Today in 1887 (or, by some accounts, 1888), the birthday of a composer who’s really only now getting the acclaim she deserves: Florence Price.
It’s a complicated story, but fortunately there’s great music all the way through.
Price grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas; her father was a dentist, her mother was a musician.
Her era was not one where many people would have considered a Black woman a serious composer.
When she studied music at a conservatory in Boston, in fact, she claimed that she was actually from Mexico to avoid the worst discrimination.
Later, Price settled in Chicago, in an era known as Chicago’s Black Renaissance.
This is when she started writing some of her most celebrated works, symphonies and other compositions that drew on rich harmonics and sometimes from Black folk musical traditions.
In 1933, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed her Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, the first time one of the world’s major symphonies had performed music written by a Black woman.
In 1939, when Marian Anderson gave her famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial, she performed Price’s work “My Soul’s Been Anchored In The Lord.”
But by the end of Price’s life in 1953, she was still relatively unknown.
That only really started to change in 2009, when the people who bought Price’s old summer house in Illinois found boxes of her unpublished pieces.
Over the last 15 years, Price’s fans – fellow composers, musicians, scholars and even young music students – have been trying to share her rich body of work with the world.
It’s another fascinating chapter in Price’s story, but the best part of that story is the music.
So if you haven’t heard Florence Price, go check some of her music out today.
Today in 2001, the launch of iTunes, which has been a big deal since the pre-streaming days of digital media.
Here’s a wild note about iTunes: the end user license agreement for the service has included this rule:
“You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture, or production of nuclear, missile, or chemical or biological weapons.”
As Her Music Is Reconsidered, a Composer Turns 135. Again. (New York Times)
8 Ridiculous EULA Clauses You May Have Already Agreed To (MakeUseOf)
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