Julia Perry Essentials

Julia Perry first came to prominence with her emotional, powerful setting of the Stabat Mater, the Latin text describing Jesus’ grieving mother at the foot of the cross during his crucifixion. Perry’s anguished yet lyrical setting for mezzo-soprano, string orchestra plus string quartet depicts a mother whose son has been put through a sham trial and unjustly sentenced to a cruel death—an experience many Black Americans had been through by the time Perry’s work was first performed in 1951. Perry was one of the first students of the leading modernist Italian composer, Luigi Dallapiccola, when in that same year he started teaching at the Berkshire Music Centre. She continued her studies with Dallapiccola in Florence, then went to Paris to study under the legendary Nadia Boulanger, who also taught several generations of American musicians including Aaron Copland and Quincy Jones. Given their shared teacher, it is no surprise that Perry’s spacious “Ye, Who Seek the Truth”, originally a choral work, sounds so akin to Copland’s style: its arrangement for strings well preserves its optimistic, song-like quality. Perry could be boldly experimental too—witness her Symphony in One Movement, scored for a rich-toned yet expressively husky-sounding ensemble of violas and basses only. And the spiky yet impassioned lyricism of her Violin Concerto, composed in the 1960s, shows a composer confident and bold in her creativity—listen to the lovely sounds conjured from the orchestra when it enters. Sadly Perry’s career was hindered by a severe stroke in 1971, though she bravely continued to compose as best she could, teaching herself to write with her left hand. There is no doubt, though, that her work fell into unjustified neglect, and is now ripe for rediscovery.