Four Centuries of Great Music March 3, 2024 Music of African-American Women Composers

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are merging a tribute to February’s black history month with March’s woman’s history month by doing to program of music by African-Amercan women composers.

We open with Florence Price’s Symphony No. 4 in D minor.  This work was composed in 1945 and thought lost until a manuscript was discovered in her former summer home outside of St. Anne, Illinois, in 2009.  It was never performed during her lifetime and received its world premiere by the Fort Smith Symphony under the direction of John Jeter in Fort Smith, Arkansas, on May 12, 2018.  The world premiere recording of this work was also by John Jeter and the Fort Smith Symphony was released on album with Price's Symphony No. 1 by Naxos Records in January 2019.

It is in four movements I. Tempo moderato; II. Andante cantabile; III. Allegro. Juba and VI. Scherzo.  The first movement has references to the spiritual wade in the water and the third movement uses the juba dance rhythm which Price used commonly throughout her works.

The Philadelphia Orchestra,Yannick Nézet-Séguin  - Florence Price -  Symphony No. 4 -William Dawson - Negro Folk Symphony (Live). Deutsche Grammophon


Next is Margaret Bonds- Spiritual Suite for piano

Margaret Bonds: Spiritual Suite - I. Valley of the Bones
Margaret Bonds: Spiritual Suite - II. The Bells
Margaret Bonds: Spiritual Suite - III. Troubled Water

Composed as a show-stopping closer for her solo recitals and performed as an inspirational statement of racial and cultural pride, Margaret Bonds’s dazzling Spiritual Suite was inspired by the concert encores of legendary Black vocalists Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes. Based on settings of traditional Negro spirituals (“Dry Bones,” “Peter, Go Ring Dem Bells,” and “Wade in the Water”) and infused with the idioms of gospel, jazz, and blues, this three-movement suite was drafted throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Although it became one of Bonds’s most celebrated and studied works, the rousing finale, “Troubled Water,” was the only movement to be published during her lifetime.

It was not until 2020, when Dr. Louise Toppin, a significant force in archiving the repertoire of Black composers, edited all three movements of the suite and had them printed as part of the Videmus African American Art Song Series, that “Valley of the Bones” and “The Bells” became available for future generations of pianists to rediscover and bring to life—a fitting revival to one of the most significant classical artists of the twentieth century.

Here is a performance of Margaret Bonds- Spiritual Suite for piano by Michelle Cann from her album Revival     Curtis Studio

We are ending this first hour of the music of African-American women composers with Julia Perry’s Short Piece for Orchestra.

Julia Perry wrote A Short Piece for Orchestra in 1952, and revised it twice before settling on its final version. After an energetic and prominent opening, we soon find ourselves in a lyrical slow section. The composition is clearly divided into five contrasting parts in which the opening thunderlike material comes back three times. In the first melodic section the theme is first played by the flute, then the oboe, the clarinet, and the horn. After an abrupt and short central section, the flute, violin, and oboe take over, leading us into the final recall of the vigorous opening. The short piece is full of contrasts and sound effects that make the work really exciting.

Julia Perry:  Short Piece for Orchestra in a performance by Imperial Philharmonic of Tokyo conducted by William Strickland from the album Music of Talma, Fine, Perry, Daniels & Howe New World/CRI-Anthology of Recorded Music


Lets open this second hour of Four Centuries of Great Music featuring the music of African American women composers with Helen Hagen’s Piano Concerto in C Minor

Helen Hagen was born in New Hampshire and graduated from Yale University with major in both piano performance and composition.

Hagan composed the concerto in 1912, the year she graduated from Yale and performed it as a soloist with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra that same year. She went on to perform the work multiple times in a two piano arrangement, garnering widespread praise for her virtuosic skill. Because the concerto is thought to be the only surviving work among Hagan’s many compositions, it takes on outsize importance as the primary evidence that remains of her dazzling creativity.

From its first impassioned measures, Hagan’s Piano Concerto is a tour de force. A bold c-minor theme, marked maestoso, immediately situates the piece within a late-Romantic legacy. The mood becomes tempestuous: thundering chords in the instrument’s lower reaches, with flashes of ornate passagework above. A contrasting second theme, expansive and sonorous, is an opportunity to showcase the pianist’s more delicate sensibilities. Saturated with snaky chromatic harmonies, and propelled forward by intricate sequential writing, the one movement work exudes confidence and ambition.

Here is a performance of Helen Hagen’s Piano Concerto in C Minor by Samantha Ege and John Paul Ekin, pianos from the album Black Renaissance Woman    Lorelt Records



Next in this episode of Four Centuries of Great Music dedicated to the music of African American Women composers is Betty Jackson King’s Four Seasonal Sketches for piano.

Betty Jackson King was born in Chicago in 1928 in a deeply religious and musical family.  Her degrees in piano and composition are from Roosevelt University.  She was a accomplished pianist, composer and educator.  

Composed in 1955, King’s Four Seasonal Sketches is a lush exploration of the seasons’ content and character. It is
dedicated to her friend, pianist and Black music scholar Dr. Geneva Southall. 1. “Spring Intermezzo” balances the ethereal and the grounded with resonant harmonies and brief
moments of dissonance. 2. “Summer Interlude” is the longest movement; its motive is built on modal minor, evoking a Negro Spiritual melody that slowly unspools and returns near the end.  3. “Autumn Dance” keeps the modal minor but with more rhythmic energy and syncopation. 4.“Winter Holiday” brings together ethereal rootedness, somberness, and rhythmic excitement; whole tones and resonant spacing shape the soundscape. It ends mid-phrase, as if to show the
unpredictability of what lies at winter’s close.

Here is a performance of Betty Jackson King’s Four Seasonal Sketches for piano by Samantha Ege from the album Black Renaissance Woman    Lorelt Records


Let’s close his episode of Four Centuries of Great Music celebrating the music of African American women composers as we opened with the music of Florence Price.  We will be closing today’s Four Centuries of Great Music with  two of Florence Price’s Fantasie Nègre pieces No.1 in E minor and No.4 in B minor

The fantasie is a familiar concept to pianist going back centuries with lengthy explorations of one or more themes without the structural demands of say a sonata.  Both of these fantasies extend the romantic spirit of Chopin or Schumann into the realm of the negro spiritual.   The Fantasie Nègre No.1 in E minor specifically quotes from the Negro spiritual, “Sinner Please Don’t Let this Harvest Pass.” As the title implies, the spiritual deals with the damnation of souls and the procrastination of getting their literal life together before death.  Price transforms this lyrically haunting melody into a rich extended nocturne.

The Fourth Fantasie nègre in B minor juxtaposes African American idioms with those of the tradition-laden
genre of the European piano fantasy, ultimately subsuming stereotypically romantic idioms into spiritual traditions
in the context of a densely interwoven thematic structure that becomes telescopically more compact as the piece progresses. The main theme evokes an authentic African American folksong or spiritual but is actually newly composed, evoking the spirit but not an actual melody from spirituals.

Here is a performance of Florence Price’s Fantasie Nègre No.1 in E minor and  her Fantasie Nègre No.4 in B minor by pianist Samantha Ege from her album Fantasie Nègre: The Piano Music of Florence Price  Lorelt Records