Composition
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

Sinfonietta No. 1

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

American composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson earned B.M. and M.M. degrees in composition from the Manhattan School of Music in the 1950s, a time of great division in American classical music. Proponents of extreme experimentalism dismissed the tastes of the general public and endeavored to keep classical music composition strictly within the academy. Provocative essays such as Milton Babbitt’s “Who cares if you listen?” circulated at the same time that traditional works by composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven were becoming further cemented into a classical music canon aimed at pleasing the public.

Named after the influential Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912), Perkinson enjoyed a multi-faceted musical career that expanded far beyond these conflicting viewpoints about the function of classical music. When asked to define Black music in an interview for the 1978 book The Black Composer Speaks, for example, Perkinson said: “I cannot define Black music. I could say that it is a music that has its genesis in the Black psyche or the Black social life, but it is very difficult to say what Black music really is. There are kinds of Black music, just as there are kinds of other musics.” Indeed, his rich musical career encompassed a vast array of classical, jazz, dance, pop, film, and television music.

In 1954, when he was just twenty-two years old, Perkinson composed Sinfonietta No. 1. Premiered in 1966, the work is a unique fusion of influences from baroque counterpoint, classical forms, American romantic harmonies, blues, and spirituals. The opening Sonata Allegro movement mixes elements of sonata form, the most common first-movement form in the Classical and Romantic periods. The movement also contains imitative counterpoint in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The Largo “Song Form” is the second of three movements and features carefully controlled dissonances and soaring lyrical melodies. Ambiguous meters, a disrupted rhythmic flow, and a driving pulse are the defining characteristics of the third movement. This movement is written in the Classical rondo form, in which the opening section of music is consistently repeated between contrasting themes.

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October 21–23, 2022
Performance of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's Sinfonietta No. 1
Watch Performance
15:31
Director: Charlie McCarron
Associate Director: Kailyn Grider
Editor: Janet Shapiro
Cameras: Rebecca Beam
Video Technical Director: JoAnn Babic
Score Reader: Jeffrey Stirling
Audio: Cameron Wiley, YourClassical MPR
Executive Producer of Digital Media: Matt Thueson
Assistant Producer for Digital Projects: Erica Beebe
Assistant Producer for Digital Audiences: Kierra Lopac
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