Concert Overture No. 2
Florence Price

African American composer, organist, pianist and educator Florence Beatrice Price (née Smith) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on April 9, 1887, and died in Chicago on June 3, 1953. Active as a composer and performer in the worlds of symphonic and commercial music, Price is also renowned for her choral and solo vocal compositions. Her settings of spirituals were performed by some of the 20th century’s greatest singers, including Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price. She was also the first African American woman to have a symphonic work performed by a major American orchestra, when Frederick Stock led the premiere of her Symphony No. 1 in E Minor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in June 1933. Much of Price’s music remained unpublished until after her death, but in 1918 the firm of G. Schirmer acquired the rights to her works, and more recent scholarship has led to ever more frequent performances of her music. Her Concert Overture No. 2, was composed in 1943. Its orchestration calls for piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

Antonín Dvořák, while in the United States in the early 20th century, admonished American composers to look for its essence in the roots of Native and African American music. This advice began to bear fruit in the 1930s, as two Black composers – William Grant Still and Florence Price – began to rise to prominence. The fact that the latter was a woman made her achievements, and challenges she faced, all the more impressive. Born in the South, Price sought to escape racism by moving from Little Rock and Atlanta to the friendlier climes of Chicago. Her extraordinary contribution to the classical repertory reflects, in her own soulful manner, the powerful late-Romantic style of Dvořák’s music, as exhibited in the Czech master’s popular Symphony in E Minor (“From the New World”) mixed with the authentic voice of African American culture — a beautiful example of cross-pollination.

While the year Price composed her first concert overture is unknown, she wrote her Concert Overture No. 2 in 1943, falling between the second and third of her four symphonies. Were it not for the good fortune and hard work of University of Arkansas librarians, Tom Dillard and Tim Nutt, the work might have been lost, as it was found among Price’s effects in an abandoned Chicago residence where she lived toward the end of her life. The work is based on three spirituals: “Go Down Moses,” “Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit” and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”

Negro Folk Symphony                             William Dawson

American composer and choral conductor William Lee Dawson was born in Anniston, Alabama, on Sept. 26, 1899, and died in Montgomery on May 2, 1990. Raised in rural Alabama amid the culture of African American folk idioms, Dawson took up formal musical studies at the Tuskegee Institute when he was 15 years old, studying piano and composition while participating in the band and choral program. He subsequently played trombone and taught at public schools in Kansas, leading to his receiving a Bachelor of Music degree from the Horner Institute of Fine Arts in 1925. Like his near-contemporary, Florence Price, Dawson moved to Chicago to continue his musical education and career. He returned to the Tuskegee Institute in 1931, where he remained until 1956, developing the Tuskegee Choir to become a world-famous ensemble. His expertise in jazz and composition found its way into his most famous work, the Negro Folk Symphony, composed in 1934 and revised in 1952. The original version was given its premiere in November 1934 with Leopold Stokowski leading the Philadelphia Orchestra. A repeat performance of it took place at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 20. Dawson’s revision followed his visit to Africa. A new critical edition by Gwynne Kuhner Brown was given its first performance in 2023. The work is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, four clarinets (including soprano and bass clarinets), two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion — including an adawura, or Ghanian bell — harp and strings.

Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony takes its place alongside of two other symphonies composed by Black composers dating from the 1930s: William Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony from 1931, and Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 from 1933 (performed earlier this Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra season). Each of these composers, in writing symphonies and other compositions, began to fulfill the recommendation of Antonín Dvořâk that America should seek its authentic voice by tapping into the musical traditions of Black and Indigenous peoples. Dawson, in using the word “Negro” in the title of his work, wanted audiences to know in no uncertain terms that his symphony could only have been the product of a Black composer. Its first performances were extraordinarily well received, which makes its disappearance from the standard repertory of orchestras somewhat of a mystery. Were it not for the fact that the racist tendencies of many in the concert world would not accept the possibility that a Black artist could produce high-quality music in the “classical” tradition, Dawson’s symphony would be familiar to us all by now. In our own time, fortunately, we are experiencing the work with fresh ears. As for the term “Negro” in the symphony’s title, it is important to understand that at the time of its composition, the word was an expression of pride.

The three movements of the Negro Folk Symphony were provided by the composer with titles, and its outer movement makes use of spirituals. The first movement, “The Bond of Africa,” cites the spiritual, “Oh, My Little Soul Gwine Shine Like a Star,” making its first appearance in the oboe. The second movement, “Hope in the Night,” which was given an encore at its first performance, does not include any spirituals, but was provided with a program note by Dawson:

“This movement opens (Andante, 4/4) with three strokes from the gong, intended to suggest the Trinity, who guides forever the destiny of man. The strings, playing pizzicato, provide a monotonous background, creating the atmosphere of the humdrum life of a people whose bodies were baked by the sun and lashed with the whip for 250 years; whose lives were proscribed before they were born. The English horn sings a melody that describes the characteristics, hopes and longings of a Folk held in darkness. After a climax, this division is followed by one conceived in a happier mood. The children, unmindful of the heavy cadences of despair, sing and play; but even in their world of innocence, there is a little wail, a brief note of sorrow. After much development of the theme of the children, and a cry from the strings, muted brasses, and trilling woodwinds, there is a return of the previous material. This, in turn, is succeeded by another outburst, in which the ‘Leading Motive’ is given out by the full orchestra. The movement closes with slow crescendos and decrescendos after each of the three mysterious sounds from the gong and other percussion instruments.”

The finale, “O Le’ Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star!,” uses the spiritual, “Hallelujah, Lord, I Been Down into the Sea.” According to the notes written by Gwynne Kuhner Brown, the last movement makes use of “complex rhythms and vivid percussive colors — elements derived from African diasporic traditions.” Its energy offers solace and hope.