Florence Price
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Florence Beatrice Price (1888-1953) was an American composer.
Florence Price is considered the first black woman in the United States to be recognized as a symphonic composer. Even though her training was steeped in European tradition, Price’s music consists of mostly the American idiom and reveals her Southern roots. Her mother, a soprano and pianist, carefully guided her early musical training, and at age fourteen, she enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music with a major in piano and organ. She studied composition and counterpoint with George Chadwick and Frederick Converse, writing her first string trio and symphony in college, and graduating in 1907 with honors and both an artist diploma in organ and a teaching certificate.
She taught in Arkansas from 1907-1927 and married Thomas J. Price, an attorney, in 1912. After a series of racial incidents in Little Rock, particularly a lynching that took place in 1927, the family moved to Chicago where 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 Anderson, 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, Chicago University, and American Conservatory of Music, studying languages and liberal arts subjects as well as music.
Her friendship with the young composer, Margaret Bonds, resulted in a teacher-student relationship and the two women began to achieve national recognition for their compositions and performances. In 1932, both Price and Bonds submitted compositions for the Wanamaker Foundation Awards. Price won first and second place with her Symphony in E minor, and for her Piano Sonata. Bonds came in third place with a song. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock, premiered the winning composition, Symphony In E Minor on June 15, 1933. A number of Price’s other orchestral works were also 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.
Deeply religious, Price frequently used the music of the black church as material for her arrangements. 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 the black contralto Marian Anderson, who performed them on a regular basis. Price died in Chicago on June 3, 1953.
Works List:
Orch: Sym. no.1, e, 1931–2; Ethiopia's Shadow in America, 1932; Mississippi River, sym., 1934; Pf Conc., d, perf. 1934; Sym. no.2, g; Sym. no.3, c, 1940, US-NH; Sym. no.4, d; Vn Conc. no.2, D, 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 pf): 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); c90 other works
Chbr: Suite for Brasses, c1949; 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 Pf: At the Cotton Gin (1928); Sonata, e (1932); 3 Little Negro Dances, 1933, arr. sym. band, 1939, arr. 2 pf (1949); Bayou Dance, 1938; Dance of the Cotton Blossoms, 1938; Dances in the Canebrakes (1953); c10 other works, c70 teaching pieces Org: Impromptu, 1941; Adoration (1951); Evening Song, 1951; In Quiet Mood, 1951; Passacaglia and Fugue; Retrospection (An Elf on a Moonbeam); Retrospection (1995); Sonata no.1, 1927; Suite no.1 (1993); Festal March (1995); Offertory (1995); other works
Arrs. of spirituals: Fantasie negre, e, 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 (1948); 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, Fayetteville
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 Internationl Classics, 2001.
Lucille Field Sings Songs by American Women Composers. Cambria Records, 2006.
Negro Speaks of Rivers /Odekhiren Amaize, David Korevaar. Musician’s Showcase, 2000.
References
Ammer, Christine. Unsung: A History of Women in American Music. Portland Oregon, Amadeus Press, 2001
Brown, Rae Linda. “Price, Florence Smith” (Accessed 3/15/07.) <http://www.grovemusic.com>
Perkins, Holly Ellistine. Biographies of Black Composers and Songwriters; A Supplementary Textbook. Iowa:Wm. C. Brown Publishers, 1990.
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