Florence Price

The 1933 premiere of Florence Beatrice Price’s Symphony No. 1 (1932) by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was the first time a full-scale symphonic work by a Black woman had been performed by a professional American ensemble. The piece embodies Price’s melodic, expressive style, which has more in common with past Romantics (such as Beethoven) than her modernist contemporaries (Charles Ives, for example), incorporating themes drawn from African American folksong and spirituals as part of the Black Renaissance. Price was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1887 and went on to study at the New England Conservatory of Music. Although she wrote extensively and to a high standard throughout her life—her catalogue includes four symphonies, four concertos and plenty of piano music—Price's work fell from favour when she died in 1953 but but now receives the accolades it deserves. Her legacy received a boost in 2009, when a large collection of her manuscripts was discovered in a dilapidated house in Illinois, where the composer had spent her summers. Musicologist Samantha Ege has reconstructed several of these pieces, which were recorded for the first time in 2021.