Stefan Wolpe

German composer Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972) began his career in the socialist cabarets of Weimar Germany and ended it a respected musician in New York's Bohemian art world. Wolpe played piano in Berlin's agitprop cafés until the rise of Nazism; after studying with Anton Webern in Vienna, he settled in Palestine and, in 1942, New York City. Wolpe taught through the mid-1960s and educated scores of students until ill-health stopped him. Musically, Wolpe is one step forward from the Second Vienna School, yet he anticipated some aspects of chance composition; Wolpe wrote a ballet, a symphony, many chamber works, piano pieces and songs.