Four Centuries of Great Music January 8, 2023 Chamber Music That Must Be Programmed Episode 1

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music is the first of several episodes of Chamber Music That Must Be Programmed.

We are opening with Florence Price’s Quintet in A minor for Piano and Strings.  Florence Price was a black, American, female composer whose works included many chamber works, symphonic works, choral works and art songs.  Florence was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on 9 April 1887. She began learning music from her mother at an early age and gave her first piano performance at age four, reportedly publishing a composition (now lost) at age eleven. She graduated high school at the age of sixteen and in that same year was accepted into the New England Conservatory (Boston), then as now one of the most prestigious musical academies in the U.S.  However, blacks were not welcome at the New England Conservatory at that time so she applied as a Mexican student, listing her hometown as Pueblo.  She double majored in piano and organ performance.  After graduation she was a faculty member at two colleges in the south but with the increasingly tough enforcement of Jim Crow laws her family moved to Chicago in 1927, during the epoch now known as "The Great Migration.”  In Chicago she gained some recognition with her first Symphony and first piano sonata winning Wanamaker Foundation Awards 1932 and a performance of her Symphony #1 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  During her lifetime she had performances of her works but relatively little was published and after her death in 1953 her music was lost to the world.  However in 2009, a substantial amount of her works were found at Price's abandoned composing retreat in St. Anne, Illinois.    And in the years since her music has become published and is now being heard again.

We open today’s Four Centuries of Great music with her Quintet in A minor for Piano and Strings.  It is in 4 movements  I. Allegro non troppo;. II. Andante con moto; III. Juba and IV Scherzo.   Most of the movements are in typical sonata form but the influence of Aftrican-American spirituals are heard throughout.  And the third movement is a Juba an African -Amercian dance with strong rhythmic drive.

Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian pianist and composer born in 1866.  He is most known as a pianist and composer of piano works and for his transcriptions of Bach.  He was a child prodigy with his first recitals at 7 years old.  He was a prolific composer and He was elected in 1881  at 15 to the Academia Filharmonica of Bologna, the youngest person to receive this honor since Mozart.   He wrote music for string quartet and in the early 1880s he wrote the Suite for Clarinet & String Quartet

The Suite for Clarinet & String Quartet is in 3 movements I. Andantino; II. Moderato; III. Vivace


Sir Arthur Sullivan is most known for his operas written with William Gilbert, but he did write considerable music outside of these operas.  Among that music was chamber music including a String Quartet in D Minor which was premiered in Leipzig, in May 1859.   But it was not published until 2000.  


Next is Carlos Chavez who was one of the most prominent composers in Mexico in the 20th century.  Born in 1899, he began piano lessons at 9 with Asunción Parra. But in 1910 at 11 he became a student of Mexico’s leading composer of the time, Manuel Ponce. Five years later he met the man whom Carlos would say was most influential in the developed his musical personality, Pedro Luis Ogazón.  He completed his formal studies at the National Conservatory and received his diploma in composition. In 1920, the firm Wagner y Levien in Mexico City published some of his early piano music, and the stage was set for his progression as a composer on a national and international stages.  One of the pieces published was his Piano Sextet written in 1919.  It is for piano, 2 violins, viola and two cellos and is in 5 movements: I. Lento; II. Allegro con Brio; III. Andante;  IV.  Presto Scherzando and V. Allegretto


Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist, and classical guitarist described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music”.  He was a very prolific composer, having written orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works, totaling over 2000 works by his death in 1959. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, he is probably best known for his Bachianas Brasileiras and his Chôros.  Today on Four Centuries of Great music we are featuring his Quatuor for Grande Flute, Oboe, Clarinet & Bassoon: which is in three movements I.  Allegro Non Troppo; II. Lento and III. Allegro Molto Vivace

Edmund Finnis: Preludes for Solo Cello 1, 2 & 3.   Contemporary English composer