In 1933 Florence B. Price became the first Black American female composer whose work was performed by a major orchestra when the Chicago Symphony programmed her Symphony in E Minor. In her posthumously published biography, University of California music professor Rae Linda Brown reflects on the context of Price’s life in a rigidly segregated nation. She was born to the light-complexioned Black upper class, which prized respectability and gentility while working for social progress. Her racially mixed ancestry perhaps helped her gain entry to institutions denied to darker Blacks, Brown writes, but her music was avidly championed by the Black press and reflected Black folk traditions. According to Brown, Price’s compositions for chamber ensembles, symphonies and choruses achieved a genuine fusion, “an art music that, while utilizing European forms, affirms its integrity as an African American mode of expression.”
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