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Article: On Proportions. (lecture by composer Stepan Wolpe)
- Article from:
- Perspectives of New Music
- Article date:
- June 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Perspectives of New Music. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTORY NOTE
On proportions" ("Vortag uber Proportionen") is not only a lecture: it is also a kind of theater piece, to be enacted by Stefan Wolpe (along with two pianists to play its forty-one musical examples). Half didactic study, half prose poem, it unifies a range of influences spanning Wolpe's life: the aesthetic of the Bauhaus (and his association with Paul Klee);(1) the generative process of the Hegelian Dialectic, probably of left-Hegelian provenance; and the free-associative programs of Dada and Surrealism. One can also hear echoes of the painters and poets at Black Mountain College.
However valuable as a document, the written text ...