Some Thoughts on the Fantasie No. 1 in G Minor for Violin and Piano
(University of Arkansas Libraries, Special Collections , Florence Price Papers MC 988b, Box 4A,
folder 2)
[First, a bit of context: by the 1930s there was a long tradition of sizeable works for solo violin and piano by men, including the superb composer and violinist Clarence Cameron White, but aside from Amy Beach’s A-minor Violin Sonata (1896) and Rebecka Clarke’s ground-breaking Viola Sonata (1919), neither of which was well known until well after Price’s death, most compositions for accompanied solo stringed instrument by women were relatively unassuming and, as far as we currently know, by Whites. Florence B. Price broke new ground with her entry into those smaller works for accompanied violin with her beautiful Andante con espressione (1929), which she evidently submitted to the Rodman Wanamaker Competition and one other competition. She was the first known woman of color to compose such a piece.
There was, though, still no tradition of Black women having written more substantial works for solo violin with accompaniment – works such as the Fantasie in G Minor for Violin and Piano (1933). So I was delighted and honored this spring when Abigail Dickson, now completing her Bachelor’s degree in Music at Temple University, asked me to write a program note on that piece for her senior recital. The program also included Violin Sonata No. 3 of Joseph de Bologne, Chevalier of St.-Georges, the “Chaconne” from J. S. Bach’s D-minor Partita (BWV 1004), the Saint-Saëns Fantaisie for Violin and Harp, and a new work by Icli Zitella – The Wife of Nabal, after 1 Samuel 25 – dedicated to Abigail Dickson. You can hear the full recital here.
The remarks below were written for Dickson’s performance of the Price Fantasie. They’re submitted here because I personally think it’s important that we recognize that Florence Price set foot on her career-path of breaking barriers already four years before the premiere of her E-minor Symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933 and broke those barriers in other genres as well.]
Readers of these notes know well that the tradition of works for solo stringed instrument with or without accompaniment is long and distinguished, including long-established works by composers ranging from the Renaissance, through J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, among many others. Readers also know that the generally known repertoire of that illustrious tradition is historically dominated by White folk – most of them European, most of them male. For composers of color and women, the concert and recital repertoire sends an implicit but potent message: you have no role models; this genre is of, by, and for White men.
Then there is Florence B. Price (1887-1953). Although most often cited as the first African American woman to have her music performed by a major U.S. orchestra, Price broke ground in numerous other ways – among them, apparently being the first Black woman to pen a substantial composition for violin and piano (as opposed to short parlor pieces, for which there was some precedent). The work with which she blazed that trail was the one performed in this recital: the Fantasie in G minor (1933). This was followed by a second violin fantasy in F-sharp minor (1940), and these two belong to a larger family of her works for solo violin including the Andante con espressione, The Deserted Garden, and the Elfentanz, as well as two concertos for violin and orchestra.
Florence Price could not have been unaware that she was breaking new ground with her G-minor Fantasy – and like many other composers who make their first contribution to tradition-laden genres, she begins with the work by asserting her own voice’s place in the company of the tradition’s acknowledged masters, specifically with a pointed allusion to the first movement of the first of J. S. Bach’s six Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo, BWV 1001 (a work that is also in G minor). After that, however, Florence Price leaves tradition to the past as she moves to a turbulent allegro whose harmonic language reflects traditions of African American folk song. Then, however, seemingly spontaneously, a brief songlike episode in the unrelated key of B major interrupts that theme. Although that interruption is quickly swept aside, its idea remains – and soon the turbulent main theme yields to an achingly beautiful pastoral melody in that same key (B major), an extended episode that drinks deeply of the well of inspiration provided by African American spirituals and folksongs – by the ancestral melodies that would remain central to Florence Price’s musical identity to the end of her life. The Fantasy closes with the turbulent allegro and a coda that displays Price’s familiarity with the violin as it sweeps to its conclusion – and by work’s end, Florence Price has boldly staked a claim in the tradition-bound genre of works for solo violin not only for own extraordinary voice, but also for the musical idioms of Black Americans generally.
We may someday learn that Florence Price was not the first Black woman to have contributed to that genre – the musical world’s historical erasure of the voices of women and composers of color from the concert repertoire makes it difficult to know whether she had predecessors in this regard (or who they may have been). For now, it is important not only to recognize the brilliance of the G-minor Fantasy and the real loss that has been inflicted on the musical world by the erasure of this work, its siblings in Price’s own oeuvre, and possibly numerous others by other composers who even today are forced to yield the stage for an unending stream of performances of the same works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and others that have already been performed and heard, studied and taught hundreds of times per year every year in living memory. As Abigail Dickson pointed out in a recently completed paper, to perpetuate the privilege uncritically afforded those works at the expense of countless others by women and composers of color is to do violence not only to the voices silenced by the cult of supremacy White and male, but also to our world’s understanding of the musical art and its history. But the recognition of that wrong is also an invitation to do right – and if our world becomes the first to acknowledge and celebrate the musical contributions of Florence B. Price and other marginalized composers, the result will be our harnessing of our artistic voices to be (in Ms. Dickson’s words) “instruments of justice.”
It will be a legacy worthy of Florence B. Price.
Here (at 45'54") is Abigail Dickson’s excellent performance of Price’s G-minor Violin Fantasy:
[Postscript: the G-minor Fantasie was published by G. Schirmer in 2019, and since then it seems to have found a firm footing in the recital repertoire – include a commercially released recording by Randall Goosby and Zhu Wang and numerous performances released on social media.]