Marian Anderson Collection at U. of Penn. Holds Rare Songs of Florence Price

[Florence B. Price (1887-1953)]

Visitors to AfriClassical.com frequently ask for help obtaining sheet music of composers of African descent. Many requests involve the works of Florence B. Price. We routinely recommend contacting Suzane Flandreau, Head Librarian and Archivist at the Center for Black Music Research (CBMR), Columbia College Chicago. Her E-mail address is: sflandreau@colum.edu The CBMER's website is: http://www.colum.edu/cbmr

Today we present Suzanne Flandreau's advice to a singer who was seeking the sheet music of two Florence Price songs, “Hold Fast to Dreams” and “Sympathy”: “[T]he songs you are looking for are unpublished. We do not have copies here, and there are not copies in Florence Price’s papers at the University of Arkansas. However, a check of OCLC’s WorldCat, an online library catalog that includes most major libraries, locates copies in the Marian Anderson collection in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania. The telephone number is (215) 898-7088 and the e-mail is rbml@pobox.upenn.edu. I don’t know what their copying policies are. I hope this information is what you need. Suzanne Flandreau” [Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma, Professor of Music at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, has compiled a Works List of the compositions of Florence B. Price. It appears on the Florence Price page at AfriClassical.com]

Center for Black Music Research
Marian Anderson Collection
Florence B. Price
Rare Book and Manuscript Library
University f Pennsylvania
Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma