On the Rediscovery of Florence B. Price’s Fantasie nègre No. 4.
It’s well known that Florence Price won big in the 1932 Rodman Wanamaker Contest in Musical Composition for Composers of the Negro Race: her First Symphony won the $500 first prize -- $9,932 in 2020 U.S. dollars -- in the category of symphonic work or concert suite for band, orchestra, or chorus; her E-minor Piano Sonata won first prize in the piano category; and the Fourth (B-minor) Fantasie nègre won Honorable Mention. What’s less well known is that Price evidently submitted all four of the Fantasies nègres and the judges chose the last – which remained unpublished until January 2020 – of the four.[1] (Here is Lara Downes’s world-premiere recording of that work – a milestone in the Price discography and stunning in its poetic synthesis of drama and passion).
This means that when Hildegard Publishing Company published Helen Walker-Hill’s edition of the First (E-minor) Fantasie nègre (1929) in the anthology Black Women Composers: A Century of Piano Music (1893-1990) in 1992 and others performed, studied, and commented on that work, they were commenting on a work that was passed over for the Wanamaker Honorable Mention, not the one that won it.[2]
Upshot: The work that actually won that 1932 Honorable Mention, first composed on April 5, 1932, remains little known and has entirely eluded discussion in the rapidly expanding body of writings about Price and her music.
There’s a bit of news toward the end of this post. But first, here are three other important facts about the B-minor Fantasie nègre:
The work that won that Honorable Mention was the second of four chronologically discrete and musically wide-ranging versions of the B-minor Fantasie nègre.
In the autograph she submitted to the competition, Price used a cryptic but perhaps telling pseudonym: “Out of the Crucible” (see the photo above).
The actual premiere of the work that won that 1932 Wanamaker Honorable Mention had to wait nearly five years – and this, due to extensive changes Price had introduced in the interim, was a significantly different composition than the one that had won that prize. The performance was given in a Works Progress Administration (WPA) concert on 15 June 1937 by well-known piano pedagogue Marion Hall [MacFadyen] (1910-2012), longtime faculty member at Indiana University, in a Composers Forum concert of the Federal Music Project in Chicago.[3] The program for that performance states that it was the work’s “first performance in Chicago.”
So let’s talk about those facts.
First, all four surviving versions of the B-minor Fantasie nègre use the same introduction and main theme, and their endings are similar. But when Price returned to the piece later on, she completely rewrote large portions of it. One main result was that its “WPA version” (1937) is shorter by about a third than the 1932 (Wanamaker) version: Price compressed it, made it much tighter, more concise. Another change – this one more musically interesting – is that in its original (Wanamaker) guise the B-minor Fantasie nègre contained a lengthy, rhapsodic, nocturne-like section perhaps evocative of Chopin or Robert or Clara Schumann; but when Price overhauled the work for Marion Hall’s 1937 performance she deleted this and replaced it with a songful section that recalls the classic female blues style made famous by Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Ethel Waters. This style – much different than the blues styles familiar from later on – flourished in the 1920s. Unlike the blues more familiar today, it was typically in the major, not minor, mode; and it featured the same sort of freewheeling tossings-off of short melodies and themes among different instruments and registers that are also well known from New Orleans jazz of the early twentieth century. (Here’s that Bessie Smith-like midsection in a livestream performance Lara Downes gave this past summer. Listen to how the long – short – long motive, with the downward leap at the end of that gesture, gets tossed around between the upper, middle, and lower registers.)
The result is that the midsection of final version of the fourth Fantasie nègre distances itself from its counterparts in the repertoire of the European piano fantasy – there is no nocturnal Chopin or Schumann here – and replaces it with what, to my knowledge, is Price’s only stylistic engagement with African American blues of this variety. Because the popularity of that blues style had receded by the mid-1930s, this may also lend a note of nostalgia to the final (WPA) version.
Second, what about the “Out of the Crucible” pseudonym? This is the only time it occurs in the thousands of pages of music manuscripts in Price’s hand, and the idiom typically refers to one’s emergence from a particularly severe test or trial. What trial did Price allude to with the pseudonym?
The autographs for the Fantasie nègre No. 4 tell us that it was composed on April 5, 1932. That was a particularly difficult year in the U.S. – one of the worst years of the Great Depression to date, with an unemployment rate of about 20% and a GDP loss since 1931 of nearly 13% -- and the titular “crucible” may refer to any of these societal tribulations. On the other hand, because “Out of the Crucible” is used in place of Price’s own name, it’s tempting to construe it personally, as something autobiographical. Such an interpretation certainly works – for the B-minor Fantasie nègre was written about fourteen months into Price’s second marriage, to Percy Dell Arnett, and eighteen months before her separation from him.[4] I suspect that the nom de plume probably refers to unspecified but severely trying marital circumstances surrounding the work’s conception.
Finally, what was special about the revision that Marion Hall performed at the WPA concert in June 1937? It’s difficult to say for certain, of course – but the extensiveness of the differences between the WPA and Wanamaker versions of the work makes clear that this was no minor tinkering in Price’s estimation. She cut the work by about a third, completely rethought the material of the middle section and its cultural-stylistic frame of reference (Bessie Smith instead of Frederick Chopin), and made other changes. As Rae Linda Brown demonstrates, by 1937 Price was at a significantly different place in her life and her career than she had been in the Wanamaker years: her separation from Arnett was several years behind her, and her level of professional recognition was at an unprecedented high.[5] In a personal but very real sense, the Florence Price of the Wanamaker years was a different person, with different prospects, than was the Florence Price of the WPA years.
And now for the news that I mentioned above. This past weekend I received an e-mail from Dr. Elizabeth G. Hill that this Sunday (September 20) she’ll be giving a live-streamed performance of Price’s Fantasie nègre No. 4 along with the Seven Traceries of William Grant Still. This delights me in part because it’s another performance of a work that, in my opinion at least, needs to be played, heard, discussed, and most of all taught more often, and in part because I’ve heard Dr. Hill’s tender performance of Price’s likewise recently published gem Summer Moon and very much admire it.
I told Dr. Hill I was planning this post and asked her if she had anything she wanted me to include. Here’s what she sent me:
When I was invited as this season’s Artist-in-Residence for the Music of Grace Concert Series, I was tasked with presenting a miniature solo-piano recital for their opening virtual performance. I immediately looked towards works by Florence Price and William Grant Still, wanting to present composers that aren’t programmed frequently enough, and a variety of styles ... in under 30 minutes. <Insert editorial gasp here.>
Price’s “Fantasie nègre No. 4” displays her powerful and unique voice, within a genre that she created. Price is a supreme storyteller; interweaving moments that shift between fiery virtuosic displays, deeply personal and solemn moods, and musical elements that reflect her heritage. Still’s "Seven Traceries" stand independently as evocative and beguiling musical moments. Each piece allows the listener just enough space to explore and build their own imagery, and provides a musical setting rich with an entrancing palette of tonal color. My hope is that this little program will help listeners feel more connected to me and my interests as a pianist, and leave them wanting to explore more of the musical richness and artistry of Florence Price and William Grant Still.
First composed on April 5, 1932 and awarded Honorable Mention in that year’s prestigious Wanamaker Competition, Florence Price’s B-minor Fantasie nègre waited more than five years for its premiere – only then to remain silent for another eighty-two (82!) years before it received its posthumous premiere – this at the hands of Price champion Lara Downes at Price’s alma mater, the New England Conservatory, in a joint lecture-recital with Yours Truly on November 1, 2019. It since been published in my source-critical edition by G. Schirmer, professionally recorded and released by Lara, and live-streamed by Lara. And it’s about to be live-streamed again. Finally, it would seem, the Fourth Fantasie nègre is coming “out of the crucible” that has held it in silence for four-score years.
You won’t want to miss this one. Here is all the information you need to be a part of this latest step in the work’s latter-day revival:
Sun., Sept. 20, 5:30-6pm EST
Music of Grace’s 2020-2021 all-virtual season opens with a concert for solo piano featuring Artist-In-Residence, Elizabeth G. Hill. Elizabeth will be performing works by Florence Price and William Grant Still. This program will be presented via the Music of Grace Concert Series Facebook and YouTube pages. Concert is free and open to all viewers. Donations are graciously accepted.
[1] My gratitude to Dr. Samantha Ege for sharing documentation from contemporary press confirming that the Fourth, not First, Fantasie nègre won this competition. [2] Rae Linda Brown’s seminal biography of Price correctly names the work that won the Wanamaker Honorable Mention as the fourth Fantasie nègre, but the work that she discusses as that composition is the first of the Fantasies nègres, not the fourth. See Rae Linda Brown, The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price, ed. Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020), 102, 106-108. [3] See Ellistine Perkins Holly, “Black Concert Music in Chicago, 1890 to the 1930s,” Black Music Research Journal 10 (1990): 141-49 at 146-47. [4] Florence Price divorced Thomas Price in January 1931, and on 14 February 1931 she married the widower Pusey Dell Arnett (1875-1957), an insurance agent and former baseball player for the Chicago Unions some thirteen years her senior. She and Arnett were separated by April 1934; they apparently never divorced. See Brown, “Lifting the Veil,” xxxi, and Gary Ashwill, “P. D. Arnett and the Chicago Unions,” Agate Type (blog), May 22, 2016. Accessed 17 November 2019. https://agatetype.typepad.com/agate_type/2016/05/p-d-arnett-the-chicago-unions.html [5] See Brown, The Heart of a Woman, chapters 14-16 (pp. 169-200).