Composer: born April 9, 1887, Little Rock, AR; died June 3, 1953, Chicago
Work composed: published in 1951. Originally written for solo organ, in recent years “Adoration” has been adapted and arranged for a number of different instrumental combinations.
World premiere: undocumented
Instrumentation: solo clarinet and string orchestra
Estimated duration: 5 minutes

As the first Black female American composer to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra, Florence Price enjoyed considerable renown during her lifetime. Her compositional skill and her fame notwithstanding, due to the racism and sexism of the time, her work was little known and rarely performed for decades after her death. In 2009, a large collection of scores and unpublished works by Price were discovered in a house in rural Illinois. Since then, many scholars, musicians, and audiences are encountering Price’s work and her rich legacy for the first time.

The daughter of a musical mother, Price was a prodigy, giving her first recital at age 4 and publishing her first composition at 11. During her childhood and teens, Price’s mother was the guiding force behind her piano and composition studies. In 1903, at age 16, Price won admittance to New England Conservatory (she had to “pass” as Mexican and listed her hometown as Pueblo, Mexico, to circumvent prevailing racial bias against African-Americans), where she double majored in organ performance and piano pedagogy. While at NEC, Price also studied composition with George Whitefield Chadwick. Chadwick was an early champion of women as composers, which was highly unusual at the time, and he believed that American composers generally should incorporate the rich traditions of Native Americans and Blacks in their own music. Price, already inclined in this direction, was encouraged by Chadwick, and many of her works reflect the expressive and distinctive sounds of what were then referred to as “Negro” traditions: spirituals, ragtime, and folkdance rhythms whose origins trace back to Africa.

In 1933, Frederick Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony, programmed Price’s Symphony in E minor, on a concert titled “The Negro in Music,” which was performed in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair. The following year, Stock asked Price to write a piano concerto, which she premiered with him and the Chicago Symphony in 1934.

To support herself and her children, Price worked at several music-related jobs, including playing organ in movie-houses, orchestrating music for Chicago’s WGN radio station, and writing popular songs under the nom-de-plume Vee Jay. “Adoration,” originally written for organ, has a warm devotional quality in keeping with the genre of semi-sacred popular tunes such as “Because,” or “Bless this House.” In the past 15 years, “Adoration” has been arranged for a number of instrumental combinations and has been widely performed, both live and on social media.