Florence Price and the Erasure of Black History

Florence Price is a name we are all hopefully familiar with. She was the first African-American woman to have her compositions performed by a major American symphony orchestra, and her life and work remain an important part of our history. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887, she was a musician from an early age and attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston when she was a teenager.1  In order to better her chances of attending the conservatory, some sources say she was dishonest about her racial background (she was the child of a biracial couple). In 1932, she won a prestigious composition competition and had the opportunity to have her Symphony No. 1 in E minor performed by the Chicago Symphony.2

Her career took another step forward when she was asked to perform her Concerto in One Movement with the same orchestra as the solo pianist. However, despite a promising start to her career, she struggled to gain recognition and opportunities because of her race and gender. She continued to release music under the male pen name of “Forrest Wood”.3
Throughout her career, she worked closely with pianist and composer Margaret Bonds, poet Langston Hughes, and contralto Marian Anderson.4

Her career was rife with racism and sexism – the fact that she was writing under a male Western name shows how she was forced to erase her own identity to survive. Her reviews, even supposedly positive ones, were all saturated with the same bias, like this one I found in the Chicago Defender:

“Florence Price’s contribution in the form of a piano concerto was by far the most important feature of the concert for here we see what the Negro has taken from his own idiom and good technique is beginning to develop on its own.” 5

Or this quote from Price herself:

“Unfortunately the work of a woman composer is preconceived by many to be light, froth, lacking in depth, logic, and virility. Add to that the incident of race–I have Colored blood in my veins–and you will understand some of the difficulties that confront one in such a position.”6

 

 

Price and her family were forced to leave Little Rock for Chicago in 1927 due to the increasing violence towards Black people in the South, directly following several lynchings in her area.7
While musical opportunities were greater for her in Chicago, she died with most of her 300+ works unpublished and inaccessible to the public until 2009, when boxes of sheet music were found in an abandoned house in St. Anne, Illinois.8 The house had been vandalized with the valuables stolen, but the sheet music was untouched and bore Price’s signature. Price’s music had been left in the house, which was discovered to have been her summer home, since her death in 1953. So why did it take this long for her works to be discovered, and how many other compositions and groundbreaking musical works lie untouched and undiscovered, just like Price’s? how many other Black composers remain uncredited for works we know and love? The erasure of Black history is a massive problem in America, and it is especially prevalent when looking at our musical history. Price is just one example of this.

1 Walker, Karla. “Racism and Sexism Stalled Her Career. Now Florence Price Is Finally Being Heard.” Colorado Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio, 1 July 2019, www.cpr.org/2018/04/16/racism-and-sexism-stalled-her-career-now-florence-price-is-finally-being-heard/
4 “Florence Price: Breaking Barriers of Race and Gender in Classical Music.” Pacific Chorale, www.pacificchorale.org/florence-price-breaking-barriers-of-race-and-gender-in-classical-music. Accessed 11 Nov. 2023

5 STARS WITH WOMEN’S SYMPHONY. (1934, Oct 20). The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967) Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/stars-with-womens-symphony/docview/492521061/se-2

6 Busch, Elizabeth. “Florence Price: Composer, Teacher, and Pianist.” Csmleesburg, csmleesburg, 10 Feb. 2022, www.thecatoctinschoolofmusic.com/post/florence-price-composer-teacher-and-pianist.

7 “Florence Price: Breaking Barriers of Race and Gender in Classical Music.” Pacific Chorale, www.pacificchorale.org/florence-price-breaking-barriers-of-race-and-gender-in-classical-music. Accessed 11 Nov. 2023

Amy Beach – Making Symphonic History

 

Amy Beach (1867-1944)

Amy Marcy Cheney, more famously known as Amy Beach, was an American composer and concert pianist from New Hampshire. Although she is not a household name among your average non-musician, she used to be a famous and widely-known name and is considered the first American woman to compose and publish a symphony.1 She was an incredibly gifted musician from toddlerhood and was even said to have started composing her own melodies at age 4.2 Despite disapproval from her mother, who was fearful that the stigma associated with musical performers would tarnish her daughter’s upper-class reputation,3 Beach became a successful touring pianist. Her mother’s hesitancy was not unfounded, since she likely knew the hardships that Beach would face as a woman entering the compositional and performance world. Women composers weren’t listened to or respected and women performers weren’t taken seriously. People of Beach’s time in America were fearful of the female composer. As composer Antonín Dvořák stated, “ladies have not the creative power”4 to composer good music. The commonly held view was that women should just stick to performing pretty songs if they were musically gifted. The “scientific”5 art of composition should be left to the men, who, unlike women, won’t allow their emotions to get in the way of this very mathematical and precise art form. If you can’t tell, I’m rolling my eyes very hard right now.

Beach married Henry H.A. Beach when she was 18 and continued to pursue her musical education. Her husband, although supportive of her compositional pursuits, patronizingly feared that formal lessons would “change her creative voice”,6 so she threw herself into rigorous self-study of music theory and composition. She went on to compose over 150 published works, including cantatas, concertos, church music, symphonies, chamber music, choral music, and numerous art songs set to Shakespearean texts.7

In 1894, Beach published her first symphony, titled Gaelic Symphony, which drew on Irish folk melodies and was inspired by some of Dvořák’s compositional styles. The symphony premiered in 1896 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Emil Paur BOOK. and was met with widespread acclaim and backhandedly positive reviews. As a New York Times critic stated, “This symphony shows that composition is not beyond the grasp of the feminine mind.”8 Another critic from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that “there is not a little strong writing, manful, one might call it, in which instruments are handled with confidence and authority.”9 These reviews can’t seem to separate the sex of the composer from how they listen to it. In Austin Latchett’s review in the Kansas City Journal, he just tells on himself about how unable he is to listen to a woman’s work without judging it differently than he would a man’s:

 “There may be no logical reason why women should not write as good music as men; but it is a fact that they have not written so brilliantly, so profoundly nor so prolifically as men have. They are almost unknown in the symphonic world. Presented anonymously, there would probably be no one to suspect that yesterday’s symphony was the work of a woman; but knowing it to be such, it is but natural that some of its most distinctive beauties should be directly associated with its feminine origin.”10

These reviews are obviously steeped in misogyny but they bring up an interesting point – what is it that makes music “feminine” and “masculine”? In my opinion, it’s a societal and cultural-based answer, but that’s for another blog post. Although her works aren’t as commonly performed these days, Beach stands as an inspirational figure for women in music everywhere. It’s important to acknowledge that if she were not white and upper-class, she would never have gotten as far as she did in the compositional world. Still, seeing a female symphonic composer clearly made a lot of male musicians uncomfortable, and that’s something that makes me smile to read about. 

 

 

 

1 Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Amy Marcy Beach”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Sep. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Amy-Marcy-Beach. Accessed 5 November 2023.

2 Ibid.

3 Robin, William. “Amy Beach, a Pioneering American Composer, Turns 150.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Sept. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/arts/music/amy-beach-women-american-composer.html. 

4 Ibid.

Ibid.

6 Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Amy Marcy Beach”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Sep. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Amy-Marcy-Beach. Accessed 5 November 2023.

8 Jenkins, Walter S. The Remarkable Mrs. Beach, American Composer: A Biographical Account Based on Her Diaries, Letters, Newspaper Clippings, and Personal Reminiscences. Harmonie Park Press, 1997.

Émile Petitot’s Exploitation of Indigenous Peoples

CW: Sexual assault/pedophilia 

French missionary Father Émile Petitot spent his life researching the Indigenous tribes of Northern Canada. An ordained minister, he was actually never trained as an ethnographer, nor did he study ethnomusicology.1 Petitot traveled from France to stay with the Inuvialuit chief, Noulloumallik Innonarana, where he researched Indigenous music, culture, and languages.2 He lived and worked in Canada until the end of the 19th century.3

Above is an example of Petitot’s transcriptions of Indigenous music, similar to Densmore and other ethnographers of the time who attempted to box this music into Western notation. Since he most likely didn’t have the means to record the songs, it does make sense that he attempted to notate them in a way that can be interpreted later, but it is still a frustratingly white-washed attempt at cultural preservation. Many of the Inuvialuit peoples were extremely mistrustful of Petitot and believed he may be carrying foreign diseases, but he still recorded that they were “hospitable” people.4 Petitot had a fascination with what he called “Eskimos” in Canada and wrote an entire book about them (Le Grands Esquimeuax)FOOTNORE INUV. His obsession with imposing himself and his religion on these people reeks of colonization and exoticization. 

His exploitative nature went even darker than this, however, and he took advantage of his position sexually as well. He was said to have had sexual relations with many of the young indigenous people while he was staying with and studying different tribes.5 He had a history of sexually assaulting young people and was fired from a previous church job for having sexual relations with a young boy servant.6 Some records state that he attempted self-circumcision as a means to quell his desires, but he was clearly unsuccessful in his attempts and continued to harm and take advantage of young Indigenous people. He was said to have numerous “bouts of insanity” and mental health issues, and this may be the reason he has many inconsistencies in his research. 7 He had a history of paranoia and once became so paranoid of being murdered by Indigenous tribes that he abandoned all his possessions and ran for it.8 Whatever mental health disorders Petitot may have been suffering with, that is absolutely no excuse for the atrocities he committed. While some of his work may be useful in the world of ethnographic research, his legacy is not one to be praised or celebrated.

1 “Father Émile Petitotback.” Inuvialuit Pitquisiit Inuuniarutait, www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/wiki_pages/Father%20%20%C3%89mile%20Petitot. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.

3. Lévy, J. (2014). Éros et tabou. sexualité et genre chez amérindiens et les inuit. Recherches Amérindiennes Au Québec, 44(2), 170-174. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/éros-et-tabou-sexualité-genre-chez-amérindiens/docview/1681918022/se-2

4 “Father Émile Petitotback.” Inuvialuit Pitquisiit Inuuniarutait, www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/wiki_pages/Father%20%20%C3%89mile%20Petitot. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.

5 Lévy, J. (2014). Éros et tabou. sexualité et genre chez amérindiens et les inuit. Recherches Amérindiennes Au Québec, 44(2), 170-174. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/éros-et-tabou-sexualité-genre-chez-amérindiens/docview/1681918022/se-2

6 John S. Moir, “PETITOT, ÉMILE,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed October 27, 2023, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/petitot_emile_14E.html.

7 Honigmann, John J. “Emile Fortuné Stanislas Joseph Petitot Encyclopedia Arctica 15: Biographies.” Dartmouth College Library, collections.dartmouth.edu/arctica-beta/html/EA15-56.html. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023. 

8 Ibid.

H.T. Burleigh – Life and Legacy

 

Harry Thacker Burleigh (Photo by Carl Van Vechten, Courtesy Van Vechten Trust)

Harry Thacker Burleigh, better known as H.T. Burleigh, was the first and most influential Black composer to rise to large success post- Civil War. He was widely known for his perservation and arrangemtn of traditional Black spirituals and plantation songs. Without his work, most likely most of the songs that come to mind when we think of “spirituals” would be lost in the past. A singer and composer as well as an arranger, Burleigh composed more than 300 works.1 His work was hugely influential and brought Black music to the Western classical music stage for the first time.

Born on December 2, 1866 in Erie, Pennsylvania, Burleigh showed an early passion and talent for music. He grew up learning these spirituals and folk songs from his maternal grandmother and singing in the church choir. However, he was unable to afford formal musical training until 1892, when he attended the National Conservatory of Music in New York City.2  During his time there, he studied under and work closely with composer Antonín Dvořák, who was director of the conservatory.3 This relationship was very influential in fostering Burleigh’s love of spirituals and folk songs. Burleigh was dedicated to preserving the traditional flavor and sprit of these songs, and Dvořák was supportive of this. Dvořák was so inspired by this musical tradition that he wrote themes inspired by many of Burleigh’s melodies, for example in his “From the New World” Symphony no. 9 in E minor.4 Burleigh was an incredibly accomplished musician despite being discriminate against every step of the way. A popular baritone singer, he sang as the soloist at St. George’s Church for 50 years and was the soloist at Temple Emanuel for 25 years.5 He even sang at a command performance for King Edward VI of England and received an honorary Doctorate of Music from Harvard and Masters of Music from Atlanta University. He was the first Black American to serve on the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers board of directors, and received the Spingarn Acheivement Medal in 1917 from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.6  I mention all these accomplishments because I believe it is important to spotlight Black Americans such as H.T. Burleigh who paved the way for so many others. His work brought Black music into the spotlight and made accessible to the average concert-goer for the first time. His arrangements of spirituals for solo voice were incredibly influential in American music – Burleigh, for the first time, brought Black music to the western classical music stage. He presented these spirituals as fine art songs, and Black music was more accessible to the concert world than ever before. While they strayed from their original performance style greatly, Burleigh was still dedicated to preserving the traditional roots and “flavor” of these songs in composed form.

Above is an example of Burleigh’s arrangement of one of the most famous spirituals arranged for solo voice, “Wade in de Water”. It’s important to note that Burleigh kept the original dialect in his arrangements, rather than completely Westernizing the songs for the classical stage. Burleigh was adamant about preserving the sacred nature of this musical tradition. As he states in the introduction of his 1917 “Negro Spriritauls Arranged for Solo Voice”,

“Their worth is weakened unless they are done impressively, for through all these songs there breathes a hope, a faith in the ultimate justice and brotherhood of man. The cadences of sorrow invariably turn ot joy, and the message is ever manifest that eventually deliverance from all that hinders and oppresses the soul will come, and man – every man – will be free.”  – H.T. Burleigh

 

1 Erickson, Shannon. “Harry Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949) •.” •, 19 May 2021, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/burleigh-harry-thacker-1866-1949/.

2 Bauer, Pat. “Harry Thacker Burleigh.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 8 Sept. 2023, www.britannica.com/biography/Harry-Thacker-Burleigh. 

3 Erickson, Shannon. “Harry Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949) •.” •, 19 May 2021, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/burleigh-harry-thacker-1866-1949/.

4 “H. T. Burleigh (1866-1949).” The Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200035730#:~:text=Harry%20Thacker%20Burleigh%20played%20a,adaptations%20of%20African%2DAmerican%20spirituals. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.

5 Bauer, Pat. “Harry Thacker Burleigh.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 8 Sept. 2023, www.britannica.com/biography/Harry-Thacker-Burleigh. 

6 Erickson, Shannon. “Harry Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949) •.” •, 19 May 2021, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/burleigh-harry-thacker-1866-1949/.

Leontyne Price and Racism in Opera

 

Leontyne Price made her Metropolitan Opera debut in January 1961 as Leonora in Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore, pictured here.

Leontyne Price is known as the first Black leading performer in opera. She was the first Black prina donna to gain an international reputation and become a singing superstar in the world of opera. Born as Mary Violet Leontyne Price on February 10, 1927, she grew up singing in the church choir and only decided to pursue music after she graduated from the College of Education and Industrial Arts, now Central State University.1 She then attended the Julliard School of Music and began her singing career on Broadway in 1952. She made her operatic debut in 1957 and continued traveling the world singing opera until 1985 when she switched to more recital work.2  Her role in Verdi’s Aida remains her best-known work, and she is widely considered the most stunning Aida this world will ever see (see video below). Price was an incredibly accomplished artist and received numerous awards, including 20 Grammys, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), the Kennedy Center Honor (1980), the National Medal of the Arts (1985), and is a National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honoree. 3 Today, at age 96, she continues to inspire upcoming generations of Black classical musicians.

I found this snippet of a newspaper from the Kansas Whip in 1955 titled “Whites Help Welcome Negro Soprano Home”, describing the large mixed-race crowd that greeted Price for a benefit concert in her birth town of Laurel, Mississippi. 4 I found this title to be extremely diminishing of Price’s accomplishments as an artist – according to the snippet, it was the largest gathering of White and Black people in Laurel’s history. To title this as “Whites Help Welcome Negro Soprano Home” is centering White people once again in a story that should be centering Black voices and celebrating Price’s artistry and accomplishments. It reminded me of the conversations we have had in class about White saviorism and White guilt – once again, White people are making themselves the heroes of someone else’s story.

Article published in the Kansas Whip in Topeka, Kansas on April 1, 1955

We can only begin to comprehend the struggles that Price had to overcome as a Black woman in the opera industry, which is a racist and almost exclusively White-dominated industry to this day. Take the Met, for example. With a board of 45, only 3 managing directors are Black.5 Bass-baritone Morris Robinson said in a New York Times article about representation in opera: “In 20 years, I’ve never been hired by a Black person; I’ve never been directed by a Black person; I’ve never had a Black C.E.O. of a company; I’ve never had a Black president of the board; I’ve never had a Black conductor,” Mr. Robinson said. “I don’t even have Black stage managers. None, not ever, for 20 years.”6

Representation in opera is still a huge issue today and racism is prevalent, especially considering the mostly old and white audience that opera attracts. Hopefully, as time goes on, we will center Black artists in the world of opera. Artists like Leontyne Price are an inspiration, but also a reminder of how far we still have to go to achieve equity in the world of opera.  

“I am here and you will know that I am the best and will hear me. The colour of my skin or the kink of my hair or the spread of my mouth has nothing to do with what you are listening to.” – Leontyne Price

 

   

1 Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Leontyne Price.” Encyclopedia Britannica, October 3, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leontyne-Price.

5 Barone, Joshua. “Opera Can No Longer Ignore Its Race Problem.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/opera-race-representation.html.

Colombian Vallenato Music

While browsing through the National Jukebox database, I came across a recording titled “Columbian Polka” that struck my interest. Listen to the recording here:

https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-766603/

I was originally interested in this because I assumed that the music would be played by Colombian musicians, or have a Colombian composer, or have at least something to do with Colombia the country. However, after some digging, I realized that this is just the name of the record company. 1 Columbia with a ‘U’, like the District of Columbia, not Colombia with an ‘O’, like the country! I had a hard time finding any information about the composer, Thomas H. Rollingson, except that he was an American composer who died in the 1920s.2 After I had a laugh about my silly spelling mistake, I became curious about how the Germanic tradition of Polka music became a staple in Mexican-American and Colombian musical traditions. I fell down a rabbit hole researching Colombian Polka music and its origin. 

As I discovered, there seems to be some disagreement about how central and eastern European salon dances like the waltz, the polka, and the schottische ended up so heavily influencing an entire culture’s musical canon. However, the commonly held view is that it was a matter of trading and immigration from Germany and what is now the Czech Republic to Northern Mexico and Texas in the late 18th century. 3
This is how the Mexican Tejano folk music tradition was born, but I am specifically interested in Colombian folk music, which I don’t feel has gotten as much of a spotlight. Colombian polka-inspired folk music is called Vallenato and is believed to have begun in a similar fashion to Mexican-American Tejano, with German merchant and trading ships introducing Colombians to the accordion.4  Meaning “born in the valley”, it gets its name from the city of Valledupar, where the traveling, typically lower-class minstrels first made it popular. 5 Vallenato is a combination of three instruments – a small drum called a
cajav, a percussion instrument called a guacharaca, and the German accordion.6 While Italian and French accordions have been used in Vallenato music, the German Hohner brand diatonic accordion matches closest with the typical vocal timbre and range of the Colombian vocalists. 7 It should be noted that Vallenato appears to be an almost entirely male-dominated vocal style, which is a conversation for another blog post but is still worth noting. 

While this post may be disconnected from the source I originally chose, I think it’s still valuable to give a spotlight to a musical tradition that has gone overlooked. I will leave you with a fantastic recording of Mauricio de Santis performing at a Vallenato festival in 2015.

3 Contretas, Felix. “How Mexico Learned To Polka” In NPR Music, March 11, 2015 Accessed September 27, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2015/03/11/392141073/how-mexico-learned-to-polka

4 Martinez, Juan. “The Surprising Origin of Colombian Folk Music.” BBC Travel, BBC, 25 Feb. 2022 www.bbc.com/travel/article/20180208-the-surprising-origin-of-colombian-folk-music 

7 Ibid.

Haney, Peter. “Tejano Music.” In The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2023. Accessed September 27, 2023. https://latinoamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1329993.

Natalie Curtis – Intention vs. Impact

Natalie Curtis Burlin (1875 – 1921) was an American ethnomusicologist and musician whose work centered around preserving and archiving African-American and Native American music, art, and culture. In her 1913 article “The Perpetuating of Indian Art”, she appeals to the American governmental systems that are trying to erase Native culture altogether by assimilation into Western culture. While Curtis’ intentions were likely to help the Native American peoples, her argument against assimilation focuses largely on how Indian culture benefits white people. In the opening sentence of her article, she states:

“Those who have worked among the American Indians, and have learned to respect the thought, the art, and many of the religious ideas of this most interesting people, must feel a sense of almost personal gratitude to the present Secretary of the Interior for having appointed a Supervisor of Music in the department of Indian Education, whose duties shall be to ‘record native Indian music, and arrange it for use in the Indian schools.’”1

While Curtis continuously raves about the beauty and importance of Native Culture throughout the article, her argument always boils down to this: since Native culture is so beautiful, we can’t let it vanish completely because we can learn from them to help better ourselves and our Western culture. 

This is a common theme among supposedly well-meaning American ethnomusicologists at this time and throughout history. Ethnomusicologists like Alice Fletcher and Natalie Curtis tended to use language that is insensitive and dehumanizing towards the cultures they were studying. Fletcher was of the belief that “education was of primary importance for Native Americans, as it would ease assimilation into ‘civilized’ culture.”2 Curtis referred to Native Americans as “underdeveloped”, “primitive”, and “noble dogs”. 

Not to say that Curtis didn’t accomplish good things in her work – she used her personal relationship with Theodore Roosevelt to aid in the removal of a longtime ban on Native American music, 3and she strongly advocated against the erasure and white-washing of Native culture. Whatever the intentions, it’s important to analyze and acknowledge ethnomusicologists of the past so we can recognize where they failed and do better in the future. What we can learn from Curtis and others is that It’s important to ask yourself, whose betterment is the work intended for?

 

2 Haynes, Caitlin T, and Katherine Crowe. “Alice Cunningham Fletcher and Francis LaFlesche in the Transcription Center.” Smithsonian, 2023, transcription.si.edu/articles/alice-cunningham-fletcher-and-francis-la-flesche-transcription-center.

3 Curtis, N. (1919, Mar 05). MR. ROOSEVELT AND INDIAN MUSIC: A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE. Outlook (1893-1924), 399. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/magazines/mr-roosevelt-indian-music/docview/137007546/se-2

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Natalie Curtis Burlin”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Apr. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Natalie-Curtis-Burlin. Accessed 20 September 2023.