New Arts International

• Florence B. Price, an American female composer who lived in the late 19th and early/mid-20th centuries. Only in recent years has she been celebrated as one of the greatest discoveries of the century; in addition to chamber music and large symphonies, she also wrote a large number of songs.

• The songs are short but rhythmically emphasised and lyrically concise, dealing heavily with social issues.

• As an African-American artist, she also had to assert herself in a time marked by profound racism and in which women rarely found recognition in the world of classical music.

FLORENCE B. PRICE

A composer advocates for the exchange of different traditions and cultures.

Florence B. Price's works combine a fascinating spectrum of intense emotion, buoyant lightness, and playful charm, which captivated me from the very first moment. In particular, her songs, which bear witness to great sensitivity and melodic ingenuity, have made a lasting impression on me in terms of their expressiveness and complexity.

However, it is not only her music that touches me; I also feel profoundly moved by her life story. Florence B. Price was a single mother of two children after separating from her husband.

Tragically, she had to cope with the loss of one of her children at an early age – a fate that is sure to have shaped her life profoundly. As an African-American artist, she also had to assert herself in an era characterised by deep-seated racism, and in a world where women in classical music rarely found recognition.

Astonishingly, her works have not yet been fully published or featured in the standard repertoire. Her music, culturally rich, full of history, and brimming with emotion, deserves to be elevated to its rightful rank due to its artistic quality. The apparent lack of widespread recognition of Price’s oeuvre cannot be explained by a lack of compositional quality, but rather by socio-historical circumstances that marginalised artists like her.

Florence B. Price, Hold Fast to Dreams