Vincent Perischetti: Serenade No. 6

Some History: On August the 14th of 1997, a Friday night, in Jackson Hole Roberta and I were preparing to go on stage to perform this Persichetti with Cellist Jacqueline Mullen, a close friend and cellist for the MET. We were performing at Walk Hall in Teton Village as members of the Grand Teton Music Festival. Philadelphia composer Joe Castaldo, in residence at the Teton Festival, was a close friend to Persichetti. Before we walked on stage that night Joe approached to tell us that Persichetti had just passed away. He told us that this would be the first performance of one of this works after his death. During that performance we got totally off in the last movement, which had never happened. We all felt something that night. Amazing work about Persichetti by Michael W. Chikinda, Associate Professor of Music Theory, University of Utah.

Click here to read this fantastic article in its entirety!

On December 15, 1972, Vincent Persichetti was contacted by members of the Second Inaugural Committee of Richard Nixon to see if the composer would be willing to write a new work for the occasion. Specifically, the work was to be written for orchestra (Ormandy leading the Philadelphia Orchestra) with a narrator (Charlton Heston) who would read selected passages from Lincoln’s second inaugural address of 1865. Later that month— after an intensive bombing campaign in North Vietnam—Persichetti was contacted again and asked to substitute another text. The concern stemmed from the fact that portions of the text could be interpreted as critical of the administration’s campaign in North Vietnam. Persichetti refused to make the change because he did not believe the words of Lincoln could, or should, be construed as subversive. A decision was made to remove Persichetti’s work, and it was left to Eugene Ormandy to notify the composer about this outcome.  

Making reference to materials found in the Persichetti Collection in the music division of the New York Public Library, the John Willard and Alice Sheets Marriott Collection in the J. Willard Marriot Library at the University of Utah, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, and the Eugene Ormandy Papers in the Kislak Center for Special Collections at the University of Pennsylvania, this paper will review the dynamics that led to the rejection of a piece of music that is representative of American values from a presidential inauguration.