Born in Little Rock, AR, 9 April 1887
Died in Chicago, IL, 3 June 1953
Born Florence Beatrice Smith
- Price was the first African-American woman to achieve national recognition as a composer.
- Price studied at the New England Conservatory, and was also a student of George Whitefield Chadwick.
- Price’s Symphony no. 1 in e minor won the Wanamaker Competition in 1932, which provided a premiere with the Chicago Symphony in 1933. This premiere constituted the first time a major American orchestra performed a work by an African-American woman.
- Price was especially prolific and successful as a composer of art songs.1
Florence Price website maintained by Price scholar and Karen Walwyn
Sources
- Rae Linda Brown, “Price [née Smith], Florence Bea(trice),” Grove Music Online (March 30, 2020), accessed June 8, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-90000367402.
Pieces
- Adoration
- Colonial Dance
- Concert Overture No. 1
- Concert Overture No. 2
- Dances in the Canebrakes
- Elfentanz
- Ethiopia’s Shadow in America
- Fantasie No. 1 in g minor
- Fantasie No. 2 in f-sharp minor
- Five Folksongs in Counterpoint
- Mississippi River
- Piano Concerto in One Movement
- Piano Quintet in a minor
- Quintet for Piano and Strings
- Songs of the Oak
- String Quartet in a minor
- String Quartet No. 1 in G Major
- Symphony No. 1 in e minor
- Symphony No. 3 in c minor
- Symphony No. 4 in d minor
- The Deserted Garden
- The Oak
- The Old Boatman
- Three Little Negro Dances (Suite of Dances)
- Thumbnail Sketches of a Day in the Life of a Washerwoman
- Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major