The ‘Mother Lode’, the Gottlieb Duo, and Ralph Shapey's Compositional Strategy in the Early 1980s

Abstract

From 1980 until his death in 2002, Ralph Shapey employed a pitch and rhythm structure, which he referred to as the ‘Mother Lode’, to compose almost all of his music. The Gottlieb Duo (1984), for piano and percussion, is a model for Shapey's use of the Mother Lode in the 1980s. This work also occupies a unique position in Shapey's oeuvre, because it is one of the first Mother Lode pieces to employ indefinite-pitched percussion. This article briefly examines the Mother Lode, and looks in detail at how the Gottlieb Duo expresses the Mother Lode structure, while simultaneously placing it in the context of other Mother Lode pieces from the 1980s. It also discusses how the Mother Lode, which is based on a twelve-tone row, affected Shapey's use of indefinite-pitched percussion during this period, and how his use of percussion changed as his treatment of the Mother Lode became increasingly flexible.