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Paul Sperry, a tenor who championed little-known American art song and spiky contemporary works, and was praised for his incisive performances of the classics, died on June 13 in Manhattan. He was 90.<\/p>\n
His death, in a hospital, was caused by heart failure, his son Ethan said.<\/p>\n
In a discipline where his peers tended to stick to tried-and-true German and French classics from the 19th and 20th centuries, Mr. Sperry carved out a niche, singing songs by living composers from his own country. But he also took on some of the most difficult late-20th-century Europeans, like Karlheinz Stockhausen<\/a> and Hans Werner Henze<\/a>, who had been shunned by many singers. That boldness earned him steady work, his son recalled.<\/p>\n Mr. Sperry, a Harvard Business School graduate who eschewed a career in real estate and turned to singing, his first love, in his late 20s, was a low-key performer who consistently earned high marks from music critics over three decades. They cited his intelligent approach to song, his understanding of texts, and his imaginative programs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cPaul Sperry is a true connoisseur\u2019s singer \u2014 he may not have the most glamorous tenor voice imaginable, but he does some wonderful things with it, and his programing is always interesting and exploratory,\u201d the critic Peter G. Davis<\/a> wrote<\/a> in The New York Times in 1975 about a recital of lieder, including by little-known 18th century composers who preceded Schubert.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When critics found fault with his voice \u2014 Mr. Sperry was most comfortable in deeper registers \u2014 they still praised the intellect and musicianship behind it.<\/p>\n \u201cFurther up, the voice turns grainy, gritty and constricted. Even then, his interpretative virtues are so pronounced that it hardly much matters,\u201d the critic John Rockwell wrote in The Times in 1977<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThose virtues start with a precise musicality in matters of pitch and rhythm, extend to a sensitively intuitive gift for phrasing and continue with a solid linguistic command \u2014 11 languages \u2014 and a nice feeling for dramatic sentiment,\u201d Mr. Rockwell added.<\/p>\n Mr. Sperry delighted in performing showy, often Broadway-esque works by little-known composers he was close to, such as Tom Cipullo and Robert Beaser, as well as the mocking, angular works of American classics like the songs of Charles Ives<\/a>. Critics had high praise for Mr. Sperry\u2019s attention to words; in Francis Poulenc\u2019s song \u201cMontparnasse,\u201d based on<\/a> the poem by Guillaume Apollinaire, his diction is impeccable and he is alive to the nuances of Apollinaire\u2019s wry surrealism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But he was most drawn to American music. \u201cWhether I\u2019m singing Theodore Chanler or Richard Hundley, or Paul Bowles, or Arthur Farwell, or what have you, I\u2019m pounding the drum for American music because I think it\u2019s wonderful,\u201d Mr. Sperry told the music critic Bruce Duffie<\/a> in 1989. \u201cI feel that I\u2019m doing something that I do better than other people \u2014 not better than everybody, but it\u2019s where I feel I have something really special to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n Critics overseas also noticed. Writing in Gramophone, the British classical music magazine, in 1981, Edward Greenfield praised Mr. Sperry\u2019s \u201cfine singing\u201d in a recording of his premiere performance of Leonard Bernstein\u2019s \u201cDybbuk\u201d suite. There were many other premieres throughout his career, many of them American works, including \u201cCanti del Sole\u201d by Bernard Rands, which won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1984. Henze, Bruno Maderna, William Bolcom were among the leading composers who wrote for him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Sperry also had a full career as an educator, teaching American song and the 19th- and 20th-century song repertoire at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music. \u201cPaul was very special to me,\u201d Dawn Upshaw, the celebrated American soprano, wrote in a note to Mr. Sperry\u2019s son after his death. \u201cA mentor and an inspiration in my early professional life.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Sperry had little patience for complaints, either from listeners or performers, about the difficulties of contemporary music. \u201cWhat young singers are really saying when they say that is that they don\u2019t want to work that hard!\u201d he told the music critic Richard Dyer of The Boston Globe in 1992. \u201cIt does take time and effort, and sometimes the music is not well written \u2014 usually I can tell if a piece isn\u2019t well written because I can\u2019t tell if I\u2019m off, and the composer can\u2019t either!\u201d<\/p>\n Paul John Sperry was born on April 14, 1934, in Chicago to Leonard Sperry, a successful businessman who contributed to the development of the Xerox machine, and Rose (Adler) Sperry. He attended the Putney School in Vermont, graduated from Harvard College in 1956 with a degree in psychology, and from Harvard Business School in 1959 with an M.B.A.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Sperry studied French civilization at the Sorbonne and took singing lessons with the renowned French baritone Pierre Bernac<\/a>, Poulenc\u2019s partner, in Paris. They remained close until Mr. Bernac\u2019s death in 1979. Mr. Sperry made his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall in 1969.<\/p>\n Mr. Sperry would go on to sing all over the world, make numerous recordings, including of Schubert\u2019s \u201cWinterreise,\u201d which his son said he considered the summit of song, and to compile and edit eight books of American song.<\/p>\n In addition to his son Ethan, Mr. Sperry is survived by two more sons, Raphael and Joshua; a brother, Leonard; a sister, Deborah Goldyne; and seven grandchildren. His wife, the sculptor Ann Sperry<\/a>, died in 2008.<\/p>\n \u201cIf my dad had had his way he would have been the great American lieder singer, but nobody wanted that,\u201d Ethan Sperry recalled. \u201cHe fell into American contemporary music and that was the best thing that ever happened to him. He kept on saying, \u2018I love Schubert, but I never get to talk to him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n