Born on March 25, 1924, in Lexington, Kentucky, Died on April 24, 1979, Akron, Ohio.
Stabat Mater
Grave
Andantino
Allegro
Allegro
Moderato non troppo
Andante
Allegro molto
Misterioso
[Presto]
Calmo
Composed: 1951
Estimated length: 19 minutes
Julia Perry was a trailblazing American composer whose career combined extraordinary promise with heartbreaking obstacles. Born in Kentucky in 1924 and raised in Akron, Ohio, she grew up in a family where her obvious musical talent was supported: her father was a physician who also sang, and her mother encouraged Julia’s training from an early age. Perry studied violin, piano, and voice as a child and always kept a deep connection to the human voice, which became central to her identity as a composer.
That connection is movingly apparent in her Stabat Mater, an early work composed in her twenties. After earning her degree at Westminster Choir College in 1947, she spent the summer at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony’s summer music academy in the Berkshires. There she studied with Luigi Dallapiccola, a leading Italian composer whose blend of modernism and lyricism was later championed in America by Leonard Bernstein, who was also teaching at Tanglewood that summer.
Perry went on to continue her training at Juilliard and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. In 1951 she composed the Stabat Mater, the work that first brought her international attention. Soon afterward, back-to-back Guggenheim Fellowships enabled Perry to spend her first extended period in Europe, deepening her connection with Dallapiccola in Florence. She went on to Paris, where she was mentored by Nadia Boulanger, whose influence touched generations of American composers from Aaron Copland to Philip Glass.
By the time she returned to the U.S. in 1959, Perry had established herself as one of the most promising American composers of her generation. She won commissions and prizes on both sides of the Atlantic and eventually composed around 100 works, including a remarkable cycle of twelve symphonies as well as concertos and operas. In 1965, she broke barriers when her Study for Orchestra became the first work by a woman of color—and only the third by any woman—to be performed by the New York Philharmonic.
Yet only a fraction of Perry’s music was published during her lifetime. Her early death in 1979, together with the challenges of being a Black woman in a predominantly white, male field, meant that much of her work fell into neglect. Today, however, Perry’s legacy is being rediscovered and celebrated.
Stabat Mater sets a 13th-century Latin hymn that meditates on Mary’s sorrow at the Crucifixion. She dedicated the work to her mother, America Perry—a gesture that adds an intimate layer to music centered on a mother’s grief. The subject also reflected Perry’s lifelong interest in sacred and spiritual themes.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
Perry scored the piece for contralto and string orchestra, using her own English translation of the medieval Latin text as a companion to the score. According to scholar A. Kori Hill, she envisioned Marian Anderson—the celebrated contralto and civil rights icon—as the soloist, though Anderson never performed the piece.
Perry wrote that Stabat Mater, which unfolds in ten sections, “consists of three characters—Jesus, Mary, and the spectator.” As the drama unfolds, the spectator, who at first observes from a distance, longs to share in Mary’s burden (the Latin words fac me cruce custodire, meaning “grant that I may stand guard at the Cross”). The contralto embodies these roles in long, chant-like lines, while the strings provide an accompaniment that is spare yet piercing.
Scored for solo contralto and string orchestra.
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
Featured on Reflections and Hope — October 24 & 25, 2025.
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