Vernon Perdue Davis Collection
Biography
Collection Scope and Contents
Key to Finding Aids Terms / Scores and Parts: Alphabetical List /Scores and Parts: Chronological List / Scores and Parts: Genre List / Authored by the Composer / Awards, Certificates, Degrees, etc. / Biographical and Bibliographical Material / Correspondence / DCR Exhibit Material / Photographs / Programs, Program Notes, etc. / Reviews, Publicity and Newspaper Articles / Sketches and Sketchbooks / Sound Recordings, Films and Videos / Supplemental Material / Teaching Aids / Introduction
BIOGRAPHY
Vernon Perdue Davis was born March 5, 1919 at Chesterfield Court House, Virginia, the second of five children. His father, The Reverend Floyd Paul Davis, was a native of North Carolina but had moved to the Norfolk, Virginia area at an early age. The Rev. Davis had many family ties to this region. His mother, Virginia Perdue, was from a Huguenot family that had large land holdings in Chesterfield County, Virginia.
After graduating from the University of Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in Latin and Greek, Vernon Perdue Davis taught Latin and Greek at the former Stuyvesant School in Warrenton, Virginia, and also served on the faculty of Woodberry Forest School in Orange County, Virginia, where he taught Latin, Greek, and Music. Later he taught music history, church music, and theory at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.
V. P. Davis earned a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in Music Composition from Princeton University, where he studied under Randall Thompson and the Czech composer, Bohuslav Martinu. While at Princeton, he was diagnosed with peripheral neuritis, a painful condition he endured for the rest of his life. He was a composer, author and historiographer of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia for about thirty years. The Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria bestowed an honorary doctorate in humane letters upon him.
For many years, Dr. Davis collaborated with the architect, James Scott Rawlings, on the restoration of several colonial churches. They co-authored several books on colonial and ante-bellum churches in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, including The Colonial Churches of Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina: Their Interiors and Worship (1985) and Virginia's Ante-bellum Churches: An Introduction with Particular Attention to Their Furnishings (1978).
Davis composed choral and instrumental works including church hymns, symphonies, operas, chamber music and anthems. He also authored books on plainsong and ancient hymnody, including The Tones of Plainsong (1963) and A Plainsong Primer (1966).
In about 1956 Vernon Perdue Davis made Richmond, Virginia his permanent residence. He died there on April 1, 1995, at the age of 76.
The Vernon Perdue Davis Collection consists primarily of scores and contains his significant compositions (mainly in manuscript and facsimile formats) and published materials.
Dr. Davis' compositions include symphonies, chamber music for various combinations of instruments, anthems, operas, organ music, solo piano music, songs and duets, service music, and various transpositions and modulations of hymns, descants for sacred tunes or hymns, and instrumental parts for carols and hymns. Sacred and church music is prevalent in the collection. Dr. Davis did not assign opus numbers or catalog numbers of any kind to his works.
A catalog of Davis' works was compiled by Professors Paul Resslar and L. Anderson Orr of Virginia Wesleyan College. Several pieces that are in the Diehn Composers Room Special Collections do not appear in this catalog. Among them are assorted church music (instrumental and vocal), piano four-hand pieces, keyboard pieces (organ, solo piano), and additional instrumental parts to hymns and carols. There are several pieces in his collection that were not written by Dr. Davis, but were included as a part of the Virginia Music Series. These pieces center almost exclusively around sacred subject matter.