STEFAN WOLPE
SOCIETY BULLETIN
November 2009
Recent Editions
This Bulletin provides information on new and recent
editions of chamber opera, orchestra, cabaret music and
cantata, chamber music, songs, and music for one and two
pianos.
Chamber Opera
Zeus und
Elida, Musikalische Groteske (1928).
A satire on the model of Busoni’s Arlecchino. with stock
characters from the puppet theatre: amorous old man (Zeus),
femme fatale (Elida), policeman (Public Prosecutor), and
skeptical Announcer, and a chorus of street people dressed
in rags. In search of Europa, Zeus (Hitler) descends onto
the traffic island in the middle of Berlin’s Potsdamer
Platz. He sees a billboard for Elida cosmetics (anagram of
Ideal) and mistakes the picture of the blond beauty for the
object of his search. A street-walker who resembles the
woman in the ad enters, and Zeus accosts her. The imbroglio
results in the Prosecutor banning the entire Potsdamer
Platz and Zeus being carted off to the asylum. The
through-composed scenes are based on the styles of the
Boston, Tango, Blues, Foxtrot, Baroque concerto, etc. For
Speaker; S, S-Diseuse, 2 A, T, Tbuffo, lyricBar, 2 B soli,
chorus; Ssax/Asax/Tsax/Kl, Ssax/Asax/Tsax/Bsax/Kl,
Asax/Tsax/Bsax/Kl/Basskl, 2 Trp, Trb, Sousaphon, 2 Cb with
C-Saite, Ban, T-Bjo, Jazz-Perc, 12 Vl (separate desks), 2
Pno (2. Pno also Cel). Recorded by Ebony Band, cond. Werner
Herbers (Decca 460-001-2). 25:00 min. Peermusic. Full
score, No. 3322. Vocal score, No. 3323.
Orchestra
The Man from
Midian (1942).
The scenario by Winthrop Palmer of this ballet score for
two pianos is based on the life of Moses. (Darius Milhaud
set the same scenario.) Moses here is not the
philosopher-priest of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aaron, but
rather the political leader who liberated the Jewish people
from slavery. Wolpe scored the First Suite, which was
performed by Dmitri Mitropoulos with the New York
Philharmonic (1951). Recorded by Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester
Berlin, cond. Joseph Silverstein (Naxos 8.559439). Antony
Beaumont orchestrated the Second Suite for a new edition of
the complete ballet score. 40:00 min. Peermusic.
Symphony No.
1 (1956).
An important contribution to American abstract
expressionism, the Symphony is based on a brief melody,
like a primordial glyph of the painters. The high bassoon
solo recalls Stravinsky’s Sacre, but rather than introduce
a ritual drama, the melody self-destructs into shard-like
aspects of itself that tumble at high speed through the
turbulent time-space, like a stone through a window. The
first movement is a succession of five actions that engage
two types of material, each with its own tempo. The second
movement is a fugue with three subjects: the first is of
shuddering, thrusting tremolos and leaps, the second is
terse and pacifying, and the third is a deluge of
non-pitched percussion (a response to Deserts by his friend
Edgard Varèse). The three subjects cycle ever closer until
they converge. The third movement combines the lyric flow
of the first movement with the violent agon of the second
in a sonata-like design. After the early performances Wolpe
deleted much of the percussion in the second movement for
reasons that remain unclear. The new edition restores the
original percussion part complete. 25:00 min. Peermusic.
Full score, No. 3267.
Cabaret Music, Cantata
Music for
Cabaret ‘Anti’ (1929):
Blues, “Stimmen aus den Massengrab,” Marsch.
Wolpe composed this music for the Swiss bandleader Teddy
Stauffer, who opened the Berlin theater-club “Anti” with
Teddies und his Jazz-Sinfoniker. Two instrumental movements
Blues and March frame a setting for speaking chorus of a
poem by Erich Kästner. Kästner left Dresden for Berlin in
1927 following dismissal from a newspaper for publishing an
erotic poem. “Stimmen aus den Massengrab” [Voices from a
mass grave] is subtitled “In place of a sermon on All Souls
Day.” It is the angry, bitter cry to the living of the war
dead. For 2Sax (Cl), Tpt, Perc, 2Pno. 10:00 min. Recorded
by Marcus Weiss (Hat[now]ART 136). Peermusic.
Cantata on
Sport, 'Alles an den roten Start' (1932).
Text: Siegfried Moos.
Wolpe composed the cantata for a communist sports rally in
a large Berlin stadium. The four numbers include a
brilliant instrumental number, Zweierlei Tempi, the
“Kampflied” Stählt die Muskeln,” and a March, “Das ist der
Sport der herrschenden Klasse.” The Revue was performed by
the agitprop troupe Fichte-Balalaika. For brass band and
chorus. 10:00 min. Peermusic.
Chamber Ensemble (10 players)
Suite from
the Twenties:
1 Tango für Irma, 2 Marsch, 3 Tango, 4
Tanz-Charleston (für Moholy-Nagy), 5 Rag-Caprice, 6 Blues.
Brilliant arrangements by Geert van Keulen of piano
compositions from the late twenties. For Cl, Bcl, Asax,
Trp, Trb, Perc, Bjo, Pno, Vl, Vc. 13:30. Peermusic.
Flute Quintet
Palestine
Suite (1941).
Wolpe was commissioned by the Palestine Labor Committee to
provide music for a short film. The film itself has not
been recovered, but the titles of the musical episodes
describe scenes of town and country life framed by numbers
with a military theme. Wolpe had played piano for silent
films and had strong views about film music: “Why Grieg for
sunsets? Why Chopin’s B-flat minor when someone is in a bad
way?” He argued that rhythm is the principal means for
uniting music with the moving image, and these vignettes
vividly call up the scenes in wartime Palestine. For Fl,
Vl, Va, Vc, Pno. 10:00 min. Stefan Wolpe Society.
Songs
Zehn frühe
Lieder (1920).
A collection of remarkably accomplished songs by the
18-year-old prodigy, they are among the very few pieces
that Wolpe kept from before 1924. They include poems on
spiritual love by medieval mystics, and verses by Rilke,
Kokoschka, Christian Morgenstern, and the feminist poet
Catherina Godwin. Wolpe himself wrote a couple of playful
poems for infants. Whether tonal hymns, or post-tonal
novelties with dashes of ragtime, the songs display a
lively fantasy and impressive control of a wide range of
materials. Recorded by Tony Arnold, soprano, and Jacob
Greenberg, piano, on Bridge 9209. 15:00 min. Peermusic.
Two Pianos
Suite for
Marthe Krueger (1940).
The score was recently discovered in the papers of the
dancer and teacher Marthe Krueger (1910-2000), who came to
America in the 1930s and worked for a time with Martha
Graham. The scenario does not survive, but the three
movements may have been inspired by Graham’s ballet, Every
Soul is a Circus (1939), which explored woman’s inner
landscape. The first movement, “Women,” contrasts gently
questing and strongly assertive motions in diatonic modes;
“Remembrance,” for solo piano, is by turns, elegiac,
aggressive, and fearful; “The Tides of Man: Passions Spin
the Plot” opposes a march-like, directed motion against a
freely flowing motion in 5/4 time. Order and disorder,
clarity and obscurity play out over this tumultuous, fully
chromatic movement that builds until the “tides of man”
crash in towering waves of sound. Recorded by Quattro Mani
on Bridge 9308. 22:00 min. Peermusic.
Solo Piano
Piano Music
1939-1942.
Composed soon after Wolpe arrived in America from British
Mandate Palestine, these pieces were contributions to a
repertoire of new music for the Jewish people, though he
was by no means a nationalist. Lied, Anrede, Hymnus,
Strophe (1939), celebrated his wife Irma Wolpe’s birthday,
and carries the subtitle: “In anticipation of new musics.”
The melody appears in the third and fourth movements of the
Sonata for Oboe and Piano (1941). Zemach Suite (1939) was
commissioned by the Russian dancer Benjamin Zemach. The
pieces (1 Song, 2 Piece of embittered music, 3 Fuge a 3 no.
1, 4 Fuge a 3, no. 2, 5 Jubilation, 6 Complaint, 7 Dance in
form of a chaconne) are based on various Middle Eastern
modes and dances. Two Pieces for Piano (1941): 1 Pastorale,
2 Con fuoco. The gentle Pastorale and the stormy Con fuoco
both make use of the whole tone-semitone (octatonic) scale
that Wolpe derived from an Arabic maqam. The Good Spirit of
a Right Cause (1942) was music to raise the spirits of the
people during the darkest days of the war. The march
fantasy recalls the Kampfmusik that Wolpe composed ten
years earlier in Berlin and looked forward to Battlepiece
(1943-1947). Recorded by David Holzman on Bridge 9116.
Peermusic, No. 3470.
Zwei Tänze
für Klavier (1926).
Blues, Tango.
Wolpe was a skilled improviser in classical and popular
styles and enjoyed making outrageously modern renditions of
dance forms of the day. These montage-like fantasies of the
Blues and Tango were thought to have been lost, until the
sole surviving manuscript recently came to light. 4:00 min.
Peermusic, No. 3613.
PUBLISHERS
PEER MUSIC
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STEFAN WOLPE SOCIETY
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