preservation of the College’s
history. Several sessions focused on the Summer Institute
of 1944, which celebrated Schoenberg’s 70th birthday,
and which, according to Dr. Hiam, was a crucial event for
the cultivation of the Second Viennese School in the
U.S.A. Gerold Grober (Univ. of Vienna) provided a
portrait of Schoenberg’s student Heinrich Jalowetz, who
arrived at BMC in 1939. Dr. Grober conducted a lively
conversation with Lisa Jalowetz Aronson, who as the
daughter of Heinrich and Johanna Jalowetz, grew up at
BMC. Sabine Feisst (Arizona State Univ.) discussed
Schoenberg reception in America.
Several papers dealt with composers who taught at BMC
in subsequent years: David Bernstein (Mills College) gave
a paper on John Cage’s “Defense of Satie,” the
provocative lecture of 1948; Ethan Lechner (Chapel Hill)
discussed Lou Harrison, Nancy Perloff (Getty Research
Institute) gave a presentation on David Tudor, and Austin
Clarkson (York Univ.), assisted by David Holzman,
lectured on Stefan Wolpe. Mr. Holzman gave a masterly
recital of Webern, Schoenberg, Bartók. He devoted the
second half to Wolpe, concluding with the prodigious
Battle Piece. The superb Brentano String Quartet gave a
concert of Webern, Schoenberg, and Berg, which was
preceded by a talk given by Prof. Neff. The Quartet also
gave a most engaging workshop on performing the music
of the Second Viennese School. The conference program
included two concerts performed by students and faculty
from the Chapel Hill campus. The final concert began
with Psalm 122 by Wolpe, sung by the UNC Chamber
Singers, conducted by Susan Klebanow, and concluded
with a reinvention of John Cage’s celebrated Theater
Piece No. 1, the so-called Happening of 1952. The star of
the Theater Piece was a festively caparisoned llama.
— A. Clarkson
KASSEL
The edition of Wolpe’s Zehn frühe Lieder is now
complete. The songs were composed during the summer
of 1920, which Wolpe spent in Weimar with students at
the Bauhaus. Three of the texts are by the medieval
mystics Mechthild von Magdeburg and Johannes
Sterngassen and one is from Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
From modern authors Wolpe set a hymn from a play by
Oskar Kokoschka and poems by Christian Morgenstern,
Rainer Maria Rilke, and the elusive German poet
Christina Godwin. Nearing completion is an edition of
pieces that Wolpe wrote for “Teddy Stauffer and his
Band” who were playing at the Berlin Cabaret “Anti” in
1929. The movements are Blues, Marsch, and a setting
for speaking chorus of Erich Kästner’s anti-war poem
“Stimmen aus den Massengrab.” The volume will also
include the Sport Revue “Alles an den roten Start”
(1932) on a text by Siegfried Moos. It was performed by
the Communist agitprop Truppe Fichte-Balalaika during
the “Rote Sportinternationale” of 1932. A new edition
of the music theater piece Schöne Geschichten (19271929) is in preparation. Werner Herbers, who with his
Ebony Band, performs the music so brilliantly, gave
advice regarding details of performance. A second
volume of Wolpe’s writings is in preparation. It will
include a lecture given in Philadelphia in 1940, three
seminars given at Darmstadt in 1961, and a new edition
and translation of the “Lecture on Dada” (1962).
SALZBURG
Music and Resistance: 1933-1945
University of Salzburg, April 10-11, 2006
The conference was part of the Salzburg Easter Festival,
directed by Simon Rattle, in conjunction with the
International Center for Suppressed Music, University of
London, and the Jewish Museum (Vienna). The
conference was tremendously successful, with a
fascinating mixture of older and younger scholars and
performances of many composers affected by the
atrocities of the Third Reich. Peter Tregear (University of
Melbourne) presented a particularly thought-provoking
paper on “Music Technique as Political Allegory in
Krenek’s early 12-tone Works,” and Katarzyna
Naliwajek-Mazurek (University of Warsaw) gave an
excellent presentation on Constantin Regamey, a
composer whose musical innovations and Polish
resistance activities have received too little attention.
Papers on Anton Webern, Erwin Schulhoff, and music in
the French resistance were also particularly interesting.
My paper on Wolpe’s “Political Resistance, Migration,
and Community” was very well received. At the end of
the conference Juerg Stenzl remarked that he urgently
needed to know more about Wolpe. I also enjoyed
talking talk to Michael Haas, producer of the Decca CD
of Wolpe’s music theater pieces. The conference was
organized by Juerg Stenzl (University of Salzburg), Erik
Levi (Royal Holloway, University of London), Peter
Tregear (University of Melbourne), David Bloch
(University of Tel Aviv), Jutta Raab Hansen (formerly of
Hamburg University), and Michael Haas (Jewish Museum,
Vienna). Papers from the conference will be published in
a forthcoming periodical by the Jewish Museum.
Unfortunately the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic
were not able to prepare Wolpe’s Oboe Quartet in time
and gave the Oboe Sonata instead. It seemed as though
they had just managed to get the notes under their
fingers and were beginning to get a sense of the
expressive side of things (but only beginning).
— Brigid Cohen
Brigid Cohen is a Ph.D. candidate in historical musicology at
Harvard University, where she is completing her dissertation
titled "Migrant Cosmopolitan Modern: Cultural Reconstruction
in Stefan Wolpe's Musical Thought." During the 2007–2008
academic year, she will hold the position of Mellon
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wesleyan University Center for the
Humanities, and she is also the recipient of an honorary Alvin
H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation Fellowship.
— Thomas Phleps
Udo Kasemets, Musicworks 91, Winter, 2005
BOOKS
ON THE MUSIC OF STEFAN WOLPE:
ESSAYS AND RECOLLECTIONS
Particularly illuminating are the discussions of the
musics of Wolpe, Eisler, and Vogel, which carry direct
political messages. Music with a political content keeps
surfacing time and again. Frustrated by policies and
events contrary to human rights or needs, many a
composer has felt the need to sing a song of anger (and
/ or hope!). The problem, so far unsolved, is how to find
a common language that at once represents one’s
political and musical ideals, and at the same time
speaks to the vast and varied population in search of
liberty and justice.
Adrian P. Childs, Music Library Association Notes,
March, 2006: 723
Edited by Austin Clarkson. (Dimension & Diversity, no. 6)
Hillside, NY: Pendragon Press, 2003. [xii, 371 p., ISBN157647-063-0. $42] Index, notes, illustrations, catalogue,
discography, compact disc.
REVIEWS
Andy Hamilton, Wire 244 (June 2004), 75
The first book on this seriously neglected composer is a
compendious labour of love, plentifully illustrated and
with a well-conceived CD to accompany it. … [T]he love
which Stefan Wolpe inspired is very evident from this
magnificent edition.
Arnold Whittall, The Musical Times, Autumn, 2004
The 20 authors who contribute to Austin Clarkson's
volume offer colourful snapshots of Wolpe's remarkably
diverse life, in Berlin, Weimar (the Bauhaus), Israel and
America, and of his work as teacher (Black Mountain
College, Darmstadt) as well as composer. Clarkson's
citation of Wolpe's wish to 'mix surprise and enigma,
magic and shock, intelligence and abandon, Form and
Antiform' (p.25) encapsulates the modernist instincts of
someone who counted Dadaism and the i2-note method
among his resources, and the best chapters in the book
manage to indicate how a distinctive musical manner
might be forged from these fruitfully warring elements
— in order, as Wolpe is quoted as saying, 'to coordinate
multiplicities' (p. 147).
The experience of reading this near-centennial
collection of essays bears a striking parallel to the
unfolding of one of [Wolpe’s] late compositions. The
volume’s formal organization divides the contributions
into two sections— “Engagements” and “Makings”—that
represent a sort of postmodern gloss on the traditional
Man-and-Music composer biography. Stretching across
and within these two parts is a complex web of
associations, created by repeated references to
composers, philosophers, and compositions that serve
as guideposts for the authors in their explorations. The
climax of the collection comes at the beginning of the
second part, with essays by Martin Zenck and David
Holzman that both involve Wolpe’s monumental Battle
Piece for piano. Zenck, a musicologist, uses
neoclassicism and serialism as foils for several piano
works from the 1930s and 1940s. … Zenck explicitly
disavows any suggestion that Wolpe represents a
synthesis of these isms. … Pianist Holzman deals with
the physical and interpretive challenges of Battle Piece,
contrasting his own performances and recordings with
those of David Tudor (renditions of Battle Piece by both
artists are on the accompanying compact disc).
Holzman’s consideration of the large-scale impact of
the differences between his and Tudor’s interpretations
is especially engaging and expert. …
This volume is a must-have for any scholar or enthusiast
of Wolpe’s compositions and writings, as well as for
anyone working in any of the composer’s various
milieux. The stronger contributions and the compact
disc also recommend the collection for all academic
libraries. Due to the vast reach and variety of Wolpe’s
own career, the essays inevitably touch on topics that
are of interest to almost all musical readers; most will
find reading the volume to be time well spent.
STEFAN WOLPE, DAS GANZE ÜBERDENKEN
Vorträge über Musik 1935-1962.
Edited by Thomas Phleps.
Quellentexte zur Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts.
Band 7.1. Saarbrücken: Paul Sacher Stiftung,
Basel, und Pfau-Verlag, 2002. 262 p.
Thomas Phleps, Introduction: “‘Outsider im
besten Sinne des Wortes’: Stefan Wolpes
Einblicke ins Komponieren in Darmstadt
und anderswo.”
1. Die musikalische Idee und das orchestrale
Equilibre (Brüssel 1935)
Zum 1. Satz der Symphonie Nr. 95 in cmoll von Haydn
2. Über die ersten acht Takte der Violinsonate
a-moll op. 23 von Beethoven (Jerusalem
1935)
3. Die Modulation als Prozess (Philadelphia 1940)
4. Der musikalische Vorgang (Maine 1941):
Über den 1. Satz der 7. Klaviersonate
D-Dur op. 10/3 von Beethoven
5. Zur Passacaglia in c-moll von Bach
(New York 1941)
6. Über Dance in Form of a Chaconne
(New York 1941)
7. Über neue (und nicht so neue) Musik in
Amerika (Darmstadt 1956)
8. Einblick ins Komponieren (Kassel 1957)
9. Thinking Twice (Los Angeles 1959)
10. Proportionen (Darmstadt 1960)
11. Über Simultaneität (Darmstadt 1962)
NEW EDITIONS
For Marthe Krueger, Suite for Two Pianos
The music had lain silent for over six decades. In the
summer of 2005 Sharon Hawkes of Auburn, Maine, who
had inherited the music library of her teacher, the
dancer Marthe Krueger, mailed a large package
containing copies of scores by Wolpe. 81 pages were in
Wolpe’s hand, 9 were in the hand of Irma Wolpe, and 20
pages had been copied by Marthe Krueger’s dance
partner Atty van den Berg. In addition there were two
dance scores by Krueger and van den Berg. Among the
Wolpe papers were a handbill and program for a joint
dance recital by Marthe Krueger and Atty van den
Berg given on January 26, 1941 at the Barbizon-Plaza
Concert Hall in New York. Three of the fourteen
numbers on the program listed music by Wolpe, but the
titles “Remembrance,” “The Women,” and “The Tides
of Man” did not correspond to any of his known scores.
Here at last was some fourteen minutes of music that
had not been seen or heard for 66 years. A long-standing
mystery had been solved.
Marthe Krueger was born in Mulhouse (Alsace) in 1910
and studied dance in France and England. She
immigrated to the U.S.A. in 1933, attended the Martha
Graham School in New York, and taught in various dance
studios. She collaborated with several young
composers, among them John Colman, Alex North, and
Wolpe. Trude Rittmann (see Remembrance, p. 6) likely
provided the link between Krueger and Wolpe, as her
name appears on the same dance program as the
arranger of a Bach chorale. After the war Marthe
Krueger moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut and taught
dance in Norwalk. In 1962 she built a home and dance
studio in Wilton and taught there until shortly before
her death in 2001. While sorting through Krueger’s
music library, Ms. Hawkes found original scores of
several composers. Having made her trove of Wolpe
materials known, the Paul Sacher Foundation of Basel
purchased them for their Stefan Wolpe Collection.
For Marthe Krueger fills what had been a sizeable
lacuna between the Zemach Suite (1939) and the
Toccata (1941). The first movement, “The Women,” is a
series of variegated actions in Wolpe’s Palestinian vein
of modernist modality. The second movement,
“Remembrance,” with slow, freely chromatic outer
sections bracketing a “Con moto” middle section in C
minor, is a lament that prefigures the “Too much
suffering in the world” movement of the Toccata. The
third movement, “The Tides of Man: Passions spin the
plot,” is a vehement march fantasy. The Suite will be
published by Peermusic and will be re-awakened from
its long slumber in the fall of 2007 by Susan Grace and
Alice Rybak of Colorado, who concertize as Quattro
Mani and are recording the Suite for Bridge Records.
— Editor
RECENT EDITIONS
Published by Peermusic Classical, unless noted otherwise.
Johannes Schöllhorn & Stefan Wolpe
About the Seventh
In the beginning Wolpe’s music did not attract me
very much, rather, I was irritated by the diversity of
his styles and by his strange complexity. Later I
understood that his music was so close to life that it
was not possible for him (fortunately) to make any
compromises. Because he was so personal, he did
not have to “create” a personal handwriting. I think
I will never really understand Wolpe, which is why he
attracts me all the time.
I composed About the Seventh (1992) to celebrate
Wolpe’s 90th anniversary year. My point of departure
was the set of four pieces that make up the work of
the same name that Wolpe composed in 1945-46.
The work consists of 15 short movements for flute,
clarinet, violin, viola, cello, piano, and percussion. I
made three settings of each of the four pieces and
of a fifth piece that I composed in place of one that
is missing from the Wolpe work. The three settings
of each item are in styles that are near to and
distant from Wolpe’s style. My goal was a prismatic
constellation of miniatures that provide a fresh and
mutually illuminating perspective on the music of
Wolpe. I was thinking of John Berger, when he writes
that the act of approaching a given moment of
experience produces at once a close investigation
and also the possibility of distant associations. The
piece has received many performances, and will be
given in Paris in April by the ensemble instant donné.
— Johannes Schöllhorn
Born in 1962, Johannes Schöllhorn studied with Klaus Huber,
Emanuel Nuñes, and Mathias Spahlinger and attended
conducting courses with Peter Eötvos. He is laureate of the
Fondation Strobel at the SWR and the Gaudeamus Foundation
and in 1995 was winner of the Comitée de lecture of the
Ensemble Intercontemporain. His chamber opera les petites
filles modales was given many times in France. He taught at the
Musikhochschule in Zürich-Winterthur and was conductor of the
Ensemble für Neue Musik at the Musikhochschule Freiburg. He
is currently professor of composition at the Hochschule für
Musik und Theater Hannover.
Bearbeitungen Ostjüdischer Volkslieder [Arrangements
of Yiddish Folksongs] (1925), medium voice
and piano. Edited by David Bloch.
Blues (1929). Blues, “Stimmen aus dem Massengrab”
(Text: Erich Kästner), Marsch. 2 sax(cl), tpt,
perc, 2 pno, speaking chorus. Edited by
Thomas Phleps.
Enactments for Three Pianos (1953). Edited by
A. Clarkson.
Good Woman of Setzuan, The (1953). Text by Bertolt
Brecht. English version by Eric Bentley. Overture
and 9 songs, voices and piano. Edited by E.
Bentley & A. Clarkson. Published by Samuel
French.
Konzert für Neun Instrumente [Concerto for Nine
Instruments] (1937). For fl, cl, bn, tpt, hrn, tbn,
vn (inc.), vc, pno. Edited by Johannes
Schöllhorn, with Werner Herbers & Emilio
Pomàrico.
Music for Le malade imaginaire (Molière) (1935). For fl,
cl, vn, va, cb. Edited by A. Clarkson.
Piano Music 1939-1942. Lied Anrede Hymnus (1939).
Zemach Suite (1939): Song, Piece of Embittered
Music, Fuge a 3 no. 1, Fuge a 3 no. 2, Jubilation,
Complaint, Dance in Form of a Chaconne. Two
Pieces for Piano (1941): Pastorale, Con fuoco.
The Good Spirit of a Right Cause (1942). Edited
by A. Clarkson & David Holzman.
Quartet for Trumpet, Tenor Saxophone, Percussion and
Piano (1950-54). Edited by A. Clarkson.
Schöne Geschichten (Droll Stories) (1927-1929). Text:
Otto Hahn & S. Wolpe. For actors, singers,
marionettes, fl, 2 cl(sax), tpt, tbn, perc, vn,
pno, chorus. Edited by T. Phleps.
Sportrevue “Alles an den roten Start” (Cantata on
Sport). Text: Siegfried Moos. Edited by T. Phleps.
Suite for Marthe Krueger (1940). For two pianos. Edited
by A. Clarkson.
Suite from the Twenties: 1. March Nr. 1; 2. Tango für
Irma; 3. Blues; 4. Tango; 5. Tanz (Charleston); 6.
Rag-Caprice. For cl, Bcl, Asax, tpt, tbn, bjo,
pno, vn, vc. Arrangements by Geert van Keulen.
Symphony No.1 (1956). Edited by A. Clarkson & Robert Falck.
Waltz for Merle (1952). Edited by D. Holzman.
Zehn frühe Lieder (1920). Texts: Christina Godwin,
Mechthild von Magdeburg, Christian Morgenstern,
Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Oskar Kokoschka,
Rainer Maria Rilke, Johannes Sternegassen,
Stefan Wolpe. Edited by T. Phleps.
Zwei Studien für Grosses Orchester (1933).
1. Ouvertüre; 2. Pastorale in Form einer
Passacaglia. Edited by Martin Brody & Matthew
Greenbaum.
Zwei Tänze für Klavier (1926). 1. Blues; 2. Tango.
Edited by D. Holzman.
Dr. Einstein’s Address about Peace in the
Atomic Era” (1950), Wolpe’s vigorous
protest against the hydrogen bomb. Leah
Summers, mezzo-soprano, and Ashraf
Sewailam, bass-baritone, accompanied
respectively by Jacob Greenberg and
Susan Grace, perform seven of Wolpe’s
Hebrew settings of texts from the Bible
and by contemporary poets to round out
this collection of songs from Wolpe’s
Berlin, Jerusalem, and New York years.
Some of the Hebrew songs will be
performed by Mr. Sewailam and Ms. Grace
at the Lincoln Center Library of
Performing Arts on April 5, 2007, along
with Egyptian and Egyptian-related works.
RECORDINGS
Wolpe, The Man from Midian, Ballet Suite no.1
(1942) 19:05 Rundfunk Sinfonie-orchester
Berlin, Joseph Silverstein, conductor. With:
Leon Stein, Three Hassidic Dances (1946);
Darius Milhaud, Opus Americanum no. 2, Suite
from the Ballet Moïse (1947), excerpts; Lazare
Saminsky, The Vision of Ariel (opera-ballet)
(1916), excerpts.
Songs (1920–1954)
1 Excerpts from Dr. Einstein’s Address about
Peace in the Atomic Era (1950)
2 Ten Early Songs (1920)
3 Arrangements of Yiddish Folk Songs (1925)
4 Six Songs from the Hebrew (1938, 1954)
5 Der faule Bauer mit seinen Hunden, Fabel
von Hans Sachs (1926)
6 Epitaph (1938)
Patrick Mason, bar, Robert Shannon, pno (1, 3, 5)
Tony Arnold, sop, Jacob Greenberg, pno (2)
Leah Summers, m-sop, J. Greenberg, pno (4, 6)
Ashraf Sewailam, bass-bar, Susan Grace, pno (4)
The Man from Midian
Naxos 8.559265 (2006)
Reissue of Koch International Classics.
Group for Contemporary Music
1 The Man from Midian for 2 Pianos (1942)
Cameron Grant, James Winn, piano
2 Sonata for Violin and Piano (1949)
Jorja Fleezanis, violin, Garrick Ohlsson, piano
Bridge 9209 (2007)
This just-released CD brings first
recordings from Wolpe’s extensive
catalogue of vocal music. The Ten Early
Songs (1920), composed when he was 17
years old and spending the summer with
students of the Bauhaus at Weimar, reveal
an extraordinary range of expressive and
technical resources. The texts include
meditations on spiritual love by medieval
mystics, a love song from Des Knaben
Wunderhorn, and poems by contemporaries Oskar Kokoschka, Rilke, Christian
Morgenstern, and Christina Godwin.
Wolpe also set two of his own verses,
amusing poems to an infant child. The
Early Songs, which range in style from
passionate Jugendstil odes to witty
ragtime tunes, are performed by soprano
Tony Arnold, nominated for a Grammy
Award in 2006, and pianist Jacob
Greenberg. The program for Wolpe’s
Berlin debut as composer and pianist
included his Arrangements of 13 Yiddish
Folksongs. Baritone Patrick Mason, who
was nominated for a 2007 Grammy, sings
the
six
surviving
arrangements
accompanied by Robert Shannon. They
also perform the solo cantata “Der faule
Bauer mit seinen Hunden” [The lazy
farmer and his dogs] (1926), the setting of
a long moralistic poem by the 16thcentury Hans Sachs, and “Excerpts from
Stefan Wolpe, Vol. 4
Ensemble SurPlus Bridge 9215 (2007)
1 Oboe Sonata Fragment (1937)
2 Sonata for Oboe and Piano (1937-1941)
3 Song, Speech, Hymn, Strophe (1939)
4 Piece in Two Parts for Flute and Piano (1960)
5 Piece for Oboe, Cello, Percussion & Piano (1955)
Heinz Holliger, ob, James Avery, pno (1, 2, 3)
Robert Aitken, flute, James Avery, piano (4)
Peter Veale, oboe, Beverley Ellis, cello,
Sven Thomas Kiebler, piano, Pascal Pons,
percussion, James Avery, conductor (5)
Jewish Music of the Dance
Milken Archive of American Jewish Music
Naxos 8.559439 (2006)
Dave Lewis, Allmusic Guide:
Stefan Wolpe was a composer who cuts a
Zelig-like path through the early 20th
century.… Naxos’ Stefan Wolpe: The Man
from Midian makes available once again
some of the first recorded salvos fired on
Wolpe's behalf in the digital era…
The Man from Midian was written for
choreographer Eugene Loring and
illustrates some chapters in the life of
Moses drawn from the Biblical book of
Exodus; it originally premiered on the
same program as Copland’s ballet Billy
the Kid. The Man from Midian is not as
dissimilar from the far better known
Copland work as one might think; it is
similarly potently rhythmic, and parts of
it are straightforwardly diatonic, though
not very “neo-classical” in the sense that
this might imply. There are stretches of
busy twelve-tone composition that wind
back into, and out of, the diatonic
sections, a very post-modern way of
working for 1942. It is also a very exciting
and
engaging
piece,
somewhat
reminiscent of Nikos Skalkottas' four-hand
piano work Le Retour de Ulysse (1944).
Duo pianists Cameron Grant and James
Winn turn in a swinging, yet wellarticulated performance of The Man from
Midian, and their steel-fingered sonorities
The “Concerto for Nine Instruments” is a
curiosity, since the violin part was lost and
reconstructed in 2000, but the vigor of the
musical imagination is still unmistakable.
The performances are compelling.
raise just the right rhythmic profile in
Wolpe's music. Parts of The Man from
Midian are deeply jazzy in sound, and
even these sections spin off through
twelve-tone sections scored at hair-raising
tempi that will leave one's jaw agape.
The Sonata for Violin and Piano is a much
more strict serial work and a very
aggressive one; it is superficially similar
to the fast sections of Arnold
Schoenberg's Fantasy for violin and
piano, Op. 47. This Sonata will prove
absolute torture for some, however if
you ever loved atonal music for its sense
of bite and aggression, this is for you —
it will remind many who have enjoyed
strict, old fashioned serialism in the past
what they liked about it in the first
place. Jorja Fleezanis and Garrick
Ohlsson’s performance is very good in its
turbulent,
hell-bent
for
leather
treatment of the music, but in this case
the recording, made at Concordia
College in Bronxville in 1991, is just a
little too “live” — the generous
reverberation of the hall swallows up
some of the music. Anyone interested in
music of the 20th century, though,
should endeavor to get to know The Man
from Midian — it is one of the most
distinctive and direct musical utterances
that Stefan Wolpe left to us.
Dan Warburton
ParisTransatlantic.com, April, 2006
Wolpe in Jerusalem 1934-1938
Mode 156 (2006)
Co-Production of Westdeutsche Rundfunk,
Beth Hatefutsoth Records.
1 Passacaglia, op. 23 (1937) 12:12*
WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln,
Johannes Kalitzke, conductor
2 Music for Molière’s Le malade imaginaire
(1934) 20:01* ensemble recherche
3 Drei kleinere Kanons, op. 24a (1936) 4:56
ensemble recherche
4 Suite im Hexachord, op. 24b (1936) 14:52
ensemble recherche
5 Konzert für 9 Instrumente, op. 22 (1933-37) 24:48
ensemble recherche, Werner Herbers, cond.
* first recording
REVIEWS
Mark Swed
The Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2006
Stefan Wolpe Chamber Music
Naxos 8.559262 (2006)
Reissue of Koch International Classics 1996
(items 1, 2), and 1993 (items 3, 4).
Group for Contemporary Music.
1 String Quartet (1969)
2 Second Piece for Violin Alone (1966)
3 Trio in Two Parts for Flute, Cello & Piano (1964)
4 Piece for Oboe, Cello, Percussion & Piano (1954)
Curtis Macomber, violin (1, 2), Theodore
Arm, violin (1), Toby Appel, viola (1), Fred
Sherry, cello (1, 3, 4), Harvey Sollberger,
flute (3), conductor (4), Stephen Taylor, oboe
(4) Charles Wuorinen, piano (3), Aleck Karis,
piano (4), Daniel Kennedy, percussion (4).
When Stefan Wolpe came to New York
after fleeing Nazi Germany, he was
known as a stubborn composer of
brilliantly Modernist music. He was also
known as something of a reluctant father
of American avant-gardists — he was
mentor to both pianist David Tudor and
composer Morton Feldman. But little is
known of the four years he spent in
Jerusalem after leaving Berlin and
before arriving in America. The Israelis
all but erased him from their history,
finding him too ornery for a then
conservative musical culture — a
headache is better than his music, one
Israeli critic wrote. They can have their
headaches. It turns out Wolpe wrote
some remarkable music while in
Jerusalem that is only now being
rediscovered; much of this disc contains
first recordings. The “Passacaglia” for
orchestra is a gripping 12-tone score
from 1937 that manages to sound angry
and visionary at the same time. To
dislike Wolpe's witty, rambunctious and
engagingly melodic incidental music for
Molière's “The Imaginary Invalid” seems
all but impossible. The “Hexachord
Suite” for oboe and clarinet is
intriguingly inspired by Arab music.
. . . once more Mode is setting the
standard for excellent and informative
liner notes - translated into French,
German and, not surprisingly, Hebrew. …
Though the [Passacaglia] was originally
scheduled for performance at the time
under the baton of William Steinberg,
the members of the newly founded
Palestine Symphony found it too difficult
(presumably technically, though one
suspects the real reasons were musical)
and the piece wasn’t heard in public
until as late as 1983, when it was finally
premiered by Charles Wuorinen and the
American Composers Orchestra. This
debut recording — at last — should help
establish the Passacaglia as one of the
major early orchestral twelve-tone
works, one worthy of taking its place
alongside Berg's Der Wein and
Schoenberg's Variations.…
Proof that he was equally at home
writing
more
harmonically
and
rhythmically straightforward music
comes in the six pieces he wrote in 1934
as incidental music for Molière's Le
Malade Imaginaire, brilliantly scored for
flute, clarinet, violin, viola and double
bass. Accessible they might be, but
there's no question of a dumbing down in
terms of language - the Schlafmusik is
another passacaglia based on a theme
from Schoenberg’s String Quartet, op 10.
The canons and the suite may already be
familiar to readers, having appeared
before on disc, but this version by the
Ensemble Recherche is the best that's
appeared to date. Wolpe’s contrapuntal
mastery is clear throughout: this is set
theory in action (I shan't bore you with
talk of hexachords — why tell you how it
works when you can hear how it works?)
and terrific music to boot, comparable
with Webern and late Stravinsky in its
combination of formal complexity and
lucidity of line and texture.
The album's third scoop is the first
recording of the Concerto for Nine
Instruments, a work Wolpe had begun
while studying with Webern and
returned to four years later. It’s scored
for near-identical forces as Webern’s
well-known piece of the same name —
the only difference being that Wolpe
calls for bassoon and cello where Webern
uses oboe and viola — but there the
similarities end. Wolpe's work is
considerably more substantial in scope;
calling it a chamber symphony might
have been more appropriate, and
comparing it to Schoenberg’s two
chamber symphonies might make more
sense. Where Webern seems to be
looking forward to the second half of the
twentieth century, and the pointillism of
Nono, Boulez and Stockhausen, Wolpe,
like
Schoenberg,
often
glances
affectionately back at the latter part of
the nineteenth, with its octave doublings
and rather dense scoring. That said,
what we hear on the disc is not exactly
what Wolpe wrote, unfortunately: both
the full score and the violin part have
been lost, and the work has been
reconstructed by Johannes Schöllhorn
from the other existing parts, with only
a few written cues to hint at what the
violin was to have played. Rather than
attempt to write a violin part,
Schöllhorn decided (wisely) to leave the
work as is, with eight complete parts and
fragments of a ninth. Even so, its
appearance at last is cause for
celebration, and another feather in
Mode’s cap. It's an impressive and
rousing - if challenging - conclusion to an
excellent and highly recommended disc.
Oded Assaf
Ha'aretz (Israel), March 24, 2006
The real Stefan Wolpe was a well known
composer (b. 1902) who escaped the
Nazis, lived in Jerusalem for four years,
and immigrated to the USA, where he
died in 1972. His presence in Palestine
became a deluded memory, like in Zarhi's
novel Car Like an Orchid (1997). Recently,
Beth Hatefutsoth’s Feher Jewish Music
Center has produced a disc named Stefan
Wolpe in Jerusalem: 1934-1938. Is it an
indication that the dim and neglected
fringes of musical life in Israel are
gradually moving closer to the center?
It doesn't look like that. Just as Wolpe,
who really tried to be an Oleh and a
pioneer, quickly discovered that in the
Levant he was only a temporary guest.
And later — to quote Paul Griffiths'
Encyclopaedia of Twentieth-Century
Music — he became a mere "GermanAmerican composer." Moreover, to which
center the Wolpe tradition can move
closer now when everything introduced
today as Israeli music — in the radio, TV,
theatre and poetry evenings — is in fact
pop industry, to which even wellestablished
art
composers
are
considered the fringe? Is the fact that
the new disc was mentioned in the press
signals a new, serious discussion of
Wolpe? This is doubtful; the disc can be
easily regarded as just another "item,"
planted between Zubin Mehta's eternal
smile decorating the Philharmonic ads
(side by side with well-dressed ladies,
coffee, and cake) and a chromo journal
titled: “Music Magazine and the Good
Life.” This is also pop industry. Wolpe’s
music and his worldview were never
meant to be part of it. They were meant
to uproot it.
initiator and senior participant in the
production of the new CD, once wrote
things that he probably thought about also
today: “The right of existence and the
vitality of the Art are in the possibility of
provocation.”
One of the journalists who wrote about
the new disc complimented it by saying
that “the compositions are not an
impassable hurdle.” Incorrect. They were
constructed purposely as a hurdle in order
to force the listener to make an effort
and overcome it, otherwise what is meant
to be overcome is worthless. Wolpe asks
the listener to stop, to give up his
customs and expectations, to consider
other ways, other passages which lead
one doesn't know where. To those who
distinguish
between
contemporary
composers who "take the audience into
consideration"
and
“composers’
composers” — Wolpe is a blow in the face.
In Germany, before his arrival to
Jerusalem, and in the USA — he had great
influence on many music lovers, not
composers, but “the audience” — this
manipulative term — Wolpe refused to
take it into consideration. …
This 2006 Mode release of music by Stefan
Wolpe is a significant survey of
compositions from the 1930s, when he
was among the most important European
musicians to settle and work in Jerusalem.
Even though much of his time was
occupied with teaching composition and
theory at the Palestine Conservatoire and
directing choral performances, Wolpe
found sufficient energy and creative
resources to compose a substantial body
of concert and theater music in these
transitional and often chaotic years. The
orchestral version of the Passacaglia, Op.
23 (1937), the Three Smaller Canons, Op.
24a, the Hexachord Suite, Op. 24b (both
1936), and the reconstructed Concerto for
Nine Instruments, Op. 22 (1933-1937) are
among Wolpe's earliest accomplishments in
twelve-tone composition. In some ways
still influenced by Webern’s concepts, but
also reflecting some of the more flexible
applications of Hauer's trope system,
Wolpe demonstrates an independence of
thought and freedom of technique that
sets him apart from the serial orthodoxy
of his mentors; as a result, his music is
often more ingratiating, naturally
inflected, and transparent to the ear. In
striking contrast to these dodecaphonic
works, his Incidental Music for Molière's Le
malade imaginaire (1934) is almost
shocking in its Neoclassical simplicity and
open tonality, and it seems to reflect an
acceptance of Stravinsky’s influence,
along with the ideas of the Second
Viennese School. The performance of the
Passacaglia by Johannes Kalitzke and the
WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln is fairly dry in
tone and crisply detailed, as if to give the
music a heightened, analytical outline.
However, the remaining works here are
performed with a more fluid feeling,
warmer expression, and richer sonorities
by ensemble recherche, under the
direction of Werner Herbers. Mode’s sound
quality is a little uneven from track to
track due to the different venues and
recording dates, but because occasions to
hear Wolpe 's music are still too rare, most
of the audio problems may be excused for
the sake of appreciating this phase of the
composer’s career.
A review published in the daily Ha'aretz
in 1936, after the gala performance of
the Passacaglia (in the two pianos
version) says almost everything: “In this
art the motion of our time and the
decadence of the previous time are
combined together and this pairing
makes this music …a little sick… it is
foreign here, a guest from abroad.”
Somehow, with a few changes of style,
this criticism is coming back to fashion
nowadays, in the era of neoconservatism, and not only in Israel.
From the plans to celebrate the 100th
anniversary of Wolpe’s birth, which took
place in 2002-2003 in the USA and Europe,
many important parts were omitted due to
lack of funds. But studies, performances,
and new recordings, few as they are, and
especially an alternative discourse, can
become new stimulants. And there is a
unique interest in all this in Israel: Wolpe
was here; an opportunity was lost; the
things he had no time to teach — are
missing. The Pastorale — a part of Suite im
Hexachord — (also in the new disc) is a test
case. A pastorale and at the same time
anti-pastorale, it is full of unsolved
tensions, turning its back to nostalgia,
‘ethnicity’ or ‘fusion’, but checking — in a
high level of the abstraction — where
perfect systems of Western compositions
meet with maquamic patterns, related to
Arab traditions: a provocative work today
as it was when composed. Yuval Shaked,
Blair Sanderson, All Music Guide
Enactments, Works for Piano
Hat[now]ART 161 (2005)
Co-Production Hessischer Rundfunk
Frankfurt / Hat Art Records Ltd.
1 March and Variations for Two Pianos
(1933) 18:45 first recording.
Josef Christof & Steffen Schleiermacher.
2 The Good Spirit of a Right Cause
(1942) 3:29 Steffen Schleiermacher.
3 Enactments for Three Pianos 1953
32:27 first CD recording.
Josef Christof, Benjamin Kobler &
Irmela Roelcke; James Avery, conductor.
REVIEWS
Geoff Brown
The Times, 12 August 2005
An electrifying piano disc, and an admirable
introduction to the music of Stefan Wolpe,
still not given his proper due as a 20thcentury giant. The exhilarating March and
Variations (a first recording) plunge us
straight into the composer's roots: Weimar
Berlin, and the music of revolutionary
struggle. But most of the minutes are
gobbled up by the CD premiere of the
extraordinary three-piano epic Enactments,
from Wolpe's American exile in the early
1950s, when his music multiplied in
complexity and spun out into some abstract
expressionist outer space. The secret trick
is to listen inwards towards the core, away
from surface detail. Christof, Benjamin
Kobler and Irmela Roelcke all display
superhuman stamina and control.
Spirit of a Right Cause is a brief gem of
agitprop music that possesses a tongue-incheek ambivalence, as though Wolpe isn’t
sure whether a “good spirit” or “right
cause” can be found in the depths of
World War II. The title work Enactments is
a world away from these other
considerations. Composed in 1953, it
makes clear what the so-called “New York
School,” namely Morton Feldman, John
Cage, Earle Brown, and others, found in
the work of Wolpe. One might infer that
Feldman was attempting in his early
multi-hand piano pieces controlled by
graphic scores to achieve textures similar
to those found in Enactments without
having to work as hard as Wolpe!
Like March and Variations, this too is an
epic work, running to more than 32
minutes and scored for three pianos. In
early movements of the piece the texture
is incredibly dense with rapid figurations
in a manner that may remind some of
Conlon Nancarrow’s most hyperactive
player piano music. It cools down
gradually into a sparser idiom before
heating up again at the end. One can
listen to Enactments many times without
“getting” the full impact of it, so great is
its level of complexity. The performances
are very good, especially considering that
this is such highly difficult and virtually
unknown music. Enactments is mainly
recommended to listeners with fast ears
and advanced tastes in contemporary
music. If one is enthusiastic about the
prospect of acquainting them-selves with
the music of Wolpe, then Enactments will
prove a revelation.
Dave Lewis, All Music Guide
… The never-before-recorded, nearly 20minute long, four-hand work March and
Variations of 1933 seems to have been
spurred on by the example of Ferruccio
Busoni in the Fantasia Contrappuntistica
and bears some resemblance to Arnold
Schoenberg 's piano music of the early
'30s. However, where Busoni is relentlessly
contrapuntal, Wolpe is chordal, and the
chords rush onward in an unceasing,
uneasy marching rhythm that evokes the
chilling aura of “funny little boots
marching over Europe.” This puts it in
context with Kurt Weill 's Symphony No. 2,
except that it is far more intense and
considerably less sentimental. The Good
Compositions for Piano 1920-1952
David Holzman, piano Bridge 9116 (2002)
1 Sonata No. 1 “Stehende Musik”(1925) 13:49
2 Adagio “Gesang, weil ich etwas teures
verlassen muß” (1920) 2:51 3 Tango (1927)
3:30 4 The Good Spirit of a Right Cause (1942)
3:00 first recording 5 Battle Piece (1943-1947)
24:30 6 Waltz for Merle (1952) 5:06 first
recording 7 Zemach Suite (1939) 11:33
Holzman’s recording received a nomination for a
Grammy Award and Holzman and Clarkson
jointly received ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for
their essays in the booklet.
REVIEWS IN BRIEF
Anthony Tommasini, The New York
Times: “fearless performances of steely
works by Stefan Wolpe.” Matthias
Kriesberg, The New York Times: “David
Holzman demon-strates with introspective virtuosity the breadth of
Wolpe’s pianistic expression, ranging
from poignant delicacy to breathtaking
ferocity.” Michael Oliver, BBC: “David
Holzman passionately believes in the
music and, crucially, has the scorching
technique to do it justice.” Philip
Ehrensaft,
WholeNote
Magazine:
“Magnificent music played magnificently. David Holzman presented this
music in a passionate and colorful
manner, so that one does not for a
second feel it to be an intellectual
exercise.” Daniel Felsenfeld, Classics
Today: “performances of revelatory
insight and passionate conviction. . . It’s
a disc I wouldn’t want to be without.
Holzman’s precious, metallic “new
music” sound — makes this disc not only
valuable to Wolpe admirers, but an
entertaining
and
fun
listening
experience, something you can rarely
say about a recording dedicated to
avant-garde piano music.”
Dave Lewis, All Music Guide
…For a pianist Wolpe's work represents a
challenge of the most formidable kind,
as it combines pan-tonal gestures with
jazzy rhythms, agitprop tunes jerked out
of proportion, and wistful moments of
reflective sensitivity. Bringing all of
these elements into focus is an
incredible task that a mere reading of
Wolpe 's score is not going to expose.
David Holzman is wholly familiar with,
and committed to, the letter and spirit
of this music. Wolpe is not "easy
listening," but the reward is found in the
largesse of Wolpe 's conceptions, the
continuous flow of his arguments, and
the sheer excitement of his propulsive
rhythms. The Sonata No. 1 "Stehende
Musik" is a real find, a work from the
1920s that could have been written 70
years later, as Antheil-like discord and
motor rhythms are contrasted with a
stark, enigmatic middle movement of
Satiëian plainness and simplicity. The
Battle Piece and Zemach Suite heard
here are notable improvements over
previous recorded versions, and the
remaining
shorter
works,
some
previously
unrecorded,
are
all
revelatory. The recorded sound is
terrific. For those who dare to venture
into the rarefied world of Stefan Wolpe,
they could hardly do better than with
this exceptional Bridge Records release.
CHRONICLE 2007–2001
2007
February 10, Heidenheim, Musikschule, Ensemble Audite
Nova, Manuel Nawri, conductor: Johannes Schöllhorn,
About the Seventh, version with oboe.
March 10, Zürich, Brockenhaus, Collegium Novum. An allWolpe evening with Quartet for Trumpet, Tenor
Saxophone, Percussion and Piano, and Blues, Stimmen aus
den Massengrab, Marsch.
April 5, New York, Lincoln Center Library for the Performing
Arts. Recital with Ashraf Sewailam, bass-baritone, and
Susan Grace, piano: Wolpe, On a Mural by Diego Rivera,
David's Lament Over Jonathan, Lines from the Prophet
Micah, Isaiah. With Handel, Mozart, Brahms, Massenet,
Halim el Dabh, Sherif Mohie el Din.
April 10, Paris, Théâtre de Thouars, Ensemble Aleph:
“Officiels et diffamés, la musique et le IIIè Reich.” Wolpe,
“performance, voix et diffusion sonore.” With: Dessau,
Eisler, Schulhoff, Schwitters, von der Wense, Weill.
Monica Jordan, voice, Dominique Clément, clarinet,
Sylvie Drouin, piano, accordion.
May 21, Nijmegen, De Vereniging. The Ebony Band, Werner
Herbers, conductor. Wolpe, Suite from the Twenties.
August, Ostrava Days, Czech Republic. August 27, Ostravská
Banda, Petr Kotik, conductor. Wolpe, Chamber Piece No.
1. With: Cage, Stockhausen, Kolman, Kotik, Kupkovic,
Brown. August 29, Sonar Streich Quartet (Berlin). Wolpe,
12 Pieces for String Quartet. With Xenakis, Lachenmann.
2006
March 11, Bremen, Radio Bremen Sendesaal. Gunnar BrandtSigurdsson, tenor, Johan Bossers, piano: “Songs and Piano
Music of Wolpe: An Anna Blume von Kurt Schwitters, Decret
nr. 2 (Majakowski), Cabaret and agitprop songs to texts by
Eckelt, Lenin, Weh, Lindt, Moos, Kästner, Weinert; Piano
music: Adagio, Gesang; Battle Piece for Piano.
March 14, Goethe-Institut, New York, NY. Recital with David
Holzman, piano: Roger Sessions, Sonata no. 3; Wolpe,
Battle Piece; George Perle, Ballade; and works by Zeisl,
Corbett, and Martino.
March 31-April 2, Chapel Hill. University of North Carolina.
“Festival on the Hill: Music at Black Mountain.” Concert:
David Holzman, piano: Wolpe, Tango, Waltz for Merle,
Lied Anrede Hymnus Strophe, Battle Piece. With music by
Schoenberg, Webern, Bartók. Symposium: Austin
Clarkson, lecture, assisted by David Holzman: “Form and
Antiform.”
Concert: UNC Chamber Singers, Susan
Klebanow, conductor: Wolpe, Psalm 122. With music by
Schoenberg, Cowell, Cage, Milhaud, Satie, Harrison.
April 9, 12, 13, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Den Bosch, Ebony Band,
Werner Herbers, conductor: Wolpe-van Keulen, Suite
from the Twenties.
April 10-11, Salzburg, University of Salzburg, “Music and
Resistance: 1933-1945.” Wolpe, Sonata for Oboe and
Piano. Brigid Cohen paper, “Stefan Wolpe as ‘an old
collective individualist or individual collectivist’: Political
Resistance, Migration, and Community.”
April 24, New York, NY. Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, Petr
Kotik, conductor. Celebrating 80th anniversary of Morton
Feldman. Wolpe, Chamber Piece no. 1; Zenakis,
Palimpsest; Feldman, For Samuel Becket.
June 30, Zürich, Kunsthaus, Ensemble für Neue Musik,
Sebastian Gottschick, conductor. Johannes Schöllhorn,
About the Seventh (Wolpe), version with clarinet.
2005
March 5, Tully Hall, New York. Family Musik Chamber
Ensemble, Robert Kapilow, director. Stefan Wolpe, “Lazy
Andy Ant,” with Sherry Boone, soprano, Judith Gordon
and Rob Kapilow, piano.
April 7-10, 14-17, Center for the Arts, State University of New
York at Buffalo. Theater Department, Saul Elkin, director:
Bertolt Brecht, “The Good Woman of Setzuan,” translated
by Eric Bentley. Music by Stefan Wolpe, adapted by
Donald Jenczka.
June 3, Vienna. Internationales Musikfest. Konzerthaus.
ensemble recherche, Werner Herbers, conductor:
Schönberg, Chamber Symphony no. 1; Schreker, “Der
Wind”; Wolpe, Concerto for Nine Instruments; Eisler,
Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben.
May 14, North*South*East*West Festival, Maluhia. Waihee,
Hawaii. David Holzman, piano: Wolpe, Tango, Dance in
Form of a Chaconne, with Beethoven, Brahms, Chou WenChung, George Walker, Robert Pollock, William Anderson,
Alba Potes.
May 22, Jean Hartmann Memorial Concert, Temple Emanuel,
San Francisco, CA David Holzman, piano: Brahms, Wolf
(with Roslyn Barak, soprano), Eric Zeisl. Wolpe,
Palestinian Notebook; with music by Mamlok, Avni,
Susman, Daniel, Feinsmith.
October 11, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, NY. David
Holzman, piano: Wolpe, Waltz for Merle; with
Schoenberg, Webern, Wolpe, Pleskow, Zeisl, Louis
Karchin, Arthur Krieger, Matthew Greenbaum, Eric Moe.
October 25, New Paltz, Department of Music, SUNY. “World of
Jewish Music Series.” Lecture by Austin Clarkson, “Quest
for a New Voice: Stefan Wolpe and the Modern Hebrew Art
Song.” Concert: “Songs of Stefan Wolpe,” performed by
Tony Arnold, soprano, Leah Summers, mezzo, Patrick
Mason, baritone, Jacob Greenberg, Robert Shannon,
David Holzman, piano: Ten Early Songs, Arrangements of
Yiddish Folksongs, Excerpts from Dr. Einstein’s Address,
Zemach Suite, Two Songs from the Hebrew, Three Time
Wedding.
November 12, Seattle, WA, Society for Music Theory Annual
Meeting. Panel, “Stefan Wolpe and Dialectics.” Brigid
Cohen, “’Boundary Situations’: Wolpe’s Migrant
Translational Poetics”; Matthew Greenbaum, “Debussy,
Wolpe, and Dialectical Form”; Martin Brody, “Where to
Act, How to Move: Wolpe’s Dialectical Moment”; Austin
Clarkson, “Stefan Wolpe and the Dialectical Image.”
Respondents: Christopher Hasty and Anne Shreffler.
November 13, Natick, Center for the Arts. Marvin Wolfthal,
piano. Battle Piece, 2nd part.
2004
January 3, Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie. “Cantos”. Ensemble
Gelber Klang: Wolpe, Twelve Pieces for String Quartet;
European first performance of the String Quartet
Fragment 1950-51; Morton Feldman, King of Denmark,
Duration 4, Structures. Improvisationen zu den 18 Cantos
von Barnett Newman.
July 3, Leipzig. Klangrausch. “Hommage à Edgard Varèse.”
Ensemble SurPlus, conducted by James Avery: Wolpe,
Enactments for Three Pianos.
August 29, Kunstmuseum, Basel, “Schwitters Arp Exhibition.”
Christoph Homberger, tenor, Jay Gottlieb, piano: Wolpe,
Stehende Musik; An Anna Blume von Kurt Schwitters. With
Antheil, Satie, Scelsi, Von der Wense, Schulhoff,
Feldman, Cage.
November 27, Paris, Cité de la musique. “Le IIIe Reich et la
Musique. Le cabaret.” Ebony Band & Cappella
Amsterdam, conducted by Werner Herbers. Wolpe: An
Anna Blume von Kurt Schwitters; Suite from the Twenties;
Schöne Geschichten.
2003
February 11, Merkin Hall, New York. Continuum, directed by
Joel Sachs and Cheryl Seltzer, with Carol Meyer, soprano.
Wolpe, Form IV, Psalms 64 & Isaiah 35, The Angel, Apollo
and Artemis I, Decret Nr. 2, March and Variations; with
music by Ursula Mamlok.
February 23, Center for Jewish History. “Edward Levy
Memorial Concert.” Wolpe, Drei kleinere Kanons, 12
Pieces for String Quartet. With music by Milton Babbitt,
David Glaser, Edward Levy, Noyes Bartholomew.
March 4, Galapagos, Brooklyn NY. Talea Quartet: “Stefan
Wolpe Centenary Concert.” Stefan Wolpe: Drei Kleinere
Kanons, 12 Pieces for String Quartet, Piece for Viola
Alone. With music by Matthew Greenbaum, Butch Morris,
Noyes Bartholomew.
March 9-12, New England Conservatory, Boston. “Charlie Parker
and the Teachers of his Dreams,” curated by Don Palma and
Robert Saden. Concert: Wolpe, Quartet for Trumpet, Tenor
Saxophone, Percussion & Piano. With music by Parker,
Brookmayer, Russell. Concert: Wolpe, Form IV (Randall
Hodgkinson); Piece for Two Instrumental Units (Don Palma,
cond.). With music by Varèse, Parker. Concert: Wolpe, Von
eine Handvoll Reis, Blues. With music by Parker, O’Farerill,
Lacy, Varèse. Lecture: Martin Brody, “Wolpe and the New
York Scene.” Lecture-recital: Veronica Jochum, piano,
“Stefan Wolpe and the Bauhaus.”
March 14-15, City University of New York Graduate Center,
“Stefan Wolpe Centennial Symposium and Concerts.”
Session 1: "Cultural Contexts," Austin Clarkson, moderator.
Papers by Heidy Zimmermann, "Wolpe's settings from the
Song of Songs (1937): Folksong and collective identity," and
“The Stefan Wolpe Collection at the Paul Sacher
Foundation.” Session 2: A. Clarkson, "Wolpe in New York:
Perspectives on the Milieu of Music, Poetry, and the Visual
Arts." Respondents: Dore Ashton, Andrew Kohn, Basil King,
Laura Kuhn, Olivia Mattis, Leonard Meyer, Larson Powell,
Eric Salzman, Cheryl Seltzer, Katharina Wolpe. Session 3:
“New approaches to the study of 20th century concert
music”: papers by Avi Berman, Brigid Cohen, Catherine
Hirata, Brian Locke. Concert 1: Parnassus, Anthony Korf,
conductor. Wolpe, Piece in 2 Parts for 6 Players, Piece for
2 Instrumental Units. With Charles Wuorinen, Matthew
Greenbaum, Mei-Fang Lin, Anthony Korf. Readings by poet
Martine Bellen of texts by Stefan Wolpe, Hilda Morley,
Robert Creeley and Martine Bellen. Session 4: Analysis
Symposium. Martin Brody, “The Will to Connect: Wolpe’s
Theater of Action, Memory, and Estrangement.” Robert
Morris, “Respiration in Stefan Wolpe’s Piece in 2 Parts for 6
Players.” Dora Hanninen, “Association and the Emergence
of Form in Two Works by Wolpe.” Christopher Hasty,
“Concentrating your Attention: Some Effects of Disjunction
in Wolpe’s Piece in 2 Parts for 6 Players.” Concert 2,
Electronic Music: Varese, Davidovsky, Morris, Olan,
Chasalow, (Wolpe Variations), Brün, Babbitt. Panel on
Wolpe and Electronic Music, David Olan, moderator. Mario
Davidovsky, Matthew Greenbaum, Robert Morris, Eric
Chasalow. Concert 3, Katharina Wolpe, piano. Program:
Wolpe, Zemach Suite, Form, Adagio, Rag-Caprice, Tango,
March no. 1, Two Studies for Piano part 1, Sonata no. 1;
Webern, Variationen.
March 31, Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel, Annual Meeting. Marc
Ullrich, trumpet, Marcus Weiss, saxophone, Sylwia
Zytynska, percussion, Manuel Bärtsch, piano, Jan
Schultsz, conductor. Wolpe, Quartet for Trumpet, Tenor
Saxophone, Percussion and Piano.
April 6, C.W. Post College, Long Island NY. “Stefan Wolpe:
Three Lands, One Language,” curated by David Holzman.
Concert 1: David Holzman, Stephanie Watt, piano. Wolpe,
Sonata no. 1, Tango. With music by Bartok, Varese,
Hindemith, Stravinsky, Gershwin. Concert 2: “Josef Marx
and Stefan Wolpe: A Friendship in Music.” Patricia
Spencer, flute, Susan Barrett, oboe, Barbara Speer, Anne
Chamberlain, piano. Wolpe, Oboe Sonata; Blues and
Tango. With music by Pleskow, Nemiroff, Wuorinen,
Rovics, Sollberger. Concert 3: David Holzman, piano, with
Patricia Spencer, flute. Wolpe, Palestinian Notebook;
Tango, Piece in Two Parts for Flute and Piano, Battle Piece.
With music by Eric Zeisl.
April 7-8, Rock Hall, Temple University, Philadelphia. "Stefan
Wolpe: Music for Dancers" Charles Abramovic, piano.
Choreography, Joellen Meglin. plus works by Alex
DeVaron, Matthew Greenbaum, and others TBA Panel,
with Austin Clarkson, Marion Kant. Concert: The
Bugallo/Williams Piano Duo with Nicolas Hodges. Wolpe,
Enactments for Three Pianos. With music by Davidovsky,
Feldman,
Vigeland,
and
Williams.
"Entartete
(Degenerate) Musik"
April 10, Americas Society, League/ISCM. Stefanie Griffin, viola,
Blair McMillen and Cheryl Seltzer, piano; the
Bugallo/Williams Piano Duo with Nicolas Hodges, piano.
Wolpe, Form, Enactments for Three Pianos. With music by
Davidovsky, Feldman, Greenbaum, Mamlok, Pleskow, Potes.
May 13, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA. Southwest
Chamber Music, Jeff van Schmidt, director. Wolpe,
Palestinian Folksongs, Suite im Hexachord, Lamenatzeach,
Oboe Sonta, Good Spirit of a Right Cause, On a Mural by
Diego Rivera, Excerpts of Dr. Einstein’s Address.
May 21, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC. “Music
in Exile.” David Holzman, piano, et al.: Wolpe, Battle Piece.
With music by Zeisl, Hindemith, and Schoenberg.
2002
January 19, Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin. Veronica Jochum, piano.
“Stefan Wolpe and the Bauhaus.”
February 18-19, Rahmaninov Hall of Tchaikovsky Conservatoire,
Moscow. Concert 1: Studio New Music Ensemble, Igor
Dronov, conductor. Vladimir Tarnopolsky, director. Wolpe, 6
Piano Pieces, 5 Hölderlin Songs, Marsch und Variationen,
Drei Arbeitslieder von Thomas Ring, Saxophone Quartet,
Symposium: Austin Clarkson, Eugenie Golubeva.
Rahmaninov Hall of Tchaikovsky Conservatoire. Concert 2:
Studio New Music Ensemble, Igor Dronov , conductor. Trio
for Flute, Cello, and Piano; 4 Lieder auf Texte von Lenin,
Majakowski, et al..; Chamber Piece no. 1; Battle Piece;
From Here on Farther.
March 3, Concertgebouw, Bruges. March 19, Marni Theatre,
Brussels. Prometheus Ensemble. Wolpe, Blues-Stimmen ausMarsch, Schöne Geschichten. With Eisler, Antheil, Weill.
May 5, Theatre Dubois, Paris. Ensemble Aleph. Wolpe, Quartet
for Trumpet, Saxophone, Percussion, and Piano.
May 5, Basel Stadtcasino, Basel Sinfonietta, Emilio Pomàrico,
conductor: Wolpe, Symphony no. 1; Bruckner, Symphony
no. 1 (Linzer Fassung). May 4, Bern Dampfzentrale, May
8,. Schiffbau Zürich.
June 7, Carl-Orff Saal, Munich. “Musica Viva: Stefan Wolpe
zum 100. Geburtstag.” Ensemble SurPlus, James Avery,
conductor. Wolpe, Enactments.
June 26, Museum Bochum (Germany), Veronica Jochum von
Moltke, piano: Wolpe, Adagio Gesang, Es wird die neue
Welt geboren, Tango, Rag-Caprice; with Krenek,
Schoenberg, Busoni, Stuckenschmidt, Stravinsky, Milhaud.
July 21, Tanglewood Music Center. Tanglewood Fellows.
Wolpe, Piece for Trumpet & 7 Instruments.
August 25, 26. North Melbourne Town Hall (Australia). Astra,
Michael Kieran Harvey, piano: Wolpe, Battle Piece, Early
Piece for Piano. Seven Pieces for Three Pianos. Astra
Choir, John McCaughey, director: Psalm 122; Dust of
Snow; Ballad of the Widows of Ossek; Fantasy of the Day
after Tomorrow.
September 9-17, Berlin Festival, “The Composer Stefan Wolpe
for his 100th Birthday: Berlin-Jerusalem-New York.”
Konzerthaus. Event 1, Konzerthaus. Ebony Band, Capella
Amsterdam, Werner Herbers, cond. Wolpe, BluesStimmen aus-, Marsch, Zeus und Elida, Schöne
Geschichten. Event 2, Konzerthaus, RundfunkSinfonieorchester Berlin, Johannes Kalitzke, cond. RIASKammerchor, David Hill, director. Wolpe, Symphony no.1;
Two Chinese Epitaphs, no. 2; Four Pieces for Mixed
Chorus, nos. 1, 3, 4. Symphony no. 1. Event 3, Josef
Christof, Benjamin Kobler, Irmela Roelke, Steffen
Schleiermacher, pianos. Wolpe, March and Variations,
Zemach Suite, Morton Feldman, Four Pianos (Version 1).
Wolpe, Stehende Musik. Feldman, Four Pianos (Version 2).
Wolpe, Enactments for Three Pianos. Event 4,
Symposium: "Wolpe's Musical Theater: Schoenberg,
Busoni, the Bauhaus, and Kunstjazz." Heinz-Klaus
Metzger, Thomas Phleps (moderator), Annette Schwarzer,
Hyesu Shin, and others. Event 5, Katharina Wolpe, piano.
Wolpe, Six Piano Pieces, Music for Any Instruments, Form,
Form IV, Sonate Stehende Musik, Webern, Variationen.
Event 6, Musikklub: Stefanie Wüst, voice, Michael Nündel,
piano, Götz Schulte, speaker. Songs of Stefan Wolpe with
documents about his life. Event 7, Symposium: “On
Performing Wolpe's Chamber Music,” with James Avery
(ensemble SurPlus), Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Habakuk Traber
(moderator), Katharina Wolpe, and members of ensemble
recherche (Lucas Fels, Martin Fahlenbock, Barbara
Maurer). Event 8, ensemble recherche: Lucas Vis; WolpeJohannes Schöllhorn, About the Seventh; Wolpe, Clarinet
Quartet fragment (first performance); Piece for Two
Instrumental Units. With music by Webern, Wuorinen,
Carter.
September 26, Music Festival Strasbourg. Prometheus Ensemble,
Etienne Siebens, director. Wolpe: Schöne Geschichten; Blues Stimmen aus dem Massengrab – Marsch.
September 30, Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern (London). Austin
Clarkson lecture, “Stefan Wolpe and Abstract Expressionism.”
Recital, Nicolas Hodges, piano, Mieko Kanno, violin: Wolpe,
Battle Piece; Sonata for Violin and Piano.
October 11-December 6, The Warehouse (London). 5
Centenary Concerts curated by Katharina Wolpe. Concert
1, Oct. 11, Ensemble SurPlus, James Avery, conductor:
Oboe Sonata, Piece in Two Parts for Flute and Piano, Oboe
Quartet, Trio in Two Parts. Concert 2, Oct. 12. Katharina
Wolpe, piano: Wolpe, Zemach Suite, Form IV, Piano Pieces
1920-29, Displaced Spaces; Webern, Variations; Wolpe,
Sonata no. 1. Concert 3, Nov. 8. Rolf Hind, piano: Wolpe,
Four Studies on Basic Rows, Music for a Dancer; with
music by Scriabin, Liszt. Concert 4, Nov. 9, Double Image
Ensemble: Wolpe, From Here on Farther, Music for
Hamlet, Decret Nr. 2, Five Holderlin Songs, Street Music;
with music by Busoni, Debussy, Varese. Concert 5, Dec. 6,
Nicolas Hodges, piano: Wolpe, Form, Battle Piece; with
music by Shapey, Feldman, Cage.
October 12-13, Merkin Hall, New York, “The Palestinian
Years,” curated by Fred Sherry and Matthew Greenbaum.
Concert 1. Helen Bugallo and Amy Williams, piano duo:
Busoni, Fantasia Contrappuntistica. Wolpe, The Man From
Midian. Panel with Hanna Arie-Gaifman, Austin Clarkson,
Rabbi Phillip Miller, Raoul Pleskow, Charles Wuorinen,
Fred Sherry, moderator. Concert 2. Fred Sherry, artistic
director. Wolpe, Piece in Two Parts for Flute and Piano,
Quintet with Voice; with music by Feldman, Babbitt,
Greenbaum, Wuorinen. Program notes read by David
Margulies. Concert 3: Feldman, Triadic Memories, Marilyn
Nonken, piano. Concert 4, 20th Century Classics
Ensemble, Robert Craft, cond. Wolpe, Suite im
Hexachord, Piece for Trumpet and 7 Instruments. With
music by Webern, Schoenberg. Panel with Milton Babbitt,
Matthew Greenbaum, Matthias Kriesberg, Fred Sherry,
Martin Brody, moderator.
October 26-27, Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd Street Y: “Stefan
Wolpe Centennial,” curated by Hanna Arie-Gaifman.
Concert 1: Peter Serkin, piano, Daniel Phillips, violin,
Brentano String Quartet. Wolpe, Second Piece for Violin
Alone, Passacaglia, String Quartet, Violin Sonata.
Dadalogue and Brunch: Panel, Walter Frisch, Werner
Herbers, Irina Zantovski-Murray, Hanna Arie-Gaifman,
Austin Clarkson. Concert 2: Ensembe, Werner Herbers,
cond. Program: Alexey Zhivotov, Fragmente; George
Antheil, Quintet; Kurt Weill, Oil Music; Wolpe, WumbaWumba Lied, Wolpe-van Keulen, Suite from the Twenties;
Wolpe, An Anna Blume von Kurt Schwitters, Schöne
Geschichten.
October 30, Tully Hall, New York. The Riverside Symphony.
Program: Wolpe, Two Studies for Orchestra; Scriabin, Piano
Concerto; Webern, Passacaglia; Bartok, Dance Suite.
November 15, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Ensemble Mosaik,
"Hommage an Stefan Wolpe." Wolpe, Saxophone Quartet,
Piece for Two Instrumental Units; Morton Feldman, The Viola
in My Life I; Walter Zimmermann, Schatten der Ideen II;
Sebastian Claren, Fehlstart (Detail).
November 15, Musica Viva, Herkulessaal, Munich.
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Peter
Rundel, cond. Wolpe, Symphony; Nicholaus Richter de
Vroe, Tetra IV; Morton Feldman, Coptic Light.
November 17, Instrumentensammlung, Musica reanimata,
“Wolpe as Teacher”: The Wolpe Trio. The Wolpe Trio.
"Wolpe as Teacher" Wolpe. Piano Pieces. Tango, RagCaprice, Charleston. About the Seventh, Piece for Cello
Alone, Trio in Two Parts for Flute, Cello, and Piano;
Herbert Brün, Gesto; Edward Levy, West of Nepal I, West
of Nepal II; Morton Feldman. Two Pieces, Untitled
composition, Intersection 4, Durations 2. Raoul Pleskow,
Zueignung; Charles Wuorinen, Third Flute Trio.
November 22-23, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne. Musik der
Zeit: Broken Sequences. Concert 1, For Voices, Daniel N.
Seel, piano, and Netherlands Chamber Choir, Ed
Spanjaard, cond. Schoenberg, De Profundis, Psalm 130,
Op. 50b; Wolpe, Four Pieces for Mixed Chorus; Morton
Feldman, For Stefan Wolpe; Daniel N. Seel , new piece for
piano; Wolpe, Two Chinese Epitaphs; Guo Wenjing, Echoes
from Heaven and Earth for choir and percussion. Concert
2. Orchestral Views, Cologne Philharmonie, with Claron
McFadden, soprano, Netherlands Chamber Choir (male
voices),
preparation,
Ed
Spanjaard,
WDR
Sinfonieorchester Köln, Johannes Kalitzke, cond. Varèse,
Nocturnal; Feldman, Episode for Orchestra; Wolpe,
Passacaglia; Johannes Schöllhorn, Views of Water for
Orchestra; Varèse, Ecuatorial. Concert 3. Hommages &
Variations, with ensemble recherche, Markus Poschner,
cond. Wolpe, Le malade imaginaire; Elliott Carter, Inner
Song; Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Hommage à Daniel
Libeskind für Sextett; Johannes Schöllhorn, About the
Seventh for Ensemble; Wolpe, Piece for Two Instrumental
Units.
November 29. Theatre Dubois, Paris. Ensemble Aleph. Wolpe at
Black Mountain College. Solo Piece for Trumpet. 3 Canons for
2 voices with accompaniment of a third voice. Quartet no. 1.
December 1, Music Gallery, Toronto. New Music Concerts,
Robert Aitken, conductor. Wolpe, Enactments. With
Geoffrey Palmer, String Quartet.
December 11, New York Society for Ethical Culture. The Cygnus
Ensemble. Wolpe, Music for Any Instruments; Matthew
Greenbaum, Mute Dance; Ursula Mamlok, Five Intermezzi,
Elliott Carter, Inner Song; Varese: Density 21.5; David
Claman, Gone for Foreign; William Anderson, The Job of
Journeywork for Uillean Pipes and sextet.
December 12, 19, Symphony Space, New York. Curated by
Marshall Taylor Concert 1, “Entartete Musik and Music of
Exile”: Marshall Taylor, saxophones, Samuel Hsu, piano,
Joyce Lindorff, harpsichord, Jenny Potes, reciter, Marion
Kant, commentator. Program: Schulhoff, Dessau,
Hindemith, Pleskow, Foss, Mamlok; Wolpe, Form, Form IV.
Concert 2: "Stefan Wolpe's Artistic Legacy: Three
Generations of Composers." Pieces by Jay Fluellen,
Katherine Malyj, Daniel Barta, Matthew Greenbaum,
Kristin Hevner, Mark Rimple, Alba Potes; Wolpe, Solo
Piece for Trumpet (for saxophone).
December 15, Gasworks Theatre, Melbourne (Australia). Astra
Ensemble. Wolpe, Solo Piece for Trumpet, Second Piece
for Violin Alone, Holderlin Song No. 1, To the
Dancemaster, Reading: Why I am not a Dadaist, Chamber
Piece No. 2, March and Variations, Piece for Trumpet and
Seven instruments, Entrance march (Agitprop Song). With
Webern, Busoni, Schwitters, Feldman, Ligeti, Hufschmidt,
Schoenberg, Brahms.
2001
November 29-December 1. “Stefan Wolpe FestivalSymposium,” Northwestern University School of Music,
Evanston, Ill. Concert 1: Nicolas Hodges, piano. Four
Studies on Basic Rows, Form, Form IV, Battle Piece.
Concert 2: Northwestern Contemporary Music Ensemble,
Pacifica String Quartet, Jacob Greenberg, piano. Wolpe,
String Quartet, Piece in Three Parts for Piano and 16
Instruments. Session 1: papers by Nicolas Hodges, Dora
Hanninen. Session 2: papers by Patricia Morehead,
Matthew Greenbaum. Concert 3: Patricia and Philip
Morehead. Wolpe, Sonata for Oboe and Piano. With
Shapey. Concert 4: David Holzman, piano. Wolpe: Sonata
No. 1, Zemach Suite, Waltz for Merle. Concert 5: eighth
blackbird, Tony Arnold, soprano. Wolpe, Second Piece for
Violin Alone, Lilacs, To the Dancemaster, Piece in Two
Parts for Violin Alone. With Carter, Karlins, Rzewski,
Varèse, Etezady. Session 4: papers by Andrew Kohn,
Austin Clarkson. Session 5: Keynote address, Christopher
Hasty, responses by Robert Morris and Martin Brody.
Session 6: paper by A. Clarkson, responses by Thomas
Bauman and Jesse Rosenberg. Concert 6: Bugallo-Williams
Piano Duo with Ursula Oppens, piano. Wolpe, Solo Piece
for Trumpet, Seven Pieces for 3 Pianos, Tango für den
Psychotechniker, Psalm 64, The Man from Midian. With
Carter, Feldman.
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_____. (2004). Form and Antiform: Stefan Wolpe and the
Busoni Legacy, in Busoni in Berlin: Facetten eines
kosmopolitischen Komponisten, edited by Albrecht
Riethmüller and Hyesu Shin, 257-274. Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag.
_____. (2004). David Tudor’s Apprenticeship: The Years with Irma
and Stefan Wolpe, Leonardo Music Journal 14, 2004, 5-10.
_____. (2005). ‘Structures of fantasy and fantasies of
structure’: Engaging the Aesthetic Self. Current
Musicology 79-80 (2005): 67-94.
Cohen, Brigid. (2006). Wolpe’s ‘Geschichte der Verknüpfungen’:
Reflections on Writing and Community. Mitteilungen der
Paul Sacher Stiftung 19, April 2006, 18-22.
Falck, Robert. (2003). A Labyrinthine Universe: The One and
Only Symphony No. 1. In The Music of Stefan Wolpe:
Essays and Recollections, ed. A. Clarkson, 221-232.
Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press
François, Jean-Charles. (2003). Stefan Wolpe’s Dual Thought,
Open Space 5, fall 2003, 172-181.
Greenbaum, Matthew. (2002). Stefan Wolpe’s Dialectical
Logic: A Look at the Second Piece for Violin Alone,”
Perspectives of New Music 40/2, 91-114.
_____. (2003). The Proportions of Density 21.5: Wolpean
Symmetries in the Music of Edgard Varèse. In The Music of
Stefan Wolpe: Essays and Recollections, ed. A. Clarkson,
207-220. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press.
_____. (2003). Debussy, Wolpe, and Dialectical Form, ex
tempore 11/2: 110-123.
Hanninen, Dora A. (2002). Understanding Stefan Wolpe’s
Musical Forms. Perspectives of New Music 40/2, 8-67.
_____. (2004). Association and the Emergence of Form in Two
Works by Stefan Wolpe, Open Space 6, fall 2004, 174-203.
Hasty,
Christopher.
(2002).
Broken
Sequences:
Fragmentations, Abundance, Beauty, Perspectives of New
Music 40/2, 155-173.
Hirshberg, Joshua. (2003). A Modernist Composer in an
Immigrant Community: The Quest for Status and National
Ideology. In The Music of Stefan Wolpe: Essays and
Pendragon Press.
Holzman, David. (2003). On Performing Battle Piece. In The
Music of Stefan Wolpe: Essays and Recollections, ed. A.
Clarkson, 187-206. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press.
Kohn, Andrew. (2002). Wolpe and the Poets of Black Mountain,
_____. (2003). Black Mountain College as Context for the
Writings of Wolpe 1952-1956. In The Music of Stefan
Lach, Friedhelm. (2003). Concepts of Dada and
Postmodernism in Wolpe’s Lecture on Dada. In The Music
of Stefan Wolpe: Essays and Recollections, ed. A.
Leutscher, Dick. (2003). A Composer Sitting Between the
Chairs: Wolpe, Cage, Adorno. In The Music of Stefan
Wolpe: Essays and Recollections, ed. A. Clarkson.
Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 133-138.
Levitz, Tamara. (2003). The Would-Be Master Student: Stefan
Wolpe and Ferruccio Busoni. In The Music of Stefan
Wolpe: Essays and Recollections, ed. A. Clarkson.
Levy, Edward. (2003). Structure and Imagination II: Thinking
and Writing Music in Milton Babbitt and Stefan Wolpe. In
The Music of Stefan Wolpe: Essays and Recollections, ed.
A. Clarkson, 103-110. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press.
Malyj, Katherine. (2003). Structures of Fantasy: Part Two of
Wolpe’s In Two Parts for Six Players. In The Music of
Stefan Wolpe: Essays and Recollections, ed. A. Clarkson,
289-310. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press.
Morley Wolpe, Hilda. (2003). The Eighth Street Club. In The
Morris, Robert. (2002). A Footnote to Hasty, Whitehead and
Plato: More Thoughts on Stefan Wolpe’s Music,”
_____ (2003). Some Processes in Wolpe’s Piece in Three Parts
for Piano and Sixteen Instruments. In The Music of Stefan
_____ (2004). “Respiration in Stefan Wolpe’s Piece in Two
Parts for Six Players,” Open Space 6, fall 2004, 154-173.
Phleps, Thomas. (2000). Stefan Wolpes politische Musik.
Vortrag im Rahmen des 'Stefan Wolpe Festival &
Symposium' der Musikhochschule Freiburg vom 15. bis 18.
November. Homepage:
http://www.uni-giessen.de/~g51092/wolpe.html.
_____ (2002). “Outsider im besten Sinne des Wortes”. Stefan
Wolpes Einblicke ins Komponieren in Darmstadt und
anderswo. In: Stefan Wolpe: Das Ganze überdenken.
Vorträge über Musik 1935-1962. edited by Thomas Phleps,
7-19. Saarbrücken: PFAU-Verlag.
_____ (2002). Schöne Geschichten und Zeus und Elida - Zwei
Opern von Stefan Wolpe. Vortrag beim Internationalen
Symposium im Rahmen der Veranstaltungsreihe 'Stefan
Wolpe Berlin - Jerusalem - New York'. Homepage:
http://www.uni-giessen.de/~g51092/schonegeschichten.html.
_____ (2003). Music Content and Speech Content in the
Political Compositions of Eisler, Wolpe, and Vogel. In The
Clarkson. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 59-74.
Pleskow, Raoul. (2003). On Wolpe’s Piece in Two Parts for
Violin Alone. In The Music of Stefan Wolpe: Essays and
Pendragon Press.
Powell, Larson. (2005). Atonales Musikantentum? Stefan
Wolpes Moderne, Musik & Aesthetik 9: 101-105.
Roman, Zoltan. (2003). The Weimar Republic as Socio-Cultural
Context for the Songs of Wolpe and Eisler. In The Music of
Stefan Wolpe: Essays and Recollections, ed. A. Clarkson.
Schwartzer, Annette. (2003). Das ‘goldblaublonde
pfirsichfarbene Glück’: Mythos und Werbung in Stefan
Wolpes Oper Zeus und Elida op. 51, Maske und Kothurn
49/3-4: 123-135.
Wolpe, Stefan. (2002). Das Ganze Überdenken: Vorträge über
Musik 1935-1962, edited by Thomas Phleps. Saarbrücken:
Pfau Verlag, 2002. 262 pp.
Wyzard, Michael Sean. (2006). A Pitch Analysis of Stefan
Wolpe’s Piece in Two Parts for Flute and Piano.
Dissertation, Rutgers University.
Zenck, Martin. (1995). Theodor W. Adorno – Stefan Wolpe –
Karel Goeyvaerts: Positionen der Webern-Rezeption 1941
und 1950, in Reihe und System, Kongress Bericht
Hannover
1995
(Monogrphien
des
Ubst,
für
Musikpädagogische Forschung der Hochschule für Musik
und Theater Hannover 9), 84-107.
_____. (2003). Beyond Neoclassicism and Dodecaphony:
Wolpe’s Third Way. In The Music of Stefan Wolpe: Essays
and Recollections, ed. A. Clarkson. Hillsdale, NY:
Pendragon Press, 169-186.
Zimmermann, Heidy. (2004). ‘Lass mich deine Stimme hören’:
Das Hohelied in jüdischen Tradition. Kirche und Israel:
Neukirchener Theologische Zeitschrift 19/1: 32-46.
Zimmermann, Heidy, & Matthias Kassel. (2003). ’A 100 Eagle
Wings Set Afire’: Bedrohung und Bewahrung der
Manuskipte Stefan Wolpes, Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher
Stiftung 16, March 2003, 18-24.
This certainly is the reason, is the raison d’être
of the Form, ripped endlessly open, and selfrenewed by interacting extremes of opposites.
There is nothing to develop because everything
is already there in reach of one’s ears. If one has
enough milk in the house one doesn’t go to the
grocery store. One doesn’t need to sit on the
moon if one can write a poem about it with the
twitch of one’s senses. One is there where one
directs oneself to be. On the back of a bird,
inside of an apple, dancing on the sun’s ray,
speaking to Machaut, and holding the skeleton’s
hand of the incredible Cézanne — There is what
there was and what there isn’t is also. Don't get
backed too much in a reality which has fashioned
your senses with too many realistic claims. When
art promises you this sort of reliability, this sort
of prognostic security, drop that baby I will say!
Good is to know not to know how much one is
knowing. And all the structures of fantasy and
all the fantasies of structures one should know
about — and one should mix surprise and enigma,
magic and shock, intelligence and abandon, Form
and Antiform.
— Thinking Twice, 1959
STEFAN WOLPE FUND
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stefan wolpe society newsletter 2007 greeting

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