Composing a Symphonist: Florence Price and the Hand of Black Women’s Fellowship

Florence Price (1887–1953) is often described as the first African American woman to achieve national and international success as a composer. However, this deserved accolade tends to exceptionalize her achievements as a female composer of African descent and thus to obscure or negate the rich context in which she worked. “Composing a Symphonist: Florence Price and the Hand of Black Women’s Fellowship” resituates Price in the dynamic cultural movement of the Black Chicago Renaissance and recognizes how a number of African American women played diverse and crucial roles within it. I illuminate Price’s Chicago, in which a female-led community shaped an American art music that uplifted black musical idioms. Positioning Price’s transition from Little Rock, Arkansas, against the backdrop of the Great Migration, the unfolding narrative explores the first six years in which she lived in Chicago (1927–1933); it delves into the community that awaited her and the particular influence of Nora Douglas Holt, Estella Conway Bonds, and Maude Roberts George in her ascent to become the first nationally-recognized black female symphonist. The result is a geographical and sociocultural mapping of Price’s Chicago that reveals the clasped hand of black women’s fellowship.