Although her well-known
spiritual “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord” was
performed by some of the most admired voices of her day,
it was Florence Beatrice Price’s “Symphony No. 1 in E
Minor” that brought her fame.
With it, she won the
Wanamaker Competition for symphonic composition, and
became the first African-American woman to have her
composition performed by a major U.S. orchestra when the
Chicago Symphony played it at the World’s Fair in 1933.
WILL-FM’s Roger Cooper
looks at the life and work of Price with his newest
Classically Black
production.
Price, who grew up in
Little Rock, Ark., and later lived and worked in
Chicago, composed more than 300 works. Her symphonies
and chamber works were famous for incorporating melodies
from Negro spirituals.
In the program, Cooper
interviews Rae Linda Brown, who has written a biography
of Price, The Heart of a Woman, scheduled to be
published by University of Illinois Press in spring
2007.
Brown said that accounts of
the World’s Fair performance described how beautiful
Price looked in her white gown. The audience applauded
her. “On some level she probably was aware, but mostly
she took it all in stride,” Brown said. “She was just
trying to work. She was self supporting, she was a
single mom, so this was in part about the money as it
was about artistic recognition.”
The program is being distributed by Public Radio International and will air on public radio stations across the country.
Classically
Black: Florence Beatrice Price
Listen
to this program