By Libby Van Cleve

“There was not a grand plan for the Ives oral history project. It just happened that Julian Myrick, Charles Ives’s business partner, called the Yale Music Library and said that he had some materials to donate. I was a part-time reference librarian, and it fell to me to be the one to visit Mr. Myrick. I had some sense that I was going to see someone who had been close to Ives, and that it would be a good idea to capture some material in his voice. I had not done interviewing. I did not know that the act that I was about to commit was called “oral history”—or how it was spelled!”

With her singular twinkle and wry humor, Vivian Perlis described the inauspicious beginning of a formidable career.  After her interview with Julian Myrick in 1968, she realized the importance of collecting the testimony of those who had known and worked with the famously enigmatic and paradoxical composer Charles Ives. Two years later, Perlis established Yale University’s Oral History of American Music (OHAM), the music field’s preeminent project dedicated to the collection and preservation of oral and video memoirs in the voices of the creative musicians of our times.

It wasn’t all as easy as it sounds. When Perlis established OHAM, she faced numerous obstacles: Yale’s University Librarian did not approve of work that was not literary, and librarians had practical challenges dealing with materials that were not in the usual format. Musicologists considered oral history anecdotal and rarely deemed American music or contemporary music worthy of scholarly attention.

Perlis showed determination in establishing OHAM, and prescience and notable open-mindedness in her choice of subjects. She chronicled respected figures such as Aaron Copland, yet she also had the perspicacity to interview John Adams in his twenties, long before Nixon in China or The Death of Klinghoffer made him famous. In 1972 she sought out Eubie Blake, the last survivor of the original ragtime craze, and she later organized a project to interview those who had known and worked with Duke Ellington. By now the importance of these figures is recognized, but when Perlis undertook these studies, it was a bold move in academic circles to chronicle the life and work of people of color and those who produced popular music. Perlis’s catholic range of subjects also included John Cage. She befriended him and documented his work at a time when it was more often embraced by artists and choreographers than musicians.

In 1974, at the centennial of Ives’s birth, Perlis published the ground-breaking book, Charles Ives Remembered: An Oral History. It was the first time that oral history methodology had been used to document a musical figure, and it garnered significant acclaim, including the Kinkeldy Prize from the American Musicological Society, the first time the prize had been awarded to a woman as well as to one who had written on an American subject.

The oral history project Perlis founded now includes over 2,000 interviews by or about leading figures in American music and has been used by scholars, students, and such organizations as the BBC, National Public Radio, and the New York Philharmonic. Using interviews conducted for OHAM, Perlis worked with Copland to write Copland: 1900 through 1942 and Copland: Since 1943. Composer William Schuman described these books as “a triumphant combination of Copland’s autobiographical material and Vivian Perlis’s brilliant catalytic role as biographer and cultural historian.” Her most recent CD and book publication, Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington (co-authored with this writer) won a Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP and the Independent Publisher Book Award. In addition, Perlis has produced recordings of the music of Leo Ornstein and Charles Ives and television documentaries on Ives, Copland, Eubie Blake, and John Cage.

Musical America’s Educator of the Year has received much recognition for her contributions, including a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for American Music in 2007. When conferring this distinction, musicologists Carol Oja and Judith Tick commented that Perlis is “an intrepid Perlis interviewed John Cage in between his forays for mushrooms. chronicler of the American musica l experience and has done so by honoring the voices of those whose story she tells. She has accomplished this as an amiable powerhouse, fusing the roles of scholar, archivist, administrator, fundraiser, filmmaker, and writer—not to mention wife, mother, and professional harpist. In the process, she established Oral History of American Music…forging a hybrid field and an equally visionary and distinctive professional identity.”

Vivian Perlis’s visionary work led to the creation of hundreds of primary source documents of inestimable value. After 40 years, the oral history project she founded is now a component of Yale University’s Music Library. She has recently retired as director, but she will continue to be vigorously involved as senior research scholar. To say that OHAM is Vivian Perlis’s baby is a cliché and an over-simplification. But she has approached her work and staff with passion, generosity, and the personal investment of a mother. In many ways, she ran the office like a family: Staff positions were not rigidly defined; each person was encouraged to grow and refine his or her particular skills; everyone’s achievements (and birthdays!) were celebrated. OHAM staff responded with notable loyalty: Countless former students and staff members remain closely in touch.

Perlis’s personal warmth also characterizes her scholarship: Many of her interview subjects became dear friends. This may be at the heart of her passion to record the sound of composers’ voices and her conviction that the recordings preserve the personality of a composer with unmatched intimacy and spontaneity. In documenting American music, Vivian Perlis has brought determination, intellectual sparkle, a generous spirit, and a great deal of hard work. Her contribution to the field of American music cannot be overestimated. •

Libby Van Cleve is a musician, scholar, and author with a specialization in contemporary music. She serves on the faculty of Wesleyan University and Connecticut College and has recently been appointed director of Yale University’s Oral History of American Music.