Quinary Quixotic Songs

Julia Perry (E)

Quinary Quixotic Songs is one of Julia Perry’s final works. The circumstances of its creation remain unknown. She offered the manuscript for publication, but it was never published. The first performance took place as part of the Julia Perry Centenary Celebration and Festival in New York City on March 14, 2024.

On the title page of the manuscript, “TRIPTYCH” is crossed out and replaced with “Quinary Quixotic Songs,” raising the question as to whether it was originally a set of three songs rather than five. The new title reflects Perry's fondness for wordplay, offering a witty description of five songs with abstract lyrics. Perry’s text is rich in musical references, both in the movement titles—”Monodic Prologue,” “Ballad,” “Rock Soliloquy”—and in the text itself: “stifled sounds ... crush the tune ... stalwart songs ... tambourines, castanets.”

The eclectic instrumentation—two woodwinds, one brass, one string instrument, and piano—is unusual, though not for Perry, whose chamber and orchestral works frequently feature unexpected combinations. The baritone horn, one of her favorites, complements the rich sonority of the work’s bass-baritone vocalist. Such an ensemble holds the potential to generate considerable sound and fury, yet restraint prevails. There is a complete absence of virtuosity in the instrumental writing, as every compositional dimension is scaled back. The writing is exceptionally spare, even for Perry, who never favored extravagance.

Sometimes the musical organization of Quinary Quixotic Songs is so subtle that one struggles to identify what its elements are. Yet, amid the seemingly uneventful development of ideas and a nearly monochromatic palette, key patterns and relationships gradually emerge. Perry’s thematic material derives from pitch sets—specific series of notes—or from extended chords. The pitches of “Rock Soliloquy,” for example, are built entirely from a D-major-11th chord. The pitch set in the final bars of the last movement closely mirrors that of the opening movement, helping to bring the work full circle.

The work's musical language relies on the repetition of simple materials. Three of the five movements are in some variety of ABA form. The “Monodic Prologue” is constructed from repeating patterns: recurring rhythmic cells, a repeated vocal line echoed by the viola, and a strict da capo form. There are also palindromic constructions: the 16th-note pattern of the piano’s first entrance; and the opening 10-bar phrase, which ends where it begins, though with an altered meter and a reversal of the pizzicato-arco indications in the viola. These modest changes mean that the final two bars of the phrase are not superimposable on the first two; they form a chiral rather than a mirror image. In a work of understated gestures, small changes have big effects.

The second movement, “Ballad,” includes a sustained or repeated A in every bar. Harmonic motion is almost nonexistent. Perry repeats the opening six bars immediately, but revoices the chord, with double stops in the viola freeing the baritone horn to shadow the vocal line. The main motive, setting the text “just one diamond she wanted,” has a range of a half step, whereas the vocal line for the rejected gems expands to cover an interval of an octave and a half. Measured trills in flute and clarinet highlight the action, and a viola glissando provides a musical exclamation point to precede the vocal one. But this burst of motion is fleeting. The music of the opening returns, only to break off early, freezing the unchanging harmony in place.

Most of the text of Quinary Quixotic Songs is disconnected from any specific time or place. But the third song, “Rock Soliloquy,” alludes to contemporary events. “Sawtooth waveforms crush the tune” may reference electronic music, a genre Perry seemingly had little interest in. And although there never was a “Viking number nine spaceship,” the first images of the surface of Mars from the Viking 1 spacecraft were conveyed on July 20, 1976. Perry’s writing shifts to the first person for “Rock Soliloquy,” where her direct address to God creates a poignant central moment in the work: “God, you’re not to blame. Must I go insane?”

“Fortune Cookies” brings a hint of optimism, albeit perhaps with irony. It is the only movement without a slow tempo marking. While it begins with static, repetitive chords in the piano and a dispiriting aphorism that could have come straight from a fortune cookie, Perry follows this with an exhortation that must have held special meaning for her: “Courage, stalwart songs, faith and hope will win!” The line comes as the baritone horn introduces a fanfare motive immediately picked up by the vocal soloist. The fanfare is marked only mf and lies in the middle of the instrument’s range, not in an exciting high register. The music quickly returns to the repetitive chords of the opening, signaling that victory may be only briefly imagined.

The final song, “Fiesta,” opens with vibrant rhythms suggesting tambourines and castanets played first on the open strings of the viola, then by the piano. For the first time, Perry introduces a motive in octaves, by flute and clarinet, then in unison, by clarinet and viola. The cheering refrain of “Olé, what a day!” is tempered by two interjections—one about unidentified squabbling visitors from North Africa, the other concerning blood-spattered matadors. Nonetheless, with all its ambiguities, “Fiesta,” marked f throughout, stands as the most assertive song of the set, with the soloist powerfully projected to the end at the upper reaches of the bass-baritone range.

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