The judges had hoped for something original. The results were 98% disappointing.
Of the 100 entries in the young composers contest at Detroit's Grinnell Foundation, most sounded like crudely rewritten Mendelssohn, Debussy, Mozart. Only two scores had both real originality and technical skill. The judges had no alternative—they awarded both first and second prize to Manhattan's 14-year-old Philippa Duke Schuyler, brightest young composer in the U.S. (TIME, July 1, 1940).
Harlem-born Philippa, a mulatto, is a pretty girl who reads Nietzsche, Flaubert and Dostoevsky. She likes to play chess against herself (to a...
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