Three Little Negro Dances (Suite of Dances)

Composer: PRICE, Florence
  • This set of three short intermediate piano pieces was originally published by Theodore Presser in 1933. Price also created a piano duet version of the set.1
  • Price enjoyed writing piano teaching pieces: she wrote repertoire for young piano students, as well as for organ students and violin students. Publication of teaching pieces was a significant part of her income in the 1930s.2
  • Price had earned a Piano Teacher’s Diploma from the New England Conservatory during her studies there.3 She was particularly active as a piano teacher when she lived in Little Rock, Arkansas, between her graduation from the conservatory in 1906 and her move to Chicago in 1927.4
  • *Suite of Dances is the name for the fully orchestrated version of Three Little Negro Dances (date of composition unknown). The piece is among Price’s most well-known works.5

Contents

  1. Hoe Cake 
  2. Rabbit Foot 
  3. Ticklin’ Toes 

Sources

  1. “3 Little Negro Dances (Price, Florence),” IMSLP, accessed June 8, 2021, https://imslp.org/wiki/3_Little_Negro_Dances_(Price%2C_Florence). 
  2. Rae Linda Brown, The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020), ebook.
  3. 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.
  4. Brown, The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price.
  5. Douglas W. Shadle, Notes in accompanying booklet, Florence Beatrice Price: Songs of the Oak performed by the Wurttemberg Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Jeter, Naxos 8.559920, 2022, compact disc.

Cut IDs

22512 24982