Shaw GS wins Pulitzer for composition

Caroline Shaw GS, who is studying composition in the University’s Department of Music, has won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music. The award, which was announced Monday afternoon, recognizes her composition “Partita for 8 Voices,” a piece that University Director of Graduate Studies in Composition Daniel Trueman called “striking and unusual.”

At age 30, Shaw is the youngest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music since the award’s inception in 1943. Her “Partita” is a piece for unaccompanied voices that makes use of speech, murmurs, whispers, sighs and other effects.

Shaw, who is based in New York, explained in an interview that she found out about the prize as she was walking in Manhattan alongside the Hudson River piers, enjoying three hours off. Calling it a “perfectly gorgeous day,” Shaw said she received a call from her friend Jeremy Faust who asked if she had heard the news.

“I wasn’t entirely sure if I was having a psychotic breakdown at the moment,” Shaw said. “But suddenly my phone was ringing, and I realized it was true.”

Shaw composed the first movement of “Partita” in 2009, the same year that her vocal octet “Roomful of Teeth” came together. Since then, the original movement has become the last movement of the piece, which goes on for 26 minutes in total. New Amsterdam Records released the work on Oct. 20, 2012 on the group’s album.

Her vocal octet is composed of two basses, two baritones, one tenor, one mezzo-soprano and two sopranos.

Among Shaw’s inspirations for the piece was the exhibition “A Wall Drawing Retrospective” by artist Sol LeWitt, who has an exhibit at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

“I feel like the paintings scream at you in a way — loud images,” Shaw said.

Shaw’s journey with music started at age two, when she first started playing the violin. Her mother, father and siblings all play musical instruments, although none of them work with music in a fully professional capacity. She explained that she came to consider a career in music after playing in a string quartet for the first time.

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Shaw went to the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, where she obtained a bachelor's degree in violin performance. She then obtained a master’s degree at the Yale School of Music, also in violin performance. At Yale, she also began singing. She then came to Princeton for a Ph.D. in composition.

Despite her success, Shaw explained that she has experienced doubts as she has tried to carve out her own niche in the classical music world.

“I have definitely had feelings of panic in college and graduate school,” Shaw said, with reference to her time at Yale. “To know that I’m not the greatest violinist, [and that] I wasn’t going to win that orchestra job — it was hard.”

Despite her doubts, Shaw branched out and pursued singing in the area near New Haven, Conn. The turning point of her career came during her first year after finishing her master’s degree in 2007.

“I started to play violin for modern dance classes; I loved playing for dance classes so much,” Shaw said. “I would play three hours of class everyday, which is 15 hours of brand new improvised music a week. If I could keep that kind of joy, I knew I was at a turning point for the better.”

According to Trueman, a lot of what Shaw does is unconventional. “I’m not a traditional composer,” Shaw acknowledges, to which Trueman agrees. This uniqueness is what Trueman — whom Shaw hopes will serve as her dissertation advisor — said he appreciates about Shaw and “Partita.”

“The full sonic range in the piece through speaking, sighing, singing and using different vowels — it is a very colorful type of piece,” Trueman said. “I haven’t heard anything quite like it. I’m glad that the committee recognized that. It is exciting that they recognized how wonderful and unusual this piece is.”

Shaw, who submitted the piece herself to the committee, said she now wants to raise the profile of “Roomful of Teeth.”

“I think there is value in any circumstance when the composer has a fresh approach and her piece has a wonderful combination. It is original and appealing,” said Chair of the Department of Music Steven Mackey. “If you win a prize like this, you’ve got to keep your head down and keep working.”