Symphony No. 1 in e minor

• Florence Price composed her First Symphony in Chicago in 1931-2.¹ She submitted it, with several other works, to the 1932 Rodman Wanamaker Symphony Competition, which was sponsored by the NANM (National Association of Negro Musicians). Price’s symphony won first prize and she received an award of $500.²
• The publicity around the Wanamaker Competition win caught the attention of Frederick Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who offered to premiere Price’s First Symphony. This marked the first time a symphony by an African-American woman was performed by a major American orchestra.³
  • The premiere of this Price’s First Symphony took place during Chicago’s Century of Progress International Exhibition (World’s Fair) on June 15, 1933.⁴
• In the place of the traditional symphonic third-movement scherzo or minuet, Price opted for an African-American vernacular dance for her symphony’s third movement: Juba. She would go on to do the same in her Third and Fourth symphonies.⁵
• Florence Price’s First Symphony uses themes reminiscent of African-American spirituals, without quoting one directly.⁶ Dvořák did the same in the Largo from his “New World” Symphony. 

“We are waking up to the fact pregnant with possibilities that we already have a folk music in the Negro spirituals—music which is potent, poignant, compelling. It is simple heart music and therefore powerful.”

Florence Price⁷

1. Rae Linda Brown, “Price [née Smith], Florence Bea(trice),” Grove Music Online (March 30, 2020), accessed June 24, 2021,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-90000367402.
2. Douglas Shadle, liner notes to Florence Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 4, Fort Smith Symphony, John Jeter, Naxos 8.559827, CD, 2019.
3. Ibid.
4. “Module 1: Price’s Symphony in E Minor,” UNC Chapel Hill, accessed April 8, 2022, https://music.unc.edu/module-1-prices-symphony-no-1-in-e-minor/.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Quoted in Ibid.