Florence Price

Florence Beatrice Price
Florence B. Price
Born Florence Beatrice Smith
(1887-04-09)April 9, 1887
Little Rock, Arkansas, USA
Died (1953-06-03)June 3, 1953
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Occupation Musical composer, pianist, organist, music teacher
Signature

Florence Beatrice Price (April 9, 1887 – June 3, 1953) was an African-American classical composer. She was the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra.[1]

Biography

Childhood and youth

Florence Beatrice Price was born to Florence Gulliver and James H. Smith on April 9, 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas,[2] one of three children in a mixed-race family. Despite racial issues of the era, her family was well respected and did well within their community. Her father was a dentist and her mother was a music teacher who guided Florence's early musical training. [3] She had her first piano performance at the age of four and went on to have her first composition published at the age of 11.[1]

By the time she was 14, Florence had graduated from Capitol High School at the top of her class and was enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music with a major in piano and organ. Initially, she pretended to be Mexican to avoid the prejudice people had toward African Americans at the time. At the Conservatory, she was able to study composition and counterpoint with composers George Chadwick and Frederick Converse.[1] Also while there, she wrote her first string trio and symphony. She graduated in 1906[4] with honors and both an artist diploma in organ and a teaching certificate.

Career

Florence B. Price, 1887-1953.

She taught in Arkansas briefly before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1910, where she became the head of Clark Atlanta University's music department. In 1912, she married Thomas J. Price, a lawyer, and moved back to Little Rock, Arkansas. After a series of racial incidents in Little Rock, particularly a lynching in 1927, the family moved to Chicago, where Florence Price began a new and fulfilling period in her compositional career. She studied composition, orchestration, and organ with the leading teachers in the city including Arthur Olaf Andersen, Carl Busch, Wesley La Violette, and Leo Sowerby, and published four pieces for piano in 1928. While in Chicago, Price was at various times enrolled at the Chicago Musical College, Chicago Teacher’s College, University of Chicago, and American Conservatory of Music, studying languages and liberal arts subjects as well as music.

Financial struggles led to a divorce in 1931, and Florence became a single mother to her two daughters. To make ends meet, she worked as an organist for silent film screenings and composed songs for radio ads under a pen name. During this time, Price lived with friends and eventually moved in with her student and friend, Margaret Bonds, also a black pianist and composer. This friendship connected Price with writer Langston Hughes and contralto Marian Anderson, both prominent figures in the art world who aided in Price's future success as a composer. Together, Price and Bonds began to achieve national recognition for their compositions and performances. In 1932, both Price and Bonds submitted compositions for Wanamaker Foundation Awards. Price won first prize with her Symphony in E minor, and third for her Piano Sonata, earning her a $500 prize.[5] Bonds came in first place in the song category, with a song entitled "Sea Ghost." The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock, premiered the Symphony on June 15, 1933, making Price’s piece the first composition by an African-American woman to be played by a major orchestra.[5][6][7][8]

A number of Price's other orchestral works were played by the WPA Symphony Orchestra of Detroit and the Chicago Women’s Symphony. Price wrote other extended works for orchestra, chamber works, art songs, works for violin, organ anthems, piano pieces, spiritual arrangements, four symphonies, three piano concertos, and a violin concerto. Some of her more popular works are: "Three Little Negro Dances," "Songs to a Dark Virgin", "My Soul's Been Anchored in de Lord" for piano or orchestra and voice, and "Moon Bridge". Price made considerable use of characteristic black melodies and rhythms in many of her works. Her Concert Overture on Negro Spirituals, Symphony in E minor, and Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint for string quartet, all serve as excellent examples of her idiomatic work.

Price was inducted into the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers in 1940 for her work as a composer. In 1949, Price published two of her spiritual arrangements, "I Am Bound for the Kingdom," and "I'm Workin’ on My Buildin'", and dedicated them to Marian Anderson, who performed them on a regular basis.

On June 3, 1953, Price died from a stroke in Chicago, Illinois. Following her death, much of her work was overshadowed as new musical styles emerged that fit the changing tastes of modern society. Some of her work was lost, but as more African-American and female composers have gained attention for their works, so has Price. In 2001, the Women's Philharmonic created an album of some of her work. Pianist Karen Walwyn and The New Black Repertory Ensemble performed Price's "Concerto in One Movement" and "Symphony in E minor" in December 2011.[9][10]

Rediscovery of her Works

In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers were found in an abandoned dilapidated house on the outskirts of St. Anne, Illinois. These consisted of dozens of her scores, including her two violin concertos and her fourth symphony. As Alex Ross stated in The New Yorker in February 2018, "not only did Price fail to enter the canon; a large quantity of her music came perilously close to obliteration. That run-down house in St. Anne is a potent symbol of how a country can forget its cultural history."[11]

Composition style

Even though her training was steeped in European tradition, Price's music consists of mostly the American idiom and reveals her Southern roots. She wrote with a vernacular style, using sounds and ideas that fit the reality of urban society. Being deeply religious, she frequently used the music of the African-American church as material for her arrangements. At the urging of her mentor George Whitefield Chadwick, Price began to incorporate elements of African-American spirituals, emphasizing the rhythm and syncopation of the spirituals rather than just using the text. Her melodies were blues-inspired and mixed with more traditional, European Romantic techniques. The weaving of tradition and modernism reflected the way life was for African Americans in large cities at the time.

Works

Orchestral

  • Symphony No. 1 in E minor, 1931–32
  • Ethiopia's Shadow in America, 1932 [first known performance: January 2015][12]
  • Mississippi River, sym., 1934
  • Pianoforte Concerto in D minor, perf. 1934
  • Symphony No. 2 in G minor
  • Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, 1939
  • Symphony No. 3 in C minor, 1940, US-NH
  • Symphony No. 4 in D minor
  • Violin Concerto No. 2 in D major, 1952
  • Chicago Suite
  • Colonial Dance, sym.
  • Dances in the Canebrakes [arr. of pf piece]
  • 2 concert ovs. [based on spirituals]
  • Ov. "Sinner please don't let this harvest pass"
  • Rhapsody, pf, orch
  • Songs of the Oak, tone poem
  • Suite of Negro Dances

Choral

  • "The Moon Bridge" (M. R. Gamble), SSA, 1930;
  • "The New Moon", SSAA, 2 pf, 1930;
  • "The Wind and the Sea" (P. L. Dunbar), SSAATTBB, pf, str qt, 1934;
  • "Witch of the Meadow" (Gamble), SSA (1947);
  • "Sea Gulls", female chorus, fl, cl, vn, va, vc, pf, by 1951;
  • "Nature's Magic" (Gamble), SSA (1953);
  • "Song for Snow" (E. Coatsworth), SATB (1957);
  • "Abraham Lincoln walks at midnight" (V. Lindsay), mixed vv, orch, org;
  • "After the 1st and 6th Commandments", SATB;
  • "Communion Service", F, SATB, org;
  • "Nod" (W. de la Mare), TTBB;
  • Resignation (Price), SATB;
  • "Song of Hope" (Price);
  • "Spring Journey", SSA, str qt

Solo vocal (all with piano)

  • "Dreamin' Town" (Dunbar), 1934;
  • 4 Songs, B-Bar, 1935;
  • "My Dream" (Hughes), 1935;
  • "Dawn's Awakening" (J. J. Burke), 1936;
  • "Songs to the Dark Virgin" (L. Hughes), (1941);
  • "Hold Fast to Dreams" (Hughes), 1945;
  • "Night" (L. C. Wallace), (1946);
  • "Out of the South Blew a Wind" (F.C. Woods), (1946);
  • "An April Day" (J. F. Cotter), (1949);
  • "The Envious Wren" (A. and P. Carey);
  • "Fantasy in Purple" (Hughes);
  • "Feet o' Jesus" (Hughes);
  • "Forever" (Dunbar);
  • "The Glory of the Day was in her Face" (J. W. Johnson);
  • "The Heart of a Woman" (G. D. Johnson); Love-in-a-Mist (Gamble);
  • "Nightfall" (Dunbar); "Resignation" (Price), also arr. chorus;
  • "Song of the Open Road; Sympathy" (Dunbar);
  • "To my Little Son" (J. J. Davis);
  • "Travel's End" (M. F. Hoisington);
  • about 90 other works

Chamber music / Works for brass band

  • Suite for Brasses, 1730
  • Moods, fl, cl, pf, 1953;
  • Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint, str qt;
  • Spring Journey, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 vc, db, pf;
  • pieces for vn, pf; 2 pf qnts;
  • other works for str qt

Works for piano

  • At the Cotton Gin (1928);
  • Sonata, e (1932);
  • 3 Little Negro Dances, 1933, arr. sym. band, 1939, arr. 2 pianos (1949);
  • Bayou Dance, 1938;
  • Dance of the Cotton Blossoms, 1938;
  • Dances in the Canebrakes (1953);
  • about 10 other works,
  • about 70 teaching pieces

Works for Organ (supplied by Calvert Johnson)

Adoration in The Organ Portfolio vol. 15/86 (Dec. 1951), Dayton OH: Lorenz Publishing Co., 34-35.

Andante, July 24, 1952

  • Andantino

Allegretto

Cantilena March 10, 1951

Caprice

  • Dainty Lass, by November 19, 1936

Festal March

First Sonata for Organ, 1927

The Hour Glass [formerly Sandman]. Paired with Retrospection as No. 1

Hour of Peace or Hour of Contentment or Gentle Heart, November 16, 1951

In Quiet Mood [formerly Evening and then Impromptu]. New York: Galaxy Music Corp, 1951 (dated Aug. 7, 1941)

Little Melody

Little Pastorale

Offertory in The Organ Portfolio vol. 17/130 (1953). Dayton OH: Lorenz Publishing Co., 1953

Passacaglia and Fugue, January, 1927

A Pleasant Thought, December 10, 1951

  • Prelude and Fantasie, by 1942

Retrospection [formerly An Elf on a Moonbeam]. Paired with The Hour Glass as No. 2

  • Steal Away to Jesus, by November 19, 1936

Suite No. 1, by April 6, 1942

Tempo moderato [no title], seriously damaged and possibly incomplete]

Variations on a Folksong

  • Compositions that have not been located.

Arrangements of spirituals

  • "Fantasie negre", E minor, 1929 (Sinner, please don't let this harvest pass);
  • "My soul's been anchored in de Lord", 1v, pf (1937), arr. 1v, orch, arr. chorus, pf;
  • "Nobody knows the trouble I see", pf (1938);
  • "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?", pf (1942);
  • "I am bound for the kingdom", 1v, pf (1948);
  • "I'm workin' on my building", 1v, pf job at Florida
  • "Heav'n bound soldier", male chorus, 1949 [2 arrs.];
  • "Variations on a Folksong (Peter, go ring dem bells)", org (1996);
  • "I couldn't hear nobody pray", SSAATTBB;
  • "Save me, Lord, save me", 1v, pf;
  • "Trouble done come my way", 1v, pf;
  • 12 other works, 1v, pf
    • MSS of 40 songs in US-PHu; other MSS in private collections; papers and duplicate MSS in U. of Arkansas, Florida
    • Principal publishers: Fischer, Gamble-Hinged, Handy, McKinley, Presser

Discography

  • Art Songs by American Composers / Yolanda Marcoulescou-Stern. Gasparo Records, 1993.
  • Black Diamonds/ Althea Waites. Cambria Records, 1993.
  • Florence Price: The Oak, Mississippi River Suite, and Symphony no. 3/ Women’s Philharmonic. Koch International Classics, 2001. Reprinted 2008.
  • Lucille Field Sings Songs by American Women Composers. Cambria Records, 2006.
  • Negro Speaks of Rivers /Odekhiren Amaize, David Korevaar. Musician’s Showcase, 2000.
  • Chicago Renaissance Woman: Florence B. Price Organ Works; Calcante CAL 014 1997
  • Florence B. Price: Concerto in One Movement and Symphony in E minor; Albany TROY1295, 2011.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Slonimsky, N. (ed.), The Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 8th edn, New York: Schirmer, 1994, p. 791.
  2. ↑ Slonimsky (1994) gives 1888.
  3. ↑ Walker-Hill, Helen (1893). Piano Music by Black Women Composers. Darby, Pennsylvania: Greenwood Press. p. 76.
  4. ↑ Slonimsky and biography.com agree on 1906.
  5. 1 2 Price, Florence (January 1, 2008) [1932]. Brown, Rae Linda; Shirley, Wayne D., eds. Symphonies nos. 1 and 3. A-R Editions. pp. xxxviii–xlv. ISBN 0895796384.
  6. ↑ Oteri, Frank J. (January 17, 2012). "Sounds Heard: Florence B. Price—Concerto in One Movement; Symphony in E Minor". NewMusicBox. Retrieved September 16, 2015.
  7. ↑ "The Price of Admission: A Musical Biography of Florence Beatrice Price". WQXR-FM. February 6, 2013. Retrieved September 16, 2015.
  8. ↑ Baranello, Micaela (February 9, 2018). "Welcoming a Black Female Composer Into the Canon. Finally". The New York Times. Retrieved February 10, 2018.
  9. ↑ "Florence Price: Symphony No. 3, Mississippi River". Women's Philharmonic Advocacy. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  10. ↑ McQuiston, Bob (February 28, 2012). "Classical Lost and Found: Florence Price Rediscovered". NPR. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  11. ↑ Ross, Alex, "The Rediscovery of Florence Price", The New Yorker, February 5, 2018.
  12. ↑ Recorded by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under conductor Daniel Blendulf; broadcast for International Women's Day on BBC Radio 3's Live in Concert program of March 8, 2015.

Sources

  • Ammer, Christine. Unsung: A History of Women in American Music. Portland Oregon, Amadeus Press, 2001
  • Brown, Rae Linda. "Price, Florence Smith". Accessed March 15, 2007.
  • Brown, Linda Rae. "William Grant Still, Florence Price, and William Dawson: Echoes of the Harlem Renaissance." In Samuel A. Floyd, Jr (ed.), Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990, pp. 71–86.
  • "Florence Beatrice Smith Price", Biography.com. Retrieved December 1, 2014.
  • Perkins, Holly Ellistine. Biographies of Black Composers and Songwriters; A Supplementary Textbook. Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Publishers, 1990.
  • "Price, Florence Beatrice", Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2006. Encyclopedia.com. December 1, 2014.
  • Slonimsky, Nicolas (ed.) (1994), The Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 8th edn, New York: Schirmer, p. 791.

Further reading

  • Brown, Linda R. (1987). Selected orchestral music of Florence B. Price (1888-1953) in the context of her life and work. Yale University.
  • Green, Mildred Denby (1983). Black women composers : a genesis (1. print. ed.). Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 9780805794502.
  • Phelps, Shirelle; Smith, Jessie C. (1992). Notable Black American women. Detroit: Gale Research.
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