Ethiopia’s Shadow in America

• Price composed this orchestral tone poem in 1932.¹
• This work earned Price an Honorable Mention in the Rodman Wanamaker Competition. Her Symphony No. 1 in e minor won the competition in 1932.²
• Price provided a program for this work, outlining a three-part structure:³

I – The Arrival of the Negro in America when first brought here as a slave. 

II – His Resignation and Faith.  

III – His Adaptation, A fusion of his native and acquired impulses.

Florence Price’s program for Ethiopia’s Shadow in Africa⁴

1. Rae Kinda 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.
2. Aaron Horne, Brass Music by Black Composers: A Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 216.
3. Douglas W. Shadle, liner notes to Price: Symphony No. 3 / The Mississippi River / Ethiopia’s Shadow in America, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, John Jeter, Naxos 8.559897, CD, 2021.
4. Ibid.