10 Facts About Ralph Shapey

Ralph Shapey was an American composer and conductor.

Ralph Shapey is known for his work as a composition professor at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1964 to 1991 and where he founded and directed the Contemporary Chamber Players.

Ralph Shapey studied violin with Emanuel Zeitlin and composition with Stefan Wolpe.

Ralph Shapey served in the United States Army in World War II before moving to New York City, where he worked as a violinist, composer, conductor, and pedagogue.

The coordination of static "sound blocks" in Ralph Shapey's music reminds one of another French composer, Olivier Messiaen, though Ralph Shapey reportedly found Messiaen's music saccharine and maudlin.

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Ralph Shapey considered himself a tonal composer, and indeed his work, though couched in a highly dissonant harmonic idiom rich in interval classes 1 and 6, does adhere to certain organizational features of tonal music, including pitch hierarchy and object permanence.

Ralph Shapey's Concerto for Cello, Piano, and String Orchestra was a finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Music and shared the top Kennedy Center Friedheim Award prize with William Kraft for Veils and Variations for Horn and Orchestra.

Ralph Shapey created a body of over 200 works, many of which have been published by Presser.

Recordings of Ralph Shapey's music are available on the CRI, Opus One, and New World labels.

Ralph Shapey's students include Gerald Levinson, Robert Carl, Gordon Marsh, Michael Eckert, Philip Fried, Matt Malsky, Lawrence Fritts, James Anthony Walker, Frank Retzel, Jorge Liderman, Jonathan Elliott, Terry Winter Owens, Deborah Drattell, Ursula Mamlok, Shulamit Ran, and Melinda Wagner, among others.