Opposites Interact: Motivic Organization in Shapey's Clarinet Concerto

Ralph Shapey's Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Group (1954) presents an intricately plotted narrative of two prominent musical ideas in apparent opposition. One, a [0,1,2,3] tetrachord realized as a motive in the shape of a wedge, saturates its confines chromatically. The other, a twelve-tone row generated solely through interval class 5, is a lyrical evocation of diatonicism. Evolving gradually from mere hints at the Concerto's opening, the two ideas achieve and retain distinctive identities that interact at different levels of structure and crystallize in a remarkable moment of equilibrium at the Concerto's approximate midpoint. Through his idiosyncratic serial techniques, Shapey transforms the row through interpolations, saving conventional serial operations for non-dodecaphonic, contrapuntal settings of the wedge motive.