Born: 9 April 1887, United States
Died: 3 June 1953
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Florence Beatrice Smith
This bio is reproduced in full with kind permission from Wise Music Classical.
The discovery of dozens of scores in an Illinois attic in 2009 led to renewed interest in the music of Florence Price, performances and recordings, and critical acclaim. Her music combines a rich and romantic symphonic idiom with the melodic intimacy and emotional intensity of African-American spirituals. As Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker, her music “deserves to be widely heard.”
In 1932 her Sonata in E Minor for piano won First Prize in the Wanamaker music contest, with overall honors awarded to her first symphony. Frederick Stock, music director of the Chicago Symphony, became a supporter of her music and programmed the work. Price became the first African-American woman to have a work performed by a major U.S. orchestra when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed it in 1933. Though she composed hundreds of pieces, her catalogue did not enter the twentieth-century mainstream canon, and many of her works, including two violin concertos, could have vanished if not uncovered during the renovation of her abandoned home.
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887, Price received early training on the piano from her mother, a music teacher. She went on to attend the New England Conservatory, one of few higher musical institutions accepting African-American students. There, she studied composition and counterpoint with George Chadwick and Frederick Converse, and graduated in 1906 with both an artistic diploma in organ and a teaching certificate. After years teaching music privately and serving as the head of the music department at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia, Price returned to Little Rock, then moved to Chicago, where she advanced her musical studies under Arthur Olaf Andersen, Carl Busch, Wesley LaViolette, and Leo Sowerby.
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
1887 April 9 Born Florence Beatrice Smith in Little Rock, Arkansas, to dentist James H. Smith (1835-1910) and Florence Gulliver
1897 Attended the Sisters of Mercy Convent School in Little Rock
1902 Graduated from Capitol Hill School in Little Rock as valedictorian
1903-1906 Attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where she studied composition and counterpoint with George Chadwick and Frederick Converse
Graduated with an artist diploma in organ and a teaching certificate
1906 Taught at the Cotton Plant Academy in Woodruff County, Arkansas
1907-1910 Taught at Shorter College in North Little Rock, Arkansas
1910-1912 Head of the music department at Clark University in Atlanta, Georgia
1912 September 25 Married Thomas Jewell Price (divorced 1931) and relocated to Little Rock where she continued to teach piano and began composing many instructional pieces for piano that she published
1915 Birth of son Thomas C. Price (died 1920s)
1917 Birth of daughter Florence Louise (Florence Robinson)
1921 Birth of daughter Edith Price
1920s Denied membership to the Arkansas State Music Teachers Association
1926 May Won second place in Opportunity’s Second Annual Contest for Negro Writers, funded by Casper Holtstein through Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life, for her suite for piano, In the Land O’Cotton
1927 Relocated with her family to Chicago, Illinois, where she became involved in the Chicago Music Association
circa 1927 Attended the American Conservatory of Music and the Chicago Musical College where she studied with Arthur Olaf Anderson, Carl Busch, Wesley LaViolette, and Leo Sowerby
1928 Publication of her work for piano, At the Cotton Gin. New York, G. Schirmer, Inc.
circa 1931 Published radio jingles under the pseudonym VeeJay and worked as a silent film organist in theaters throughout Chicago
1932 October Won two first prizes in the Wanamaker National Composition Competition: for her Sonata in E minor in the symphonic category and her Sonata for Piano in the piano composition category
1932 December Katherine Dunham’s dance troop premiered a work based on Price’s composition Fantasie Nègre no. 1 in E minor, with Margaret Bonds as pianist
1933 June 15 Premiered Symphony no. 1 in E minor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra directed by Frederick Stock
1934 Premiered Piano Concerto with the Chicago Women’s Symphony Orchestra and piano soloist Margaret Bonds
1935 Invited to perform a piano recital of her own compositions in Little Rock at the segregated Dunbar High School
1939 April 9 Marian Anderson performed Price’s spiritual arrangement of “My Soul’s Been Anchored in de Lord” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for more than 75,000 people
circa 1940 Premiered Symphony no. 3 with the Michigan Symphony Orchestra and performed her Piano Concerto to a standing ovation
1943 November 6 Wrote to Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, requesting he examine samples of her work
1950 Commissioned by Sir John Barberolie, an orchestra conductor in Manchester, England, to compose an overture based on American spirituals
1953 February 18 Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed an arrangement of her song “Two Little Negro Dances: Rabbit Foot and Ticklin’ Toes” on WGN-TV
1953 June 3 Died of cardiac arrest in Chicago
1964 Price Elementary School in Chicago named in her honor
1978 Singer Leontyne Price performed songs by Florence Price at the White House for President Jimmy Carter
2010 Re-orchestration of Price’s Piano Concerto based on her original piano sketches by Center for Black Music Research composer Trevor Weston
2018 Posthumously inducted into the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame
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