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celebrating three hundred years of music by women |
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Price was the first African-American woman to win widespread recognition
as a symphonic composer, rising to prominence in the 1930s. She studied
at the New England Conservatory in Boston from 1902, and privately with George
Chadwick (1854-1931). Her family moved to Chicago in 1927 to escape the increasing
racial oppression in the South. She started winning awards for her
composition in the 1920s, and in 1933 became the first African-American
woman to have an orchestral work performed by a major American orchestra
when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premièred her Symphony in E minor. Her Songs to
the Dark Virgin was hailed by the Chicago Daily News as "one of the greatest immediate successes ever won by an American song." Her
musical language is in keeping with the romantic nationalist style of the 1920s-40s, while also reflecting the influence of her heritage. She
incorporates spirituals and characteristic dance music within classical forms, at times using call-and-response techniques and Juba dance
rhythms. She is most noted for incorporating African-American spirituals into her music, as seen in her contribution to Art Songs and Spirituals by African-American Women Composers; she bought colourful harmonies and exotic modulations into her instrumental and vocal writing. Marian Anderson (1897-1993) sang her songs.Price prefaced her work with "I have two handicaps - those of sex and race"; she is now seen as a pioneer for both gender and race. In 1964 the Florence B. Price Elementary School opened in Chicago. In 2009 a collection of her manuscripts were found in an abandoned dilapidated house in St Anne's, Illinois. In 2018 G. Schirmer acquired the publishing rights to her complete catalogue. In January 2021 BBC Radio 3 featured her in their series Composer of the Week. Further information from the web - libinfo.uark.edu/SpecialCollections/findingaids/price.html The Heart of a Woman - The Life and Music of Florence B. Price, Rae Linda Brown (University of Illinois, 2020). The Caged Bird: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price DVD documentary, with performances of her works. Click on these works for more details below: Back to Contents Symphony No 1 in E minor. 1931-2 3 fl, 2 ob, 2 cl, 2 bn, 4 hn, 3 tpt, 3 tbn, tb, timp, pers, celesta, stgs. 27 mins This Symphony won Price the first prize in the Wanamaker Competition in 1932 and brought her national recognition. It is squarely in the nationalist tradition, and it may be more fully considered in the context of the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro Movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Cultural characteristics are borne out in the pentatonic themes, call-and-response procedures, syncopated rhythms of the third movement's Juba dance (using rhythmic patterns of this old dance which involved syncopated clapping and thigh-slapping, the preponderance of altered tones, and the tonal contrast of instrumental brass and woodwind choirs. The idiom is expressive late romantic). Back to Contents Symphony No 3 in C minor. 1940 4 fl, 3 ob, 3 cl, 2 bn, 4 hn, 3 tpt, 3 tbn, tb, timp, 4 perc, celesta, stgs. 30 mins The Symphony in C Minor was inspired by new philosophical, political, and social currents, stemming from the Chicago Renaissance, underway from 1935-1950. The Great Migration (of blacks from the south to Chicago), the Depression, and the adjustment to urban life provided vivid life experiences as subject matter for Chicago Renaissance writers and artists. Originally premièred in Detroit in 1940, it was only heard again in modern times in 1998, when it was performed at the Northern Arizona University. Her impressive music is coming back into the repertoire. The recording on Koch by the Women's Philharmonic also includes 'The Oak', and 'The Mississippi River'. Orchestral and other music available on Wise Music Classical. Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers, Concert Music,1900–1960; OUP; E minor Sonata, 1932; ClarNan. Book: William Farina, Florence Price, The Life, Compositions and Influence of a Black American Composer. Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon; Naxos Records; Decca Classics; Chandos Records; Solem Quartet.
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