Lesser-Known Composer of the Month: Florence Price

Wait, Who?

Florence Price (née Smith) was the first black American woman to have her works performed by major orchestras.  The daughter of a dentist and a school teacher, Price grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she was well acquainted with another future composer, William Grant Still.

She recieved her early musical education from her mother, but at the age of 15 she entered the New England Conservatory.  After obtaining an artist's diploma in organ and a piano teacher's certificate, she spent several years teaching in Little Rock, and later Atlanta, before returning to Little Rock to marry the lawyer Thomas Price in 1912.

Around 1927, Price moved to Chicago with her husband and children, in part for economic reasons and in part to escape the racial tension and violence of Arkansas.  She took the opportunity to further her studies of composition, harmony, and orchestration.  In 1932 she gained national recognition as a composer when several of her pieces won her the Wanamaker Prize, with others recieving honorable mentions; one of her pupils, Margaret Bonds, was also a winner.

Price remained active as a teacher and as a pianist and organist as well as a composer, publishing a successful series of teaching pieces.  In 1951 John Barbirolli commissioned an overture from her; she was to have traveled to Manchester to attend the premier, but had to cancel the trip due to a hospital stay. May of 1953 she was again to have traveled to Europe to recieve an award in Paris, but again her health intervened; she died the following month at St. Luke's Hospital, Chicago.

Few of Price's have been published aside from some collections of her songs and the seventy or so teaching pieces written for young piano students, which together with the hundred or so songs for voice and piano constitute the largest part of her work.  The more ambitious works for piano and organ include sonatas, suites, and assorted character pieces.

Her music for instrumental ensembles includes for strings and winds and, from the 1930s on, a number of orchestral works including five symphonies, concertos for piano and violin, and rhapsodies and tone poems on folk or spiritual themes.

She also arranged spirituals, both for solo voice and for chorus, as well as producing original choral settings.