Episode 6
Maestra Julia Perry
Episode 6 Transcript
Hey Y’all, and welcome back to classical queens. I’m Jessica Joy and I’m here to introduce you to the Black women composers and musicians in classical music you probably haven’t heard about. I will be candid with you all. I mean I always am, lol, But I had a hard time deciding whose story I would share with you today. Each of these histories to me, seem of the utmost importance, but this week I chose a story that is new to me, but that reminded me very much of where I am at right now, and where many musicians may be at right now, as this Panorama, Panda Express, Panoply, Pineapple Express, Purple Rain…..whatever y’all are calling it these days, as this Pandemic continues to take our careers from us. It reminded me of conversations I have been having with those within my circle. In a recent interview I was able to participate in, and in my continued realizations about what being a musician, and to the point of this podcast being a person of color trying to be a musician is actually like. Today is not a story that is all happy or all sad, but rather very real, and very relatable to those entrepreneurial types trying to make their careers work for them. I hope you enjoy learning about the life of Julia Perry.
TERM DROP
Neo Classicism: A movement of style in the works of certain 20th-century composers, who, particularly during the period between the two world wars, revived the balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic processes of earlier styles to replace what were, to them, the increasingly exaggerated gestures and formlessness of late Romanticism. The history and evolution of the term in all its aspects have been traced by Messing. Since a neo-classicist is more likely to employ some kind of extended tonality, modality or even atonality than to reproduce the hierarchically structured tonal system of true (Viennese) Classicism, the prefix ‘neo-’ often carries the implication of parody, or distortion, of truly Classical traits.
LET’S MEET THIS WEEKS QUEEN
Julia Amanda Perry, was born March 25th 1924, in Lexington Kentucky to parents Dr. Abe Perry, and America Lois Heath Perry. She was the fourth of 5 sisters named- Clara, Lois, Lucie, and Alycia- all of whom felt the effect of their access to music and education their whole lives, thanks to their access to finances and opportunity being apart of the black upper middle class. Perry was known early on to have an adventurous and cheerful personality. She was an avid bicycler, and was often referred to as someone who enjoyed the outdoors. Comments from childhood friends mentioned her preference towards running track and playing basketball, then standing still. In 1940, as Julia was the young age of 16, a family tragedy occurred. Julia’s sister Lois died tragically in a train accident at the age of 20. She was away from home working as a pianist and teacher in the preparatory level at Cleveland Institute of Music. Her body was shipped back to Kentucky and Julia Perry never mentioned her sister again. Not in her music or in any other circumstance. The first written documentation of her sister, in relation to Julia Perry, is discovered in “From Spiritual to Symphonies” by Helen Walker-Hill. Her sister's death deeply affected the Perry family, as I am sure it would affect any of our own families.
Musically, Julia excelled from early on in her life. Her first instrument was the violin followed by voice. She was already an award winning musician in high school on both of those instruments and her collegiate experience was no exception. She won a scholarship to attend the Cleveland Institute, but given her family’s recent hardship, it was no wonder they did not want her to attend the university her sister was attending when she passed. With that in mind Julia decided to accept admission to the University of Akron for a year, which then enabled her to transfer to Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. Julia Perry was so invested in all facets of classical music. She studied violin, voice, dramatics, piano, and conducting. Due to her excellence in all categories, she was in leadership positions in everything she was a part of, pitch giver for the Westminster choir, concert master of the college orchestra, and conducted youth performances at the local Presbyterian church and also showcasing her own compositions within the space of the church.
In 1948, at 24, Julia Perry received her Masters. Her master thesis was a completion of a Cantata called Chicago, written for male chorus, orchestra, and narrator. Which is quite a big work. Directly after graduation Perry attended National Association of Negro Musicians event to compete in the composition competition. She won, and this experience led to a teaching position for Julia on the faculty at Hampton Institute of music in Virginia. She would work here for only a year. By the following summer Julia attended the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood, Mass. To study choral singing and conducting with Hugh Ross. She was beginning to be frequently featured as a prominent/up and coming composer, and her works were beginning to be featured in concert artists concerts. In 1948 she moved to New York City and won the Miriam Anderson Award Competition, shortly after arriving. Through connections she made though the Miriam Anderson Competition, she began to take voice lessons with Madame Eugenia Giannini Gregory, who was on faculty at Curtis Institute of Music. She continued to study, coach, and compose, and through that work ended up studying orchestral conducting at Juilliard with Emanuel Balaban. In 1950, staying at the same house she was, she met a conductor named Piero Bellugi who loved her musicianship and performance and through the help of his own teacher, persuaded Perry’s to study at Tanglewood the following summer with his own teach, which would then lead to Perry traveling to Europe to study composition and conducting, to perform her works like Stabat Mater for solo voice and string orchestra.
Perry was able to raise money for this trip through patrons from her home town of Akron, Ohio and in November of 1951 left for Florence, Italy. After studying for some time, Perry began performing in Milan, Naples, and Rome, a performance of her Stabat Mater was also recorded for Radio Italiano. The following summer she would travel to Salzburg, Austria, and Fontainebleau, France where she studied with the amazing pedagogue and composer Nadia Boulanger.
As you can imagine, these experiences, opportunities, these are the stuff of an artist's dreams. It is said that Perry spoke Italian, you could find her, always riding a bike through the streets of whatever European city she was spending time, and there are many comments from friends and colleagues about how she was always so enjoyable to be around. Everyone knew her and called her by the esteemed moniker, Maestra, which is a very endearing, meaning teacher or friend.
In 1953 Perry returned to America and came back to major music companies and performers, performing her own works. By major, I mean performances being held through Juilliard and Carnegie Hall. So it will not be a surprise to you that in the Fall she would win the first of two Guggenheim Fellowships. It was after this point where Perry made some major decisions for herself. She would change her career title officially to composer, and would no longer perform her works. She was also quoted, when asked if she would begin teaching “ If I can get around it, no.” She would win her next Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956, and would travel back to Italy to continue her study if composing and conducting. However this time with Roberto Lupi, and 4 other conductors. She loved conducting even more than composing, and was able to tour as a conductor of her own works in Italy funded by the US Information Agency. She toured the whole of Europe and was even on the cover of Life Magazine in Europe and the States.
It was at this point that her life would take a drastic turn. Julia began to develop symptoms of the enlarging of the hands feet and face, called acromegaly, chronic hyperpituitarism. This condition has an onset between the 20’s and 30’s. Teachers, friends and colleagues of Julia who saw her after the onset of this disease all spoke of how changed she was. She was suddenly more religious than ever before, some say in an obsessive way, with St. Catherine of Siena as an inspiration to her. She was no longer the cheerful/colorful Maestra that everyone loved, but rather withdrawn, angry. In the summer of 1960 she would be living in Akron Ohio again, living above her fathers medical office. She was reclusive, but worked a great deal and composed Homunculus CF for 10 percussionists and Symplegades on the Salem witch trails. These works begin to help us understand her frame of mind, inspired by alchemy, potions, and experimentation. By 1961 she began offering piano lessons, kept composing, but again, more friends mentioned her frame of mind being altered, and her mental health being questionable. She was hurting for money and began to work to alter her career path to make up for that.
In 1965 she wrote the graves of untold Africans, which extols the beauty of ancient African kingdoms. This piece, more than any piece she wrote before, offers a surprise in our understanding of Perry in general as she was not one for interviews and speaks a lot. This is the first piece since she was a young child that was representative of her African heritage. That is because of new realizations she had about the civil rights struggles of Black Americans. Being comfortable, in a Black upper class world, removed Perry from the worst of those struggles due to her almost constant access to money, access, and education. Social structures of the time, lended to propriety being an important focus of Black upper class families, so when they were faced with racial issues, it was more polite to ignore it and move on rather than say no and face it. Appeasing the hate, rather than standing up to it. These social issues were something she began to realize she hadn't paid attention to, and from this point on in her career, she would work to utilize her music in more than just high art, but high art for the activism for her people.
In May of 1970 at 46 Perry had to break contracts of a touring lecture because she had her first stroke in a series of strokes that paralyzed her right side, took her speech, and confined her to a wheel chair until the end of her life. During this time in her life, she worked to overcome her physical situation, she taught herself to write with her left hand, exercised so she could walk again, and although many said her writing was illegible, no matter what, she would continue to apply to grants, write CRI asking them to record more of her works, she would continue to compose, but no one would take her works because no one could read the music and was secluded enough that she had no one to help her continue the work. The most she received from the music world were letters or. Phone calls of people telling her to donate her works to Fisk or Howard, but no one willing to actually record, or pay her for her work. Her mother took care of. Her until she died in 1979. And it is because she never entrusted her works to any institution, and no one worked to preserve her catalogue, that by 1990 many of her works were lost.
QUESTIONS FOR OUR QUEEN
What was the importance of Julia Perry continually trying to publish her works, when she did have the opportunity to donate everything she created to institutions who would have preserved her works?
You know, as an artist- clients, professors, colleagues want to barter your time and talents for the good of experience, rather than a paycheck. Now I think there is a time in everyone’s career where the performance, and the experience within it, are worth it. But I know for me, as for many of my colleagues out there, there comes a time to put your foot down, and lose opportunities because you know your worth and deserve to be paid a fair wage, or a wage at all. Although the setting of the situation is slightly different, the sentiment remains the same. Why should she have to donate her works so they can be appreciated for free, when she knew their worth, had been paid for them to be performed, recorded and such in the past, but because of where she was at in her later life, lacked the advocacy of others that she needed in order to fund her life, and her medical bills? I understand her plight so much! I’m sure every one of you does too. I know that I am so very tired of being underestimated, of being told that your skills are worth it, and that you are needed, but you are not worth the pay check. It is unfortunate that standing up for her worth meant losing her work, but in the end, I’m sure she understood that, and as those who came after her, it’s a hard lesson for us to learn.
How can one understand a composer through their work, specifically since Julia Perry was such a quiet person, how can we find her evolution?
I believe I spoke of this briefly before. This idea of messages being laid within vocal works, and those messages being important teachers of Black history. The same can be said for Perry's works. As you’ve discovered, Perry was one that was good at many things, violin, piano, voice, conducting, and composition. But her primary inspirations for composition were for the voice. With the texts that she utilizes we can see someone who was working to be excellent at everything despite race, class, and gender. She was one of the great 20th century Neo-Classical composers. We then see her works being influenced by medicine, alchemy, due to her illness, her location. We see music specific to her patron saint, Catherine. Who was the patroness of fire, illness, and she was an activist. She began to understand her class privilege and ignorance of the racial injustice outside of her class, and worked to utilize her space in classical music to speak out. She even wrote a little bit about race, but her works were returned to her. We see her speaking to the history of unjustly murdered women, as we look at her work about the Salem witch trials. When we look at the life of Julia Perry, although outwardly quiet due to her physical struggles, she embodies growth and strength and resilience in all of her work.
WHAT DID WE LEARN ABOUT OUR ROYALTY?
You know, this life of Julia Perry’s and her example of resilience through everything her life brought her Is amazing. Of course it's amazing! But let me be real, based on where I am in my life as a professional musician, how the panorama has affected my career, and how thankless artistic work can be, it's also a story that is disheartening to me. This and believe me, much more, has me questioning the quest that many artists types go on when trying to “make it” in the business, and the worth of this mission, especially as a person of color. It had me asking the question of how artists can better support each other. What is actually helpful to a person who is trying to make it? Even more important, What could established artists do to support and build up those who are trying to grapple though this strange and very specific world we live in as musicians, especially when they do not come from a musical dynasty, trained to understand the world from birth? This question had me considering advocacy for musicians of color, from musicians themselves. Maybe the work goes beyond just being a teacher, to then an advocate.
Now the first thing I want to say is advocacy is not favoritism. Yes of course, that saying, it's about who you know, really is true in the business of music. But just because you know someone, doesn’t mean they deserve the work, that they practice, that they would best suit a specific position, or have a temperament that is easy and enjoyable to work with. If you are in a position to give a job to someone who does the job, do it. Advocacy should not be a political game to play within any given organization. It is giving opportunity where it is deserved. To those who will give the time to the work, who will come and make the space better just because they are there. Just because of who they are.
I also think Mentorship is advocacy. You know, there was someone I knew, who tried to be that for me. I didn’t believe his intentions at the time. Due to my experiences in life, and how much I’ve been burned in classical music, at the time, his offer had to be a joke. Why would someone take an interest in my playing, and in me as I am. At one point this person said, you are like me. We are the same. I know you don’t see that, but we are the same, and I want to help you in whatever way you would like me to, because that is what helped me get to where I am, and I think it would help you too. I think he understood the struggles of building a career for yourself being POC even though he passed. He knew how lonely it was, that feeling of not fitting in or being enough, and that constant search for people, for a tribe. Mentorship is something I still seek now that I am in a better headspace. But I think I find it in small bursts, and it always has such a lasting guiding effect. It is very meaningful. This person, let me know that my experiences were also some of his. He was real about the struggles, about some of the pain of our shared career. His openness about that really stuck with me. It is one of the many reasons that I will always try to be as real and honest with people, especially those who really want help figuring out how to be a musician, as possible.
Another reason I will always choose honesty is because I think it’s important to debunk pretense. To let people know there are ways through the ridiculous expectations that musicians are told to live up to, that are not always conventional but make this world possible. Mentorship isn’t saying, suck it up, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, work harder, unless that is where you are at in your journey. I think it can also be more. It can be sharing a real path as to how to get through, how to survive the struggle, how you can make tricky career decisions work for you. It is seeing the person for who they are, and what they have to offer, and connecting them to gigs, teaching opportunities, and spaces where their strengths are needed. In the end, this sort of advocacy is the most vital, and us everyday musicians, artistic, and people can be doing our part, when it's within our capabilities, to help each other out, and build real comradery in a community, that’s not built on games, but reality. But I think this sort of reality requires honesty, kindness, and someone wanting to do good work, just because. Not for any sort of notoriety. Us POC peeps don’t need a white savior yo, just support.
Well, yall, thank you for joining us this week. If you have any suggestions on black women in classical music you would like to know more about, drop me a DM on my instagram @ClassicalQueens. I would love to hear from you all, and understand the ways you have been able to implement information such as this into your spaces.
As you know, for now this is a bi-weekly podcast, and if you like it, you should subscribe, and leave a five star rating and a review! Till next time.
See ya, Classical Queen’s!
