Active in Chicago during the first half of the twentieth century, Florence B. Price was an African American composer, pianist, organist and music teacher, and a central figure in the first generation of Black composers of art music in the US. Price's aesthetic engaged with Black music of the enslavement period, and her gendered racial identity deserves careful consideration, while her geography and era distinguish her trajectory from those of her European and Anglo-American counterparts. This Companion introduces readers to archives and sources on Price, the style and genre of her music, and her artistic communities, and reception. It contextualizes Price's music and life in relation to the sociocultural climate of her time, the Black classical scene to which she belonged, and the compositional aesthetics that informed her craft. It offers an alternative view of music's capacity to uplift and amplify underrepresented voices.
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Explores the career of this acclaimed African American woman composer, and her distinctive sociocultural contexts, identity, and aesthetic.
List of Figures; List of Tables; List of Musical Examples; List of
Contributors; Acknowledgments; Chronology; Foreword Naomi André; Introduction
Samantha Ege and Alexandra Kori Hill; Part I. Archives and Sources:
1.
Listening for Florence 'Bea' Price Samantha Ege;
2. Hidden figures and Black
music historiography: Florence Price's story and Rae Linda Brown's
scholarship Carlene J. Brown and C. E. Aaron;
3. Price and the Black concert
tradition in the United States Louise Toppin; Part II. Genre and Style:
4.
New analytical approaches for Florence Price scholarship Jane Forner and
Ellie M. Hisama;
5. Reflections of Price in the mirror of her art songs
Minnita Daniel-Cox;
6. The concert spirituals: price as Griot-Composer
Elektra V. Carter;
7. The solo keyboard works Gwynne Kuhner Brown and Joe
Williams;
8. Price and the violin: between virtuosity and vernacularity R.
Larry Todd and Katharina Uhde;
9. Concertos and chamber works: The African
American idiom in texture and form Alexandra Kori Hill;
10. Symphonies to
tone poems Douglas W. Shadle; Part III. Community and Reception:
11. The
influence of Harry T. Burleigh Rae Linda Brown;
12. Black feminist bonds
between Florence Price, Marian Anderson, and Margaret Bonds Elizabeth
Durrant;
13. The critical reception of Florence Price Lucy Caplan;
14. When
things don't fall apart: the myth of Black cultural rediscovery and the
afterlife of Florence Price Tammy L. Kernodle; Select Bibliography; Select
Discography.
Samantha Ege is an award-winning musicologist and internationally recognized concert pianist. She is the author of South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago's Classical Music Scene (2024). Her albums spotlight underrepresented composers, and encompass collaborations with Odaline de la Martinez, Castle of our Skins, and the BBC Philharmonic. Dr Alexandra Kori Hill is a musicologist, editor, and freelance writer. She specializes in American culture, Black composers, and music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kori is the assistant editor for I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, powered by American Composers Forum, and serves as the 20252026 Provostal Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Sirp, and program notes for major American orchestras.
