"The greatest composer you never heard of..." Florence Price-- Black and a Woman...

[TreasonousBastard]

Two slams to make sure she's unheard of but over 300 compositions and kudos by orchestral groups and a place of fame with the Chicago Symphony.

https://www.classical-music.com/composers/guide-florence-price/

Florence Price made significant friendships during the 1930s, including with the pianist and composer Margaret Bonds and the contralto Marian Anderson and the writer Langston Hughes. Anderson, who had sung her spiritual arrangement of ‘My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord’ in a broadcast from Prague on 6 May 1937, performed the song at the end of her programme at her renowned Lincoln Memorial concert on Easter Sunday in 1939. With 75,000 people attending the performance and many more listening on the radio, Price won overnight fame.

So it’s something of a mystery as to why Price couldn’t get her First Symphony published, despite nationwide performances. It spurred her on to send a letter to the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. ‘My dear Dr Koussevitzky,’ she wrote. ‘To begin with I have two handicaps – those of sex and race. I am a woman with some Negro blood in my veins. Knowing the worst then, would you be good enough to hold in check the possible inclination to regards a woman’s composition as long on emotionalism but short of virility…’

[wyn borkins]

1. Florence Beatrice Price Was An African-American Classical Composer...

Pianist, organist and music teacher. She is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra.

Now you might look contentedly here, here, and also here...