Pia Gilbert 1921-2018 | In Memoriam

Composer and scholar Pia Gilbert, who was on the Juilliard faculty from 1986 until her retirement, in 2016, died on May 14. She was known at Juilliard for, among many other things, teaching aesthetics, masterminding the course known as ChoreoComp, and being called upon to talk about her studies with Arnold Schoenberg and her long friendship with John Cage. Her survivors include her daughter, Vivian, and brother, Hans, and his family.

In 2001, for an 80th birthday celebration for her at Juilliard, Gilbert wrote about how her relationship with choreography—which led her to co-create ChoreoComp— came about. “My career as a composer was ‘jumpstarted’ willy-nilly because I had landed in my beloved Dance World in a relatively short time after my family and I had left Germany in 1937. It was after those initial ‘refugee years’ … that I had first been engaged to improvise and play for seemingly every modern and ballet choreographer in New York. Eventually, especially during a long and immensely gratifying tenure at UCLA and at other venues in Los Angeles (1947-85), it was assumed that I would write scores for choreographies as well as incidental music for the theater. Being autodidact was not considered to be a problem or a hindrance to compositional or pedagogic activities at that time. Astonishingly, it was thought to be somewhat original or courageous. Of course it was neither, but offered numerous, sometimes most welcome challenges. A large bulk of that endeavor was generated during the ’50s and ’60s, where experimentation was encouraged and appreciated, and where I was thoroughly in my element! Many of these scores easily fell into the category of disposable or at least highly interdependent configurations, since my interest was mainly to serve the total stage work. In other words: the dance or theater piece was incomplete without my music and vice versa.”

ESPia: Remarkable and Perceptive

By Michael Griffel
“They often call me ESPia,” Pia Gilbert used to say, “because I somehow can tell what’s on someone else’s mind or what’s happening in their life.” My 20 years with Pia Gilbert made a believer out of me! Whenever I saw, or even telephoned, Pia, she seemed to expect me to say what I was about to say. This was truly a remarkable and perceptive woman, who left Germany as a teenager, came to the United States, worked as a piano accompanist for dancers, and rose to become a beloved and respected music teacher first at UCLA, where she specialized in music for dance, and then at Juilliard, where she taught courses called Aesthetic Explorations, The Second Viennese School, and Composers and Choreographers.

Perhaps more important, however, is the fact that the people in Pia’s circle learned much about history—and life—from her. For she was wise, undeterred from tackling difficult tasks, unafraid to speak the truth or offer advice, even when that truth or advice might hurt, if she felt that a momentary disappointment might lead to a lasting betterment.

Pia was a good friend to me and my wife, Margaret. Was it because I, too, had studied at the New York College of Music during my childhood? Was it because my wife and I, too, had German-speaking parents who arrived in New York with almost nothing? Was it because I offered to share my faculty office with her when her own was needed by others at Juilliard? Was it because I had studied dance for five years as a child? Maybe all of these things, maybe something else—I do not know.

But I do know why I wanted to be Pia’s friend. She was supportive and gracious, hospitable and elegant, reliable and informed. Her stories of the past, of the Arnold Schoenberg family and Merce Cunningham, of Elliott Carter and Virgil Thomson, of John Cage and Ned Rorem, in fact, of the entire artistic world in which she was a participant for more than half a century, were fascinating, honest, and often funny. Pia was a person of integrity, solid character, unique personality, and tremendous talent. She will be missed by a huge number of admirers, including me and my wife.

Michael Griffel (MS ’66, piano) is the chair of the music history department

Warm and Welcoming

By Jane Gottlieb
A German-Jewish émigré of incredible intellect and fierce determination, Pia Wertheimer arrived in New York City with her family in 1937. She always kept a photo of the SS guards outside of her family’s Kippenheim home—the Wertheimers just missed the worst of Holocaust horrors, but Pia never forgot the terror of those years. As she conveyed in her 1988 UCLA oral history, A Life in Several Keys*, “Nobody thought that Hitler would stay in power any longer than the green shirts, the pink shirts, the brown shirts … [M]y father, all the uncles, all the Jewish gentlemen could not believe that this would happen in Germany and that it would last. It was … [the mothers who] started to realize that this was for real, that this was threatening, that one had to leave one’s country.”

In New York, Pia found work as a dance accompanist, working with Lotte Goslar, Doris Humphrey (faculty 1951– 58), and others. After moving to Los Angeles she joined the faculty of UCLA, first as a dance accompanist and later as a professor of music. Pia knew all of the other German émigrés in California: some of this is recounted in Dorothy Crawford’s book A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler’s Emigres and Exiles in Southern California*. Over the years, she became very close to Arnold Schoenberg and his family, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Igor Stravinsky, Elliott Carter (faculty 1966–84), and many other modernist musicians.

Gilbert joined Juilliard’s graduate faculty in 1986. She settled on West 72nd Street—John Cage wrote one of the reference letters to her building’s co-op board—and her apartment was a warm and welcoming home where many of us were privileged to join her for coffee, smoked salmon tea sandwiches, and pastries.

In 2001, Juilliard celebrated Gilbert with a concert of her music. She wrote in the program book, “So here I am, 80 years old, at my beloved Juilliard where I am reveling in the freedom to teach interesting subjects to marvelously talented students, learn from them, and from my astonishingly impressive colleagues, and am brimming over with gratitude and joy in being allowed to do what I love most!” We were honored to have known and loved Pia.

Jane Gottlieb is vice president for library and information resources and director of the C.V. Starr Doctoral Program

*These sources are available in Juilliard’s library as are audiotapes of two interviews Ara Guzelimian did with her on John Cage and on European émigrés in Los Angeles. Read about one of the interviews Guzelimian had with Gilbert, in 2010, in the Juilliard Journal archive.