Philippa Schuyler

Early life

Philippa Duke Schuyler was born in Harlem, New York on August 2, 1931. She was the only child of George Schuyler, a prominent black essayist and journalist, and his wife Josephine Schuyler (née Cogdell), a white Texan and one-time Mack Sennett bathing beauty and the granddaughter of slave owners.^[1][2] Her parents believed that intermarriage could "invigorate" both races, produce extraordinary offspring, and help solve social problems in the United States.

For three years before Schuyler's birth, her mother ate only natural and raw food, avoided meat, and went on a body- and mind-preparing regime to cleanse her system and prepare to bear a "superior" child.^[3] Mrs. Schuyler believed that genius could best be developed by a diet consisting exclusively of raw foods. As a result, Philippa grew up in her New York City apartment eating a diet predominantly of raw carrots, peas, and yams and raw steak. She was given a daily ration of cod liver oil and lemon slices in place of sweets. "When we travel," Mrs. Schuyler said, "Philippa and I amaze waiters. You have to argue with most waiters before they will bring you raw meat. I guess it is rather unusual to see a little girl eating a raw steak."^[4]

She was recognized as a prodigy at an early age. In 1933, a New York Herald Tribune writer called her the "Negro Baby." Schuyler reportedly knew the alphabet at 19 months and was able to read and write at the age of two. By four years old, she could play compositions by Schumann and Mozart and was writing her own.^[5][6] Her intelligence quotient (IQ) at the age of six was found to be 185.^[7]

Music career

Schuyler's mother was an overbearing stage mother who entered her into every possible music competition.^[5] In June 1936, four-year-old Schuyler won her first gold medal at the annual tournament sponsored by the National Guild of Piano Teachers, where she performed ten original compositions.^[8][9] She won eight consecutive prizes from the New York Philharmonic Young People's Concerts at Carnegie Hall, then was barred from competing because the other children had little chance to win against her.^[10][7] She also won gold medals from the Music Education League and from the City of New York.^[10]

Schuyler's piano recitals and radio broadcasts attracted press coverage. Among her admirers was New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who visited her at home on more than one occasion. He declared June 19, 1940, "Philippa Duke Schuyler Day" at the New York World's Fair, where she performed two recitals.^[11][6] At nine, Schuyler became the subject of "Evening With A Gifted Child", a profile written by New Yorker correspondent Joseph Mitchell, who heard several of her early compositions. He noted that she addressed both her parents by their first names.^[12] Schuyler completed the eighth grade at the age of 11 and by the age of 14 she had composed 200 musical selections.^[6] She became the youngest member of the National Association for American Composers and Conductors in 1942.^[11]

By the time she reached adolescence, Schuyler was touring constantly in the United States and overseas. At 15, Schuyler graduated from Father Young S. J. Memorial High School, the Schola Cantorum of Pius X School of Liturgical Music.^[13] She performed with the New York Philharmonic at Lewisohn Stadium.^[5] Schuyler continued her studies at Manhattanville College.^[14] Her talent as a pianist was widely acknowledged, although many critics believed that her forte lay in playing vigorous pieces and criticized her style when tackling more nuanced works. Acclaim for her performances led to her becoming a role model for many children in the United States, but Schuyler's own childhood was blighted when, during her teenage years, her parents showed her the scrapbooks they had compiled recording her life and career. The books contained numerous newspaper clippings in which both George and Josephine Schuyler commented on their beliefs and ambitions for their daughter. Realization that she had been conceived and raised, in a sense, as a genetic experiment, robbed the pianist of many of the illusions that had made her earlier youth a happy one.^[15]

In later life, Schuyler grew disillusioned with the racial and gender prejudice she encountered, particularly when performing in the United States, and much of her musical career was spent playing overseas. She fled to Latin America, where people of mixed races were more prevalent. She chose a voluntary exile of traveling and performing in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa and Europe.^[5][16][17] She played at the inauguration of three successive presidents in Haiti. In Africa, she performed for various notables such as Haile Selassie of Ethiopia,^[18] at Independence Day celebrations for Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kasavubu of the Congo,^[19] President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and for Albert Schweitzer in his isolated leper colony in Lamberéné. She began passing for white in 1959, at first so she could travel in South Africa, then again years later thinking she would have a better career if she reentered the American concert scene as a white performer.^[5][11]

Journalism career

As her concert schedule decreased in the early 1960s, Schuyler followed her father George Schuyler into journalism in her thirties. She supplemented her limited income by writing about her travels. She published more than 100 newspaper and magazine articles internationally, and was one of the few black writers for the United Press International.^[5] Schuyler published four non-fiction books: Adventures in Black and White (a biography, 1960); Who Killed the Congo? (a summary of the Belgian Congo's fight for independence, 1962); Jungle Saints (about Catholic missionaries, 1963); and Kingdom of Dreams (a quixotic study of scientific dream interpretation written with her mother, 1966).^[20]