{"id":17257,"date":"2021-02-21T20:43:33","date_gmt":"2021-02-21T20:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicuntold.com\/?p=17257"},"modified":"2021-02-23T20:49:32","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T20:49:32","slug":"dr-michael-cooper-uncover-florence-prices-preludes-set-for-piano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicuntold.com\/index.php\/dr-michael-cooper-uncover-florence-prices-preludes-set-for-piano\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Michael Cooper uncover Florence Price’s PRELUDES set for PIANO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Michael Cooper uncover Florence Price’s PRELUDES set for PIANO<\/strong><\/p>\n

Florence B. Price<\/p>\n

(1887-1953)<\/p>\n

PRELUDES<\/strong><\/p>\n

for Piano<\/p>\n

edited by<\/p>\n

John Michael Cooper<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

CONTENTS<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Foreword and Critical Report………………………………………………………………………………. iii<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Preludes………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1<\/p>\n

No. 1. Allegro moderato……………………………………………………………………………. 1<\/p>\n

No. 2. Andantino cantabile………………………………………………………………………… 5<\/p>\n

No. 3. Allegro molto…………………………………………………………………………………. 9<\/p>\n

No. 4 [\u201cWistful\u201d]. Allegretto con tenerezza……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 14<\/p>\n

No. 5. Allegro………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 18<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FLORENCE PRICE:\u00a0PRELUDES<\/em><\/p>\n

Florence B. Price (1887-1953)\u00a0achieved a level of renown that defied all expectations for an African American woman in her day.[1]\u00a0Having studied at the New England Conservatory from 1903 to 1906, she pursued a career that included teaching at Shorter College (Little Rock) and heading the Music Department at Clark College (Atlanta). After moving to Chicago in 1927 to pursue a better, safer life than anything possible in the virulently racist U.S. South, she immersed herself that city\u2019s bustling cultural and educational life, becoming actively involved with the National Association of Negro Musicians and studying music and a variety of subjects at American Conservatory, Chicago Teachers College, Central YMCA College, the Lewis Institute, and the University of Chicago.[2]\u00a0Today she is celebrated as the first African American woman to have her music performed by a major U.S. orchestra (her First Symphony was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as part of the World\u2019s Fair\u00a0in 1933), but her fame spread far beyond than that, and lasted much longer. The following two decades witnessed performances of her music by at least nine other orchestras, as well as by some of the world\u2019s greatest soloists and chamber players.\u00a0\u00a0More than a\u00a0decade after her death her reputation was still so great that the City of Chicago Public Schools named the Florence B. Price Elementary School after her in 1964. That school closed in 2012, but the same building still bears her name: the Florence B. Price Twenty-First Century Academy for Excellence.<\/p>\n

And through it all she composed. Florence Beatrice Price penned hundreds of compositions\u00a0of astonishing richness and breadth which gave voice to a musical imagination that would not be stilled despite the limitations that her world would have imposed on her because of her race and her sex. Her reputation has been steadily broadening in recent decades thanks to dedicated and brilliant scholarly work by Rae Linda Brown, Barbara Garvey Jackson, Eileen Southern, Helen Walker-Hill, Samantha Ege, and Douglas Schadle, among others.[3]<\/p>\n

But if Price the composer never had to be rediscovered, the same could not be said of her music itself\u00a0\u2013\u00a0simply because she published only a small portion of what she wrote. That began to change when her elder daughter, Florence Price Robinson (1917-75), donated a significant body of her music manuscripts and biographical materials to the University of Arkansas Libraries (Fayetteville), and the situation further improved with that library\u2019s acquisition of a sizeable \u201caddendum\u201d in the late 1980s. Another major development was the discovery of a sizeable trove of music manuscripts and other documents in an abandoned house in St. Anne, Illinois, in 2009\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a recovery that eventually met with major media coverage. Florence Price, having already during her lifetime overcome the forcible silencing that was her lot as an African American and a woman in a profoundly racist and sexist world, was now in a position to have her voice heard again.<\/p>\n

The present edition owes its existence to the generosity of the heirs of Florence B. Price, to the Special Collections division of the University of Arkansas Libraries (Fayetteville), and to G. Schirmer\u2019s acquisition of the rights to Price\u2019s complete catalog in 2018.\u00a0 Thanks are due also to David Flachs and Peter Martin at G. Schirmer, Inc. To Florence Price advocate and pianist extraordinaire Lara Downes I am grateful for her encouragement to pursue these editions. Finally, I thank my family for their patience and support.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Published here for the first time,\u00a0Price\u2019s\u00a0Preludes\u00a0<\/em>are her first major set for piano\u00a0\u2013 and they are not without their enigmas. For one, only one of the autographs sources bears Price\u2019s name, a rare occurrence in her papers. For another, the earliest manuscript version (now surviving as two separate autographs, identified as sources AS 2 and AS 3 below<\/strong>[4]) is dated June, 1926, but neither it nor the only complete autograph that survives intact (source AS 1) names Price as author. Most curious of all, that autograph is found not with most of the remainder of Price\u2019s musical estate in the Special Collections division of the University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, but rather in the papers of Margaret Bonds (1913-72) at the Booth Family Center for Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Georgetown University Libraries (Washington, D.C.). Because Price collaborated with Bonds on several projects in 1932-34, lived in the Bonds home after her separation from her second husband, P.D. Arnett, in late 1933 or early 1934, and had no sustained interaction with Bonds after the younger composer\u2019s move to New York in 1939, this autograph was probably written between 1932 and 1939. But source AS 1 clearly served as the basis of a separate autograph for No. 4 titled \u201cWistful\u201d (source AS 4, below), and that manuscript survives in a brown-paper folder bearing the address \u201c4404 Vincennes Ave.,\u201d where Price lived with Arnett in 1931-1933\/34. Finally, source AS 1 is written on PHILADA paper, which is rare in Price\u2019s manuscripts after 1932. The complete set may thus be tentatively dated 1926-32.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The\u00a0Preludes\u00a0<\/em>are also unique among Price\u2019s sets for piano solo in that they are her only set of \u201cabsolute\u201d rather than characteristic or programmatic pieces. All of Price\u2019s later sets bear descriptive collective titles and movement titles such as\u00a0Village Scenes<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cChurch Spires in Moonlight,\u201d \u201cA Shaded Lane,\u201d and \u201cIn the Park\u201d) or\u00a0Snapshots<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cLake Mirror,\u201d \u201cMoon behind a Cloud,\u201d and \u201cFlame\u201d).<\/strong>[5]\u00a0But the lack of a descriptive collective title for the\u00a0Preludes\u00a0<\/em>should by no means be taken to indicate that they are abstract, abstruse, or (least of all) bland. The existence of No. 4 as a separate work titled simply \u201cWistful\u201d clearly assigns a distinct and melancholy character for that movement, and the other movements all possess sharply contrasting characters as well as imaginative and evocative music. No. 1 as a whole is conspicuously impetuous, alternating between the dotted main theme in C major, fanfare-like figures, and a lyrical second theme; No. 2 is dominated by a leisurely, songlike theme but includes a middle section of greater urgency; and No. 3 seems to take the character of the middle section of No. 2 as its point of departure. Nos. 4 and 5 form a complementary pair in G minor, moving from an exploration of Tchaikovsky-like melancholy to a rapid and concentrated technical study to bring the set to an exciting close.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 John Michael Cooper<\/p>\n

Denton, Texas, 21 May 2020<\/p>\n

About This Edition<\/p>\n

Four separate autographs survive for the\u00a0Preludes<\/em>:<\/p>\n