Battle Piece

Description

Piano — Wolpe began "Battle Piece" in 1943, at a time when he was writing works in support of the war effort, though seasoned with left-wing politics. This work took on a more abstract character, and, as if groping for a new style, Wolpe put it aside until 1947. It was premiered in 1950 by David Tudor, at Colmbia Unversity's McMillin Theatre. Wolpe's pianist wife Irma wrote the word 'Guernica' in her score, which probably indicates something Wolpe communicated to her. Wolpe was a close friend of art historian Max Raphael, who was writing an essay on "Guernica" -- Picasso's tortured response to the Spanish Civil War -- at the time Wolpe worked on "Battle Piece". Like Picasso's mural, "Battle Piece" fuses modernist aesthetics and an ethical awareness of human suffering on an epic scale. -- Austin Clarkson