Florence B. Price (1887-1953)
May 16, 2019
Brett Campbell
Classical music programs largely consist of endlessly recycled old
classics by composers who are (a) European, (b) male, and (c) white.
Florence Price is (e) none of the above. The 20th century African
American composer does, however, abide by that other common requirement
for appearing on classical programs — she’s (d) — dead.
But today, Price’s music is, against all odds, coming back to life, including Tuesday when Portland’s Metropolitan Youth Symphony performs one of her symphonies.
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Born in Arkansas in 1887, Price studied music at the prestigious New
England Conservatory and went on to write hundreds of compositions.
Premiered in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, her Symphony No. 1 in E minor was the first symphony by an African-American woman ever to be performed by a major American orchestra. (Read Damien Geter’s ArtsWatch story about Price and other neglected African American composers.)
But Price’s music, like that of so many composers of color in her
time, was ignored by most orchestras and seldom played after her death
in 1953. When one of her former homes was remodeled in 2009, the attic
yielded dozens of unpublished scores, and ignited an ongoing rediscovery
of her music.
***
“It was this revelation,” [Maestro Raul] Gomez remembers. “Price’s symphony sounds
truly American. In it you can hear the strong presence of Afro American
rhythms and dances. You can hear influences of orchestral European music
of the time, [such as] Dvorak’s New World Symphony, [but] she
got that in a personal way. It was very shocking to me that her symphony
is, as far as [her publisher] can tell is a US West Coast premiere.”
The centerpiece of MYS’s May 21 concert, Price’s Symphony #1
fit Gomez’s programming for MYS: “to expose our students to the old
well established masterworks of the symphonic catalog, but also to teach
them that new music and music by minorities or other neglected
composers are as valid as any pieces by the old masters,” he says.
“We’re doing [Price’s symphony] from the starting point that it’s great
music, not because it was written by a minority. We’re going to
celebrate it and perform it. And while doing that, we’re giving voice to
composers from other backgrounds that haven’t had the same exposure,
for many reasons, historical and otherwise” as venerated white European
masters. Gomez also thought Price would be an ideal unfamiliar American
voice for the orchestra to showcase on its upcoming European tour.
After Gomez showed the MYS players a documentary film about Price and
the challenges she and other composers of color faced, “the orchestra
managers said they’d never seen a group of teenagers so quiet and
attentive and focused, ever,” Gomez says. “So from the beginning of this
process, we contextualized the work and students have been really
receptive to it.”
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