JAVS Spring 2023

Modern Music Commentary on Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Lament by Jordan Watt

Harmonic openness defines modern American works. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Lament for Viola and Piano exemplifies this. Despite receiving little recording recognition until its performance at the 2021 Primrose International Viola Competition, this four-minute work wins over audience members with its intricate counterpoint, recognizable form, and fluid harmony. By exploring the piece’s structural components and deliberate scoring, an argument emerges for the piece’s permanent addition to the standard musical canon. Biography Perkinson, a musical polymath, had a career that spanned from directing the Center for Black Music Research and New Black Music Repertory Ensemble to arranging for Marvin Gaye and Harry Belafonte. Even from birth, his name—taken from Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor—foretold his musical excellence. While at New York’s High School of Music and Art, he received the LaGuardia Prize for Music in 1949. Perkinson furthered his studies at the Manhattan School of Music, earning his Bachelors and Masters of Music in Composition. 1 He later studied at the Mozarteum and Berkshire Music Center. 2 His primary teachers, Vittorio Giannini, Charles Mills, and Earl Kim, greatly influenced his composing—particularly Giannini in relation to Perkinson’s Lament . Analyzing roughly when this work was composed and its relevance displays its significance to listeners: while Perkinson clearly finished this work early in his career, its proximity to major events in his life may illuminate his thought process. He mentions his trip to Europe to study in 1960 and the death of Martin Luther King Jr. as life pillars. While MLK Jr. passed in 1968, the Lament may have been composed close to his travels to Europe.

Composition Dating Perkinson’s compositional style exhausts “whatever it is that [he is] about then moves to something else.” 3 His frequent changes in style allow for time analysis. Therefore, analyzing Perkinson’s Lament , which lists itself as a 1950s work while not specifying the year, narrows the time when it was composed. Based on audio analysis, the pieces with the most in common to the Lament took place between 1950 to 1956. His Scherzo for Piano (early 1950s) and Sinfonietta for Strings (1956) characterizes this period with perfect intervals and an emphasis on contrapuntal lines, even at a faster tempo than the Lament . 4 Thus, this suggests Perkinson most likely composed the Lament between 1950-1956. While 18-24 years old, he studied with Vittorio Giannini, whose students’ compositions will be elaborated upon later in this article. Giannini’s students, including Perkinson, used extended chordal harmony, including 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths.

Figure 1. Perkinson Lament for Viola and Piano, mm.19-20.

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 39, No. 1, Spring 2023