Florence B. Price, a black female American composer, was a successful composer in her lifetime, winning the Wanamaker Foundation Award in 1932 for her Symphony No. 1 in E minor and her Piano Sonata in E minor. The following year, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed her symphony. In 1939, her arrangement on “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord” was performed at the Lincoln Memorial Concert in Washington, D.C. Amongst all of these achievements and thus recognition of her talent, her success was still limited by the discrimination and lack of legitimacy that she received based on her race and gender.
In 1941, Florence Price wrote a letter to Russian american composer Serge Koussevitzky, in efforts to request a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, of which Koussevitzky was the music director. In her letter, she expresses her credentials as an American composer, stating:
“After graduating from the New England Conservatory I returned to my native South to teach. I have an accumulation of scores and manuscripts which during the past few years here in Chicago I have been bringing to light with the result– several performances. Having Colored blood in my veins, and having been born in the South, I believe I can say that I understand real Negro music as well if not better than the kind I studied in the East… Having read that you are particularly interested in American music I am hoping you will give something of mine a trial.”
This was the first of several correspondences to Koussevitzky, of which he never responded. In 1941, the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed strictly white male compositions, such as Tchaikovsky, Pierné, Sibelius, and interestingly, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. This presents an interesting conversation, considering the topic of an American genre, and what those ideals entailed during Koussevitzky’s time as a conductor and music director. In Price’s correspondence, she explicitly states that her positionality as a black woman allows her to distinguish “real Negro music,” and offers him an opportunity to present “a fusion of [antebellum music and rag-time and jazz that proceeded], colored by present cultural influences.” Yet, the same year, Rhapsody in Blue was composed by white male composer George Gershwin was programmed at the BSO, demonstrating jazz and blues influences in a classical context but representing the prioritization of white male artistry. This seems to be reflective of the deliberate actions that were being taken during this time to sculpt an image of American classical music. While black music styles like jazz and blues were infiltrating the classical music scene, it was only being attributed an “American music” that excluded talents like Florence Price based on gender and race.
Florence Price’s Quartet for Strings premiered at the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the 2016-2017 season, and her works have been performed there nearly every year since. One can hope that we are carving a new sculpture of who is encompassed in the American genre.
Martin, Roland. 2023. “Florence Price | Composer, Pianist, Symphony, & Biography | Britannica.” Www.britannica.com. October 25, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Florence-Price.
“Performance History Search.” 2014. Bso.org. 2014. https://archives.bso.org/Detail.aspx?UniqueKey=79913.
“Image 3 of Letter from Florence B. Price to Serge Koussevitzky; 1941 September 18.” 2015. The Library of Congress. 2015. https://www.loc.gov/resource/musska.musska-100182/?sp=3&st=image&r=-1.305.