Julia Perry facts for kids
Julia Amanda Perry (born March 25, 1924 – died April 25, 1979) was an American composer and teacher. She wrote classical music, mixing her training in European styles with her African-American background.
Quick facts for kids
Julia Perry
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | March 25, 1924 Lexington, KY
|
| Died | April 24, 1979 (aged 55) Akron, OH
|
| Occupation | Composer, pianist, conductor |
Life and Musical Training
Julia Perry was born in Lexington, Kentucky. When she was a child, her family moved to Akron, Ohio. She studied singing, piano, and how to compose music at Westminster Choir College from 1943 to 1948. There, she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in music.
She continued her studies at the Tanglewood Music Center in Tanglewood. She learned from a famous teacher named Luigi Dallapiccola. Later, she went to the Juilliard School of Music. Around this time, she won her first Guggenheim Fellowship. This is a special award that helps people in arts and sciences continue their work.
In 1952, Perry went to Paris to study with another famous teacher, Nadia Boulanger. While there, she won the Boulanger Grand Prix for her Viola Sonata. Soon after, she received her second Guggenheim Fellowship. She used this award to go back to Italy and study more with Dallapiccola.
Julia Perry also learned how to conduct music. She studied at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, during the summers of 1956 and 1957. In 1957, the U.S. Information Service helped her lead a series of concerts in Europe.
After spending five and a half years in Europe, Julia Perry came back to America. She kept working on her music compositions. When she returned, she also taught at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College in Tallahassee in 1967. She was also a visiting artist at Atlanta College.
Julia Perry's Music
Some of Julia Perry's first musical pieces were inspired by African American music. In 1951, she published songs like Free at Last and I'm a Poor Li'l Orphan. These songs showed how she used black spiritual music in her work. She also wrote Song of Our Savior for the Hampton Institute Choir. This piece used a special musical scale called the Dorian mode. It also had a repeated humming tune called an ostinato and used a "call and response" style, where one part of the music answers another.
In her other works, Perry started trying new ways to compose. She experimented with sounds that might seem a bit clashing or "dissonant." One of her most famous pieces is Stabat Mater (1951). She wrote this for a solo singer (a contralto) and a string orchestra. It uses some clashing sounds but still stays within what is called "tonal music," meaning it has a clear musical key. These pieces used more modern ways of composing, like "quartal harmony." This is when musical chords are built using intervals of fourths instead of the usual thirds and fifths. The Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra recorded Stabat Mater.
Julia Perry wrote many other instrumental pieces. These include Requiem for Orchestra, which is also known as Homage to Vivaldi. This piece was inspired by the famous composer Antonio Vivaldi. She also wrote several shorter orchestral works, different kinds of chamber music (for small groups of instruments), a violin concerto, twelve symphonies, and two piano concertos.
Her vocal works include a three-act opera. She also wrote The Symplegades, which was based on the Salem witchcraft panic from the 1600s. This opera took her more than ten years to write. She also created an operatic ballet with her own story, based on Oscar Wilde's tale The Selfish Giant. In 1976, she composed Five Quixotic Songs for a bass-baritone singer. In 1977, she wrote Bicentennial Reflections for a tenor solo.
At first, Julia Perry mostly wrote music for voices. However, as she got older, she started writing more pieces for instruments. By the time she had a stroke in 1971, she had written twelve symphonies.
Here are some of her important compositions:
- The Bottle (1953) – an opera
- The Cask of Amontillado (1954) – an opera
- The Selfish Giant (1964) – an opera
- Short Piece (1952) – for orchestra
- Requiem (Homage to Vivaldi) (1959) – for orchestra
- Piano Concerto (1964) – for piano and orchestra
- Violin Concerto (1964) – for violin and orchestra
- Symphony No. 6 (1966) – for symphonic band
- Homunculus C.F. (1960) – for 10 percussion instruments with harp and piano
- Stabat Mater (1947) – for alto voice and strings
- Symphony U.S.A. No. 7 (1967) – for choir and small orchestra
Recordings and Performances
Julia Perry's music was not recorded very often. However, her Short Piece for Orchestra was performed and recorded by the New York Philharmonic in 1965. This happened at Lincoln Center in New York.
This piece shows Perry's neoclassical style of composing. This means it uses ideas from earlier classical music but with a modern twist. It has many rhythmic parts that use syncopation, which means the rhythm plays off the main beat. The piece itself can feel wild and fast. The string and brass sections switch between being in the background and the main focus. Percussion instruments add rhythmic fills. After a lively start, Short Piece calms down into a long, singing passage. The woodwind instruments introduce this part, and the strings then expand on it.
In 1960, the Manhattan Percussion Ensemble recorded Perry's Homunculus, C.F. for 10 percussionists. This piece is written for instruments like timpani, cymbals, snare drum, bass drum, wood blocks, xylophone, vibraphone, celesta, piano, and harp. Perry called this work "pantonal." This means it doesn't have a main major or minor key. Instead, it uses all the available musical notes. Perry used the title Homunculus as a symbol for the experimental nature of the piece. The name refers to a tiny creature brought to life in a test tube by a character named Wagner in Goethe's famous story Faust.
