Ralph Shapey

[2] Shapey's style is characterized by modernist angularity, irony, and technical rigor, but his concern for sweeping gesture, frenetic passion, rhythmic vitality, lyrical melody, and dramatic arc recall Romanticism.

He was dubbed by the critics Leonard B. Meyer and Bernard Jacobson a "radical traditionalist", which pleased him immensely—he held a deep respect for the masters of the past, whom he regarded as his finest teachers.

[citation needed] The musicologist Ronit Seter, and Shapey's student Shlamit Ran, noted a strong connection to Jewish and Israeli music in several of his works.

Indeed, his work, though couched in a highly dissonant harmonic idiom rich in interval classes 1 and 6, does adhere to certain organizational features of tonal music, including pitch hierarchy and object permanence.

[4][5] In 1992 the Pulitzer Prize for Music jury, which that year consisted of George Perle, Roger Reynolds, and Harvey Sollberger, selected Shapey's Concerto Fantastique for the award.

His students include Gerald Levinson, Robert Carl, Gordon Marsh, Michael Eckert, Philip Fried, Matt Malsky, Lawrence Fritts, James Anthony Walker, Frank Retzel, Jorge Liderman, Jonathan Elliott, Terry Winter Owens, Deborah Drattell, Ursula Mamlok, Shulamit Ran, and Melinda Wagner.