You're listening to KPBS midday edition. I'm Jade Hindmon and I'm Maureen Cavanaugh who decides what compositions get called classical music and who picks what orchestras play and what they don't play. Those questions have swirled around the rediscovery of several concertos and symphonies by 20th century composer Florence price prizes known as one of the first African-American composers to win national attention back in the 1930s. But it turns out that some of her most sophisticated works were never performed and almost lost prices. Little known works are now just being included in orchestral programs. Her Violin Concerto Number two will be performed this Saturday by the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus. Here's a sample. Joining me are Stephen Shick music director of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus. Steven welcome to the program. It's great to be back. Thank you Maureen and Douglas Sheetal is assistant professor of musicology at Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. And Douglas welcome to the program. Thanks it's great to be with you. Stephen what did you know about composer Florence price before programming her violin concerto number two. Well I have to say I'll confess that I knew relatively little. I knew the name as an important composer of the 20th century as an unheralded African-American woman composer. But it wasn't really until Alex Ross's piece in The New Yorker that I put two and two together and Alex asked in a roundabout way what orchestras would now champion this music. And I thought to myself at that point when I read the article well I know an orchestra. I am the music director of an orchestra and so I began listening intently and I was just blown away by what I heard. Now I'll be referencing Alex Ross's piece in The New Yorker a little bit later but first I want to go to Doug and have you tell us Doug this story about how some of Florence Price's compositions were actually literally saved in 2009 during the early 1950s. These are the last few years of Price's life she was living in a summer home in this town saint and Illinois and would spend some time there during the year with her family and then would spend some time back in Chicago. Well after she passed away in 1953 the house went to her daughter Florence and her husband Elmer. But then after she passed away the house fell into disrepair and no one in the family was really taking care of it. And it in essence was abandoned until this couple purchased the property and discovered all of these manuscripts that belonged to Florence price and had sat untouched. We think for nearly 30 years and they were searching for a home for it once they found it. Knowing that it was probably very important and it certainly was now a Floras price did receive some recognition during her lifetime for her music. Doug what kinds of music was she known for well she was known for several different kinds of music because she lived and worked in many different musical spaces in the industry. You might say so on the one hand she was known as a piano teacher and pedagogue. She also wrote a lot of music for the contralto Marian Anderson. They had a long and fruitful collaboration that lasted for about 20 years. And so Price wrote a number of arrangements of Negro spirituals for Anderson as well as art songs by poets like Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes. My whole life Anderson would record these pieces and perform them in recital. And this really got Price's name out into the open. Well then finally Pryce was known at various points in her career for writing orchestral music as you mentioned earlier. She was one of the first African-American women composers to earn any sort of national recognition in this field. And her first symphony was performed by the Chicago Symphony in 1933 and her third symphony was performed by an orchestra in Detroit in 1940. And although that orchestra was not major like the Chicago Symphony the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt attended that performance and then wrote about it later in her daily newspaper column and so it earned a kind of national recognition that way. So she was really living in a lot of different spaces at once to get her name before the public. Now back to that article in The New Yorker earlier this year that described how Florence Price's music was saved but it also delved into how price tried to get her music played and how she was rejected at times. It quotes a letter Pryce wrote to conductor Serge Koussevitzky in 1943 where she introduces herself right off the bat as having two handicaps. She says one she's a woman and the other quote I have some Negro blood unquote. Koussevitzky apparently never wrote back. I'd like to get your reactions to that letter Steve. Well I mean it's a sad sad thing to hear even at this historical distance. We reflect upon the you know the historical bias against African-American composers and women composers and by the way that continues to this day and so on one hand it's a good job in the guts too to the situation we find ourselves in today. And the other aspect of that and something that actually goes into matters of style is that the gatekeepers of orchestral programming have always been cautious. I mean I think that's a very diplomatic way of putting it. And so another aspect of the price musical language which was potentially off putting is the fact that it that she didn't actually really fall into what I would think of as one of those major American style she wasn't a experimentalist or an avant garde composer she also didn't really write in the kind of Copeland desk Americana style. She had her own voice which is elegant and refined but wasn't easily imagined categorized because I still think it's not easy to categorize. So the gates were closed for a lot of reasons but the very fact that one wouldn't respond to such a you know a letter is it makes me as a conductor and as a person who decides programming cringe frankly. And Doug what kind of attention is Florence Price's music getting now. Well I think Price's music is getting a lot of well-deserved attention. Alex this piece was obviously a terrific turning point in the story the ongoing story of Price's music in that it came out in a highly visible venue from a well respected critic who in fact has been sympathetic to price in her music for many years before this piece and the piece came out along with a piece for The New York Times and both of those were tied to a recording of the very piece that the La Jolla Orchestra will be performing as part of this concert that the the two violin concertos and so the fact that these two concertos came out alongside the pieces in The New Yorker and The New York Times created a real groundswell of interest not only in the new pieces but in those pieces of prices that had long remained a part of the repertoire in one way or another kind of gives them a new type of exposure the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus performs Florence Price's Violin Concerto Number Two. Handel's Messiah and Ching Ching Wang's between clouds and streams 730 Saturday night and 2 p.m. on Sunday at the Mandeville auditorium and I've been speaking with Stephen Shiek music director of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus and Douglas Shadel assistant professor of musicology at Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. Thank you both very much. What a huge pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Who decides what compositions get called classical music and who picks what orchestras play and what they don’t? Those questions have swirled around the rediscovery of several concertos and symphonies by 20th-century composer Florence Price. She is known as one of the first African-American composers to win national attention back in the 1930s, but it turns out that some of her most sophisticated works were never performed and almost lost.
The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross wrote about the rediscovery of dozens of Price's musical scores in a dilapidated house in Illinois in 2009 by new owners Vicki and Darrell Gatwood.
"The couple got in touch with librarians at the University of Arkansas, which already had some of Price’s papers. Archivists realized, with excitement, that the collection contained dozens of Price scores that had been thought lost," Ross wrote.
Ross' article and another in The New York Times reignited interest in Price’s work, which has since been included in orchestral programs across the country including here in La Jolla. Her Violin Concerto No. 2 will be performed this Saturday by the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus.
