# Stefan Wolpe (August 25, 1902 – April 4, 1972)



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

(From WIK)

Wolpe was born in Berlin. He attended the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory from the age of fourteen, and the Berlin Hochschule für Musik in 1920-21. He studied composition under Franz Schreker and was also a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni. He also studied at the Bauhaus circa 1923, and met some of the dadaists, setting Kurt Schwitters's poem An Anna Blume to music.
In 1928, Wolpe's first opera, Zeus und Elida, premiered in Berlin. This soon was followed by two more operas in 1929, Schöne Geschichten and Anna Blume. The music Wolpe was writing between 1929 and 1933 was dissonant, using Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. However, possibly influenced by Paul Hindemith's concept of Gebrauchsmusik (music that serves a social function), and as an avid socialist, he wrote a number of pieces for workers' unions and communist theatre groups. For these, he made his style more accessible, incorporating elements ofjazz and popular music. His songs became popular, rivaling those of Hanns Eisler.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany, Wolpe, a Jew and a convinced communist, fled the country, passing through Romania and Russia en route to Austria in 1933-34, where he met and studied with Anton Webern. He later moved to Palestine in 1934-38, where he wrote simple songs for the kibbutzim. The music he was writing for concert performance, however, remained complex and atonal. Partly because of this, his teaching contract with the Palestine Conservatoire was not renewed for the 1938-39 school year.
In 1938, Wolpe moved to New York City in the United States of America. There, during the fifties, he associated with the abstract expressionist painters. He was introduced to them by his wife, the poet Hilda Morley. From 1952 to 1956 he was director of music at Black Mountain College. On January 24, 1956, he was appointed to the faculty at the C.W. Post College of Long Island University in Brookville, New York. He also lectured at the summer schools in Darmstadt in Germany. His pupils included Jack Behrens, Herbert Brün, Morton Feldman, Matthew Greenbaum,John Carisi, M. William Karlins, Gil Evans, George Russell, Robert D. Levin, Boyd McDonald, Ralph Shapey, Netty Simons, and David Tudor.
His works from this time sometimes used the twelve-tone technique, were sometimes diatonic, were sometimes based on the Arabic scales (such as maqam saba) he had heard in Palestine and sometimes employed some other method of tonal organisation. His work was radical, but avoided the punctualism of composers such as Pierre Boulez (in his works of 1951-53), instead employing more conventionally expressive gestures.
Wolpe developed Parkinson's disease in 1964, and died in New York City in 1972. Elliott Carter commemorated Wolpe with the following comment: "Comet-like radiance, conviction, fervent intensity, penetrating thought on many levels of seriousness and humor, combined with breathtaking adventurousness and originality, marked the inner and outer life of Stefan Wolpe, as they do his compositions."

Suggested recordings:


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Two short-ish stage works from the late 20s, _Zeus und Elida_ and _Schoene Geschichten_, are worth investigating. The first is a jazzy _zeitoper_ farce where the recently-retired chief god finds himself in 1920s Berlin. On Potsdamer Platz he pursues a streetwise hooker whom he mistakes for a model featured on a billboard ad for _Elida_ soap (he thinks the model is actually his consort, Europa). The second is a tableaux of anecdotes-cum-homilies, separately entitled _Science, Religion, Right, Culture, Love, Philosophy_ and _Patriotism_.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

How did Wolpe not have a thread already? Good work, MR. 

I first heard of Wolpe through the work dedicated to him by Morton Feldman. 

Battle Piece is a favorite of mine, thanks to the Hamelin recording.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Has my two favorite Wolpe pieces - Piece for Two Instrumental Units and Piece in Two Parts for Six Players

Also the Naxos recording of the String Quartet, a late work written in a lucid interval from the Parkinsons that afflicted him from the mid 60s onward


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## philoctetes (Jun 15, 2017)

This one has survived all my collection reductions... a very unique composer with a bit of the goldilocks touch...


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## Dirge (Apr 10, 2012)

Stefan WOLPE: Passacaglia (1936)
:: Tudor [hat ART '54]




:: Kalitzke/WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln [Mode]





This twelve-minute twelve-tone solo piano piece is basically one big accelerating crescendo with a cool-down at the end. It has more forward sweep and a stronger sense of purpose than is common in twelve-tone music, and Tudor plays it with fearless commitment. Wolpe also orchestrated the work shortly after he wrote it, and it sort of superficially resembles Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra in that form-and it doesn't suffer in comparison. In fact, in either guise, this strikes me as one of the most compelling serial works around. To me, Wolpe is at his best when he's working in a strict form such as passacaglia, chaconne, fugue, etc., so it's not surprising that this is a favorite of mine.

* * *

Stefan WOLPE: Dance in Form of a Chaconne (from _Zemach Suite_) (1939)
:: Holzman [Bridge]





A slightly deconstructed little dance of Thelonious Monk-like rhythmic character.

* * *

Stefan WOLPE: _Enactments_ for three pianos (1953)
:: Seltzer, Chamberlain & Sachs [Nonesuch LP]





This is a large-scale 32-minute work in five varied movements, the final one being a big gnarly fugue of _Grosse Fuge_-like ambition. The contrapunctilious playing and dense layering of the three pianos sometimes gives the work a Nancarrow-like feel, only more varied, flexible, and complex. Although the work is imposing at first, things start to clear up and make sense as your ears adjust to the speed and business and density of it all, and the work "improves" with repeated listening.

The movements vary from the ecstatic singing (relatively speaking) of "Chant" to the aborted fugue and subsequent conflict of "In a State of Flight" to the fragmentary groping of "Held In" (which features a nice little hammered-strings "dulcimer" episode) to the dreamy experimentation of "Inception" to the rigorous ambition of "Fugal Motions," which, as the liner notes put it, "brings into one enormous framework two opposing motions: a motion toward concreteness, focus and integration versus a motion toward divergence, scattering and disintegration." Wolpe himself was uncommonly attached to _Enactments_: "The work is, with all its tumults, vortexes, flights, exuberances, simultaneities of multiple organic stages and states, terribly dear to me."


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