Piano Quintet in a minor

• We don’t have a record of exactly when Price composed this work, but stylistically, it seems to fit with her mid-1930s style.¹
• The third movement of this piece is a juba, an African-American vernacular dance form. Price frequently used this form in the place traditionally assigned to a scherzo in classical four-movement forms.²

“In all of my works which have been done in the sonata form with Negroid idiom, I have incorporated a juba as one of the several movements because it seems to me to be no more impossible to conceive of Negroid music devoid of the spiritualistic theme on the one hand than strongly syncopated rhythms of the juba on the other.” – Florence Price³

• This is one of the Price works that was rediscovered in 2019. The manuscript is now housed at the University of Arkansas. It was published in 2017 as part of a series overseen by Price scholar Barbara Garvey Jackson.⁴
• Read more about the Catalyst Quartet’s project to record major string quartet literature of Florence Price and other Black composers.

1. Paul Laraia, ”Album Notes,” Uncovered Vol. 2: Florence Price, Catalyst Quartet, Michelle Cann, Azica 71346, CD, 2022.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Mervyn Cooke, liner notes to American Quintets, Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, Chandos 20224, CD, 2021.