Florence B. Price (1887-1953), born in Little Rock, Arkansas, was an African American composer, pianist, and organist. Graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in 1906, her music instructors, echoing Dvořák, urged her to incorporate her African American heritage into her compositions, lending them a distinctive character. After a brief return to Little Rock, she relocated to Chicago in 1927 to escape the escalating racial violence of the Jim Crow South and pursue her aspirations of establishing a music career amidst the vibrant art scene of the Chicago Renaissance. Her Symphony No.1 in E Minor, composed in 1932-33, premiered with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, making her the first African American woman composer featured by a major symphony. Despite this groundbreaking achievement, she faced ongoing challenges in gaining national recognition and respect, attributing it, in Price’s own words, to her “two handicaps - those of her sex and race.” Over her lifetime, Price composed nearly 400 works, including symphonies, concertos, art songs, chamber works, and solo pieces for organ and piano. Following her death, many of her compositions remained unperformed or forgotten in the classical art music canon until 2009 when numerous manuscripts were discovered in the attic of a home in St. Anne, Illinois. 

Clouds, believed to have been composed sometime in the late 1940s, stands as an unpublished work discovered in that attic in 2009. Departing from Price’s usual blend of African American idioms with Classical gestures, it embraces an ambiguous ternary form, weaving in sections with a fantasia-like quality. This piece juxtaposes light impressionistic gestures with late-Romantic lyricism and chromaticism, alongside jazz-inspired harmonies, resulting in a captivating fusion of styles. Notably, Price omits a time signature in both of her remaining manuscripts for the piece's opening. While fully grasping Price’s intent remains elusive, musicologist John Michael Cooper suggests that the evocative title "clouds" often symbolizes freedom in literature, poetry, and African American art, representing "freedom of movement, shape, form, and mood." Amidst the piece's shifting moods and textures, a five-note descending scalar motive serves as a unifying thread.