Florence Price
20th Century · 1887–1953
Florence Price was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1887 and trained at the New England Conservatory in Boston. In 1927 she moved with her family to Chicago, where she built a career as a composer, pianist, organist, and teacher. In 1933 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered her Symphony no. 1 in E minor, making her the first Black woman to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra.
Her music joins the European symphonic tradition she studied with the spirituals and dance rhythms she grew up hearing. Marian Anderson sang her songs and spiritual arrangements for years, including at her 1939 concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Price died in 1953, and much of her music sat unplayed until 2009, when a trove of scores was found in her abandoned summer house south of Chicago. Orchestras have been catching up ever since.
If she's new to you, start with the Symphony no. 1 in E minor, then the Piano Concerto in One Movement.
15 works in the catalog, across 4 genres. Log what you listen to with Opus, the classical music journal for iPhone.
Chamber
- Five Folksongs in Counterpoint For string quartet
- String Quartet no. 2 in A minor
Keyboard
- Adoration For organ
- Dances in the Canebrakes Suite for piano
- Fantasie nègre no. 1 in E minor For piano
- Piano Sonata in E minor
Orchestral
- Piano Concerto in One Movement
- Symphony no. 1 in E minor
- Symphony no. 3 in C minor
- Ethiopia's Shadow in America
- Mississippi River Suite
- Symphony no. 4 in D minor
- Violin Concerto no. 2
Vocal
- My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord Spiritual arrangement
- Songs to the Dark Virgin Song, text by Langston Hughes
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