Florence Price
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Composer, pianist, and organist Florence Price (1887-1953) was the first Black woman to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra. Price played her first piano recital at age four and published her first composition at age eleven. After graduating from high school as valedictorian at age fourteen, she attended the New England Conservatory where she presented herself as being of Mexican descent in order to avoid the severe repercussions of systemic racism waged against Black Americans.
Price returned to Little Rock in 1912 to teach privately and pursue composition, but was refused admission to the all-white Arkansas Music Teachers Association. In response, she founded the Little Rock Club of Musicians and taught music at the segregated black schools. As white aggression mounted in the city, she and her family moved to Chicago in 1927 where she completed additional studies in composition and orchestration.
Price’s career flourished in Chicago; G. Schirmer and McKinley began publishing her piano music, songs, and piano methods. In addition to teaching private students, she composed more than 300 works including symphonies, organ and piano works, piano concerti, violin works, art songs, chamber works, and arrangements of spirituals. Price also wrote popular songs under the pseudonym Vee Jay, played the organ for silent films, and orchestrated for WGN radio. Performed in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, her Symphony No. 1 in E Minor was revered by The Chicago Daily News as “a faultless work, a work that speaks its own message with restraint and yet with passion . . . worthy of a place in the regular symphonic repertory.”
Resources
Sources
Brown, Rae Linda. “Price [née Smith], Florence Bea(trice).” Grove Music Online. 30 Mar. 2020.
Works Featured on Expanding the Music Theory Canon
The Goblin and the Mosquito
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Pages: Scales, Simple Meters