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In 2009, dozens of scores by the American composer Florence Price, long thought lost, were found in her abandoned former summer home in St. Anne, Illinois. A couple preparing to renovate the house came across them, including two violin concertos and her Fourth Symphony, in a building with a hole in its roof.

Florence Price / University of Arkansas / Encyclopedia of Arkansas / The New Yorker

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The story behind the card

Price, born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1887, trained at the New England Conservatory and settled in Chicago. In 1932 her Symphony in E minor won first prize in the Wanamaker competition, and in June 1933 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Frederick Stock played it at the Century of Progress World's Fair, in a concert that Maude Roberts George, president of the Chicago Music Association, paid to make possible. It was the first symphony by a Black woman performed by a major American orchestra. In a 1943 letter to the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, Price wrote that she started with two handicaps: her sex and her race. After her death in 1953 much of her music was forgotten, until the St. Anne find led to new recordings and performances.

Türkçe oku
Amerikalı besteci Florence Price'ın kayıp sanılan onlarca eseri, 2009'da Illinois'un St. Anne kasabasında, terk edilmiş eski yazlık evinde bulundu. Evi onarmaya hazırlanan bir çift, çatısı delik binada, aralarında iki keman konçertosu ile Dördüncü Senfoni'nin de bulunduğu notalara rastladı.

1887'de Arkansas'ın Little Rock kentinde doğan Price, New England Konservatuvarı'nda okudu ve Chicago'ya yerleşti. Mi minör Senfonisi 1932'de Wanamaker yarışmasında birincilik kazandı. Haziran 1933'te Chicago Senfoni Orkestrası, Frederick Stock yönetiminde bu senfoniyi Century of Progress Dünya Fuarı'nda çaldı; konserin masrafını Chicago Müzik Derneği başkanı Maude Roberts George karşılamıştı. Bu, büyük bir Amerikan orkestrasının seslendirdiği, Siyah bir kadının yazdığı ilk senfoniydi. Price 1943'te şef Serge Koussevitzky'ye yazdığı mektupta, işe iki dezavantajla başladığını söylüyordu: kadın olmak ve Siyah olmak. 1953'teki ölümünden sonra müziğinin büyük kısmı unutuldu; St. Anne'deki buluş yeni kayıtların ve konserlerin önünü açtı.

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