Symphony No. 1 in E Minor

Alternate Title

• Symphony in E Minor
• Symphony No. 3 in E Minor¹

Composition Year

• 1931–1932²

Instrumentation

• 2+2pic.2.2.2 - 4.2.3.1 - timp.3perc - strings

Length

• 40 min.

Manuscripts

• MC988: Florence Beatrice Smith Price Collection, Special Collections, Mullins Library, University of Arkansas
  • Score, complete: Box 6, Folder 1
  • Parts, complete: Box 3, Folders 6–14; Box 4, Folders 1–11; Box 5, Folders 1–7

Premiere Performance

• June 15, 1933; Auditorium Theatre, Chicago; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Frederick Stock, conductor

Published Editions

• Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3. Edited by Rae Linda Brown and Wayne D. Shirley. Music of the United States of America 19. Recent Researches in American Music 66. Middleton, WI: Published for the American Musicological Society by A-R Editions, 2008.
  • OCLC: 277150358
  • Google Books: Introduction only
• Symphony No. 1 in E Minor. New York, NY: G. Schirmer, Inc., 2019.
• Movement III only (concert band): Bocook, Jay, arr. Juba Dance. New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 2022.

Recordings

• Florence B Price: Concerto in One Movement/Symphony in E Minor. Karen Walwyn, piano; Leslie B. Dunner, conductor; New Black Music Repertory Ensemble. Albany Records TROY 1295, 2011.
• Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 4. John Jeter, conductor; Fort Smith Symphony. Naxos Records 8.559827, 2019.
• Florence Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor; Philadelphia Orchestra. Deutsche Grammophon 4862029, 2022.
• F.B. Price: Piano Concerto in One Movement / Symphony No. 1. Roderick Cox and Leslie Suganandarajah, cond.; Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, piano; Chineke! Orchestra. Decca Classics, 2023.

Thematic Incipits

• Movement I
• Movement II
• Movement III
• Movement IV

Bibliography

1. Brown, Rae Linda. “Florence B. Price and Margaret Bonds: The Chicago Years.” Black Music Research Journal 12 (Fall 1990): 11–14.
2. Brown, Rae Linda. “Florence B. Price’s Negro Symphony.” In Temples for Tomorrow: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance, edited by Geneviève Fabre and Michael Feith, 84–98. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
3. Brown, Rae Linda. The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price. Music in American Life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020.
4. Brown, Rae Linda. “William Grant Still, Florence Price, and William Dawson: Echoes of the Harlem Renaissance.” In Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays, edited by Samuel A. Floyd, 71–86. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990.
5. Ege, Samantha. “Composing a Symphonist: Florence Price and the Hand of Black Women’s Fellowship.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 24 (2020): 7–27.
6. Farrah, Scott David. “Signifyin(g): A Semiotic Analysis of Symphonic Works by William Grant Still, William Levi Dawson, and Florence B. Price.” PhD diss., Florida State University, 2007.
7. Hobbs, Erin. “Rehearing Florence Price: A Closer Look at Her Symphony in E Minor.” MM thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2017.
8. Jackson, Barbara Garvey. “Florence Price, Composer.” The Black Perspective in Music 5 (1977): 30–43.
9. McGinty, Doris Evans. A Documentary History of the National Association of Negro Musicians. Chicago: Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago, 2004.
10. Morgan-Ellis, Esther, ed. Resonances: Engaging Music in Its Cultural Contexts. Dahlonega: University of North Georgia Press. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
11. Schenbeck, Lawrence. “Music, Gender, and ‘Uplift’ in the Chicago Defender, 1926–1937.” Musical Quarterly 81 (1997): 344–70.
12. Shadle, Douglas. “Plus Ça Change: Florence B. Price in the #BlackLivesMatter Era.” NewMusicBox. Feb. 20, 2019.
13. Villella, Frank. “125 Moments: 072 Price’s Symphony in E Minor.” From the Archives: Musings from the Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association. May 5, 2016.

Entry History

• Submitted February 11, 2023
• Revised May 31, 2024

Notes