Wolpe, Stefan (EN)

Wolpe Stefan, *25 August 1902 Berlin, †4 April 1972 New York, American composer of German descent. Wolpe’s mother, Hungarian, came from Venice and his father was Russian. In 1920–21, Wolpe studied composition with P. Juon at Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. He took part in the Dadaists’ exhibition in Berlin, and participated in courses in Bauhaus (Weimar), in 1923, he was a pianist and composer at the Novembergruppe organising socialist artists, in 1931–33 he was a music director of a propagandist theatre Truppe 31. After the Nazis closed the theatre in 1933, he emigrated to Vienna, where he studied with A. Webern, then (the same year) went to Palestine; in 1935–38, he taught composition at the Palestine Conservatory in Jerusalem. In 1938, he came to the United States and settled in New York, and in 1945 he became an American citizen. He taught at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia (1939–42), the Brooklyn Free Music Society (1945–48), the Philadelphia Academy of Music (1949–52), in the 1950s and 1960s at the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, and from 1968 at the Mannes College of Music. He was a co-founder and principal of Contemporary Music School in New York where he taught in 1948–52. In 1952–56, he was a music director at Black Mountain College (North Carolina), and in 1957–68 a director of music chair at C.W. Post College at Long Island University in Greenvale (near New York). His students included, among others, M. Feldman, R. Shapey, D. Tudor and Ch. Wuorinen. Wolpe was twice awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1962, 1970), was a fellow of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1981, the Stefan Wolpe Society was founded to promote his music by publishing critical editions of his works and sponsoring their recordings.

Wolpe’s early work reflected the ideas of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) movement; at that time, he wrote compositions intended for a wide audience: these were songs with leftist overtones, as well as music for theatre, film, and cabaret. During his stay in exile in Palestine and in the 1940s, Wolpe drew on Hebrew music, creating Hebrew songs and pieces with Jewish themes (e.g. the cantata Yigdal). The influence of Asian music was evident in the use of the octatonic scale, composed of alternating whole tones and halftones. Wolpe’s compositional style was characterised by the free use of the dodecaphonic technique (Suite im Hexachord, 4 Studies on Basic Rows) and – in his late works, which are examples of open forms – total serialism.

Literature: Stefan Wolpe. Von Berlin nach New York, ed. H. Vogt, Cologna 1988; “Perspectives of New Music” XL, 2002 no. 2, includes articles published on the 100^th anniversary of Wolpe’s birth, e.g. D. Hanninen Understanding Wolpe’s Musical Forms, A. Clarkson Essays in Actionism: Wolpe’s Pieces for Three Pianists, A. Kohn Wolpe and the Poets of Black Mountain; On the Music of Stefan Wolpe. Essays and Recollections, ed. A. Clarkson, Hillsdale (New York) 2003; “Contemporary Music Review” XXVII, 2008 no. 2/3, special ed., devoted to S. Wolpe; R. Morris A Footnote to Hasty, Whitehead and Plato. More Thoughts on Stefan Wolpe’s Music, in: R. Morris The Whistling Blackbird. Essays and Thoughts on New Music, Rochester (New York) 2010); Stefan Wolpe I, «Musik-Konzepte» no. 150, ed. U. Tadday, Munich 2010; Stefan Wolpe II, Musik-Konzepte» no. 152/153, ed. U. Tadday, Munich 2011; B. Cohen Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora, Cambridge 2012.