Florence Price
(1887–1953)
Who Was
Florence Price?
A Brief Introduction
The music of Florence Price blends European classical traditions and Black American idioms, with its echoes of spirituals, blues, and jazz. She was the first Black woman to have a symphonic work performed by a major US orchestra, and appeared to be on her way to establishing a solid musical legacy in 1the mid-20th century. Yet, the limited acceptance of classical music by women and composers of color at the time meant that her work was largely forgotten after her death. Many of her works could have been lost entirely if not for the unexpected discovery of a trove of her unpublished music in 2009, which led to an increased number of performances and a new appreciation for her decidedly American blend of musical styles.
Early Years: From Little Rock to New England Conservatory
Florence Beatrice Price (née Smith) was born on April 9, 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas, the youngest of three children in a family of mixed-race heritage that moved easily within the city’s social strata. Her father, Thomas H. Smith, was the only Black dentist in Little Rock, and his patients reportedly included prominent white politicians. Florence began studying music with her mother (also named Florence) and soon began composing her own pieces.
Although the family was respected across Little Rock society, issues of race remained close to the surface. When Florence was accepted to New England Conservatory of Music in 1902, she listed her hometown as Pueblo, Mexico, at the urging of her mother, who believed her daughter would face fewer issues of discrimination in performances.
Price entered New England Conservatory as a piano and organ student. She also turned to composition and showed such promise that she became one of the few private students of the school’s president, composer George Whitefield Chadwick. Spurred on by Antonín Dvořák’s use of Black American musical forms (to which he had been introduced by Black composer Harry Burleigh) in his New World Symphony of 1893, she began exploring the use of spirituals in classical formats.
After graduating, Price took teaching positions, including one as head of the music department at Clark Atlanta University, a historically Black college. She returned to Little Rock after her father’s death in 1910 and met lawyer Thomas Price. The couple married in 1912, and Florence’s attention turned to raising a family with two daughters and a son who died in infancy. Meanwhile, Thomas was becoming known as part of the legal team that gained reprieve for 12 Black men convicted of murder in an episode that sparked the 1919 Elaine Massacre in Phillips County, Arkansas. More than a hundred Black residents were murdered, and hundreds more arrested, after a white man was killed during a dispute at a sharecroppers’ labor meeting. Growing racial tensions prompted the Prices to relocate to Chicago in 1927.
Middle Period: Chicago Connections
The Price marriage did not survive long after the move—the couple divorced in 1931 after charges of domestic abuse—but Florence’s new home provided fuel for her musical career. She began composing again, and in 1929 her Fantasie nègre No. 1 for piano was premiered by her close friend, pianist and composer Margaret Bonds.
In 1932, Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor won first prize in the Rodman Wanamaker Foundation Awards, a competition to promote emerging composers, while her Piano Sonata took third prize. It led to the performance of her first symphony by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933, making her the first Black woman to have a work performed by a major US orchestra.
The performance of her first symphony by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933 [made] her the first Black woman to have a work performed by a major US orchestra.
Price was part of the circle of artists, writers, and performers of the Chicago Black Renaissance that included Lorraine Hansberry, Mahalia Jackson, Louis Armstrong, and the dancer Katherine Dunham, who choreographed Fantasie nègre. She became acquainted with Langston Hughes, whose poetry she set to songs, and Marian Anderson, who closed her historic 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert with Price’s arrangement of the spiritual “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.”
Late Period and Death
Price remained in Chicago for the rest of her life, composing and working to get her music performed. Increasing health issues kept her from attending the 1951 premiere in England of her Suite of Dances, commissioned by conductor John Barbirolli for the Hallé Orchestra. She died of a stroke on June 3, 1953.
Legacy
Despite general acclaim for her music, Price was discouraged in attempts to secure repeat performances. She was all too aware of the causes. When writing to conductor Serge Koussevitzsky of the Boston Symphony Orchestra with a request that he view some of her scores, she prefaced the letter with “I have two handicaps—those of sex and race.”
She composed more than 300 works, including four symphonies, four concertos, numerous chamber pieces, tone poems, songs, and arrangements of spirituals. Much of it may have been lost to history if not for the discovery in 2009 of original manuscripts, including her Symphony No. 4 (1945) and two violin concertos, by the buyers of her one-time summer home outside Chicago. Ensuing years have seen increased interest in her music: the International Florence Price Festival launched in 2020, and Grammys have gone to the New York Youth Symphony, for its 2023 recording of Ethiopia’s Shadow in America (1929–32) and Piano Concerto in One Movement (1934), and to the Philadelphia Orchestra, for its 2022 recording of Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 (1938–40).
She composed more than 300 works, including four symphonies, four concertos, numerous chamber pieces, tone poems, songs, and arrangements of spirituals.
Watching and Listening
The influence of Black American musical traditions, blended with European classical styles, runs throughout Price’s compositions. It can be heard in her Quintet in A minor (1935) through references to spirituals, ragtime, and church hymns. The third movement, Juba, is based on a percussive dance dating back to the era of slavery. Price had previously incorporated Juba into the third movement of her Symphony No. 1, which gained her widespread attention when it was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933. She also referenced it the next year in the Piano Concerto in One Movement, a lush melding of her eclectic sources and late Romantic style. Price performed as soloist in the premiere at the Chicago College of Music, where she had been studying.
Price’s stylistic mix was clear from the beginning with Fantasie nègre No. 1 in E minor, from 1929, which transforms the spiritual “Sinner, Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass” into a classical piano piece that explores the possibilities of its melody. A taste of the direction her music may have taken in later years can be heard in her Violin Concerto No. 2 from 1952, one of her last works, and one of the lost manuscripts recovered in 2009.
