Composition IN Black AND White This page intentionally left blank Composition IN Black AND White THE LIFE OF PHILIPPA SCHUYLER Kathryn Talalay OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New York Oxford Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1995 by Kathryn Talalay First published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 1995 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1997 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Libraiy of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Talalay, Kathryn M. Composition in black and white : the life of Philippa Schuyler / Kathryn Talalay. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-509608-8 ISBN 0-19-511393-4 (Pbk.) 1. Schuyler, Philippa. 2. Pianists—United States—Biography. I. Title. ML417.S42T35 1995 786.2'092—dc20 [B] 94-49016 1 3 5 79 10 8642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper In Memoriam With unbounded affection and deep admiration to an extraordinary man, whose kindness, creativity, and spirit were unmatched. I am blessed to have shared with him the writing of this book, and I cherish our times together. To my father ANSELM TALALAY 1912-1994 with love forever This page intentionally left blank PREFACE Over a dozen years have passed since I first discovered, by chance, a slim red file, hidden in a rare book room. The words "Philippa Duke Schuyler" were embossed on the cover. As I opened the file, a haunting image stared back at me. I sat down on the floor and began turning the pages—more photos, news- paper articles, some music compositions, letters. An increasingly complex tap- estry began to emerge: One of her parents was white, the other black. A child prodigy, Philippa had been compared to Mozart. By age eleven she had penned over two hundred musical works. Each clipping helped to compose a larger portrait—that of a gifted and beautiful young woman who spent her life in travel to more than seventy-five countries, performing for kings and queens, in small African towns and quaint Dutch villages, at Town Hall in New York and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Then I came across a final item—a tattered and yellowed article written in 1966. Under Philippa's veneer, a journalist had discerned "an atmo- sphere of childlike emotional fragility. . . . 'I'm not sure what I am,'" she admitted to the reporter. How had I not heard of Philippa Schuyler? News of her death had made the front page of the New York Times. The 1939 World's Fair dedicated a day to her. She was profiled in the New Yorker. Why had such a bright star burned out? And, most intriguing, where were all those music manuscripts, those thousands of lost notes? The red file had been donated to the Indiana University School of Music Library—where I was a faculty member—by Joseph and Mary Myers, a couple from North Carolina. I tracked them down and although they knew nothing regarding the whereabouts of Philippa's music, they invited me to their home, a rambling, century-old white house in Lexington, to reminisce about an "un- usual woman." [viii] PREFACE The visit was imbued with an air of mystery. Joseph and Mary wanted to perform a seance in order to get in touch with Philippa's spirit. A colleague who had traveled with me nervously accepted an offer to sleep under a newly built "pyramid" in their backyard. Although the Myers knew Philippa only briefly, their insights were keen and their generosity to a stranger remarkable. Mary told me that the entire Schuy- ler family was deceased, but that "a man named Mitchell" might know some- thing about the Schuyler estate. Excited by the lead, I grabbed my pen to write down his address: "Somewhere in New York," Joseph said. I returned to Bloomington determined to find Mr. Mitchell. But the Man- hattan directory alone lists over 750. Night after night on the university WATS line, I called number after number. Sensing the enormity of the project, I turned superstitious and decided to go to the end of the alphabet. "Well, thank you anyway. Sorry to have bothered you," became my mantra. Nine months later, at about 11 p.m., having promised myself this would be my final attempt, I made one last round of calls. A sleepy-voiced woman answered the phone. Oh yes, she knew the Schuylers, but who was I? Yes, she had some of Philippa's music in her home, but most of the Schuyler papers had been donated to the Schomburg Center. The woman at the other end of the line was Mrs. Carolyn H. Mitchell, executrix of the Schuyler estate. I am eternally grateful to Carolyn for not hanging up on me at that very late hour. Over the next few years, with the help of a sabbatical and a Rockefeller grant, I began to trace the life of an unusual woman. With permission from the gracious Carolyn Mitchell, I sorted through sixty-odd cartons at the Schom- burg Center for Research in Black Culture. While wading through letters, diaries, photographs, and manuscripts sandwiched between ballet slippers and swimming medals, I began to realize that hidden in the Schuyler memorabilia lay a life far removed from what I had expected. Music was only a part. Phi- lippa's place in history, her complex relationship to her biracial provenance, the "grand experiment" of her parents, George and Josephine, who believed that the solution to America's race problems lay in miscegenation—all this, and more, left Philippa searching the world for her place in it. My own travels would take me across America and Europe, interviewing her friends, family, and acquaintances. Some erstwhile lovers shunned me, saying they "never wanted to hear that name ever again." Some on the white side of the family would not speak to me, but others welcomed a view of their "family skeletons." A man I met in California told me things he had never repeated to another living soul. And a woman who braved the threats of her husband to meet me in secret provided valuable missing pieces to Philippa's enigmatic past. Soon Philippa became the adopted daughter in our family. My father, in particular, took an extraordinary interest, and in time he became actively in- volved in deciphering Philippa's mysteries. We spent days, nights, and months together, thinking, talking, reconstructing her yearly travels through faded stamps on her various passports. I wrote, he read, I rewrote, we edited. For years my parents' house was a mess — papers in every corner, scraps covered Preface IX with ideas my father had written down at midnight scattered on the floor of their bedroom, my own books, drafts, and thoughts piled high on their capa- cious dining-room table. When I was living in New York or Bloomington, my father and I spoke every day. Sometimes he would call me very early in the morning with an (often crazy) idea: would I mind researching it? In turn, I would think nothing of calling him from abroad to wake him at two in the morning after having interviewed a key figure in the Schuyler saga. He was as interested in her as I was. During the final stages of this project, my father became quite ill. I am eternally grateful, however, that he lived long enough to witness the signing of my contract with Oxford University Press. He died a week later. Philippa exerted an extraordinary influence on the culture of her times. For many African Americans growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, she was a role model. Not only to aspiring musicians, encouraged that a black woman could be so successful in the white world of classical music, but also to others who later became doctors and lawyers. Philippa was the first "colored girl" to achieve national prominence at so young an age. One woman told me she decided to become a writer after hearing Philippa play: It was easier than learning all those notes. But it was Philippa who had inspired her on her journey. This was repeated to me time and again. What struck me also, time and again, was the ubiquitous refrain from so many African Americans of her generation: "Of course we knew Philippa Schuyler. . . . But whatever happened to her?" Here, then, is her alluring, complex, tragic, sometimes disturbing American saga—for all those who knew her, and for all those who should know her. New York K. T. February 1995