Music
1887–1953 · American
American Romantic — the Chicago Black Renaissance
Florence Price was the first Black American woman to have a symphony played by a major American orchestra, when the Chicago Symphony gave her First Symphony in 1933. She fused European symphonic form with spirituals, the blues, and the syncopated dance rhythms of the juba. Much of her music was lost after her death and was rediscovered in 2009 in an abandoned house south of Chicago, setting off a revival that has put her back in concert programmes worldwide.
A four-movement symphony in E minor whose third movement is a juba dance, played by the Chicago Symphony in 1933 (1932)
Symphony No. 1 in E minor — the first symphony by a Black American woman performed by a major American orchestra, at the Century of Progress World's Fair
Her arrangement of the spiritual that Marian Anderson chose to close her Easter Sunday recital at the Lincoln Memorial (1939)
My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord
A 1932 piano work in one movement that won the Wanamaker Foundation competition alongside her first symphony (1932)
Piano Sonata in E minor — the Wanamaker prizes of 1932 launched her career
A single-movement piano concerto in D minor, in the 'one movement' form she favoured, premiered by the composer in 1934 (1934)
Piano Concerto in One Movement
A symphony in C minor completed in 1940 and lost for nearly seventy years until manuscripts turned up in an abandoned Illinois house (1940)
Symphony No. 3 in C minor — rediscovered in 2009 and now widely recorded
A late set of three piano miniatures evoking the sugar-cane thickets of the American South (1953)
Dances in the Canebrakes — three pieces, later orchestrated by William Grant Still
A violin concerto in D major of 1939, one of two she wrote, left unperformed for decades (1939)
Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major