Musician of the Week
Florence Price

Monday
Listening Example:  "Juba Dance"

Florence Beatrice Smith Price was the first African-American female composer to have a symphonic composition performed by a major American symphony orchestra.
Florence Beatrice Price was born on April 9, 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Her mother was a music teacher and her father was the only African American Dentist in Little Rock.  
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Florence gave her first piano performance at the age of 4.  By the age of 11, she had her first composition published.  
Florence was a very smart, and determined, young lady.  She graduated from Capitol Hill School in Little Rock at the age of 16!

A “Juba Dance” is a type of dance brought over by slaves from West Africa.  It was used to create music when slaves weren’t allowed to have musical instruments for fear that they were using them to send secret messages.  The dancing created repeating percussive rhythms by patting and slapping their arms, legs and chest and stamping with their feet.

This kind of body percussion forms the basis of the Juba Dance that inspired the third movement of Florence Price’s Symphony No.1 in E minor. African drums echo the patting, slapping rhythms as the strings play an upbeat melody.  Price fused two worlds, taking a part of her own musical heritage and reimagining it with a classical orchestra.  Today’s listening example is “Juba Dance”.

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Tuesday
Listening Example:  Violin Concerto No. 2

Yesterday, we learned that Florence Price starting performing on the piano at the age of 4, and was a published composer by the age of 11.  She went on to graduate from high school at the age of 16.  That qualifies her as a child prodigy, just like many of our musicians we study.

After high school, Florence knew she wanted to study music, but, being an African American woman, finding a music school that would accept her was a problem.  She finally discovered the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.  While in school, Florence wrote her first string trio and symphony.  In 1906, she graduated with honors, and a degree in both organ performance and a music teaching certificate.  

Today’s listening example is Price’s “Violin Concerto No. 2”.  Price finished this piece in 1952, but she passed away before it was ever performed.  In fact, the music she wrote was all lost until recently when a couple bought a home outside of Chicago and discovered all of Price’s music in the attic.  

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Wednesday
Listening Example:  "Piano Sonata in E Minor"

After graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music, Florence Price returned to Arkansas.  She briefly taught music in Cotton Plant, Arkansas.  Cotton Plant is a town not much bigger than Weiner.  
She left Cotton Plant to teach at Shorter College in Little Rock, Arkansas.  She taught at Shorter until 1910, when she moved to Atlanta, Georgia to be the Head of the Music Department at Clark University.

In 1912, Florence married Thomas Jewell Price, who was a lawyer in Little Rock, so she moved back to Arkansas once again.  While in Little Rock, Price established a music studio, taught piano lessons, and wrote short pieces for piano. Despite her credentials, she was denied membership into the Arkansas State Music Teachers Association because of her race.

After a series of racial incidents in Little Rock, Price, her husband, and their two daughters decided it was time to move somewhere else.  So, they packed up and moved to Chicago, Illinois.  She pursued further musical studies at the American Conservatory of Music and Chicago Musical College and established herself in the Chicago area as a teacher, pianist, and organist.

In 1928, G. Schirmer, a major publishing firm, accepted for publication Price’s At the Cotton Gin. In 1932, Price won multiple awards in competitions sponsored by the Rodman Wanamaker Foundation for her Piano Sonata in E Minor, a large-scale work in three movements, and her more important work, Symphony in E Minor.  Today’s listening example is the 2nd movement of Price’s “Piano Sonata in E Minor”.  

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Thursday
Listening Example:  "Symphony in E Minor"

In 1931, Florence Price divorced her husband, and found herself a single mother with 2 girls to raise.  She began writing songs for radio ads and playing the organ at silent film screenings to make ends meet.  She moved in with her friend, Margaret Bonds, who was also a musician.  

Both Bonds and Price entered compositions into the Wanamaker Foundation Awards in 1932.  Not only did her “Symphony in E Minor” win first place, but she won 3rd place for her Piano Sonata as well!  The prize awarded her $500, which would be about $9600 now.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 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.

Today’s listening example is “Symphony in E Minor”  This was the award winning piece that made Price famous, and made history as well.  Price once said she had two things stacked agains her, she was a woman and she was African American.  This piece was so good, it was able to overcome those obstacles and make her a star.

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Friday
Listening Example:  "My Soul is Anchored in the Lord"

In her lifetime, Price composed more than 300 works, ranging from small teaching pieces for piano to large-scale compositions such as symphonies and concertos, as well as instrumental chamber music, vocal compositions, and music for radio. 

Her musical style is a mixture of classical European music and the sounds of black spirituals, especially the rhythms associated with African heritage, such as the juba dance. Price’s southern heritage had an obvious impact on her work, as the titles for some of her shorter works suggest: Arkansas Jitter, Bayou Dance, and Dance of the Cotton Blossoms.

Price died in Chicago on June 3, 1953.  In 2018, she was inducted into the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame and honored by the Arkansas State Music Teachers Association, which had denied her membership while she lived in the state.

In 2009, during renovations of an abandoned house in Illinois, the new owners of the home discovered piles of musical manuscripts, books, and various documents belonging to Price, who had used the house as a summer home. The owners contacted librarians at the University of Arkansas, where some of Price’s papers were already archived. The new materials contained many Price scores that had been presumed lost.

Today’s listening example, “My Soul is Anchored in the Lord” was considered one of her most famous songs of all time.  It was performed by Marian Anderson, as her last song during her famous concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939.  

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References

https://tinyurl.com/4x2kfzva

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/21/686622572/revisiting-the-pioneering-composer-florence-price

https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/florence-beatrice-smith-price-1742/

https://www.bsomusic.org/stories/listening-guide-florence-price/

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/florence-price/

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