OrArtsWatch.org: Florence Price's Symphony No. 1 in Portland 7:30 PM May 21

Florence B. Price (1887-1953)

Oregon ArtsWatch

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 When one of her former homes was remodeled in 2009, the attic yielded dozens of unpublished scores, and ignited an ongoing rediscovery of her music.

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“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.”