Reflections on a Little Known Gem by Florence Price
In the ongoing resurgence of interest in the life and music of African American composer Florence B. Price, the most commonly used phrase is “the first African American woman to have her music performed by a major orchestra.” The phrase is true, but it is also pernicious. It constructs Price’s musical identity primarily in terms of an arena that was, and is, traditionally a man’s domain. Additionally, establishing that Price was a player in the field of endeavor that was traditionally the domain of men, most of them white and European, evidently does not suffice to encourage commentators to go further in learning about Florence Price, to try to learn her musical voice on her own terms rather than the terms of an exclusionary DWEM club. That attitude does Price little service. It never asks what else she wrote, never asks who she was as a composer when she was not writing in the DWEM arena. That’s a shame because it obscures the fact that, more often than not, Florence Price simply did not play by DWEM rules. Identifying her in terms of DWEM precedents obscures her originality, the tirelessness of her musical imagination.
So what happens if we start with Price and her music and resist the temptation to identify her in DWEM terms?
The sumptuous recently published gem Summer Moon offers an example. (There’s now a lushly intimate recording in the series of Florence Price Piano Discoveries by Price champion Lara Downes, here.) The autographs tell us that this piece was dedicated “to Memry Midgett.” Midgett (1920-2013) is herself a remarkable and dynamic personality, one worthy of significant further study if we ever take a break from our DWEM genuflections. A student of Price, she was a successful jazz pianist and vocalist, performing with Billie Holiday in 1953-54, performing with Holiday and Count Basie in Carnegie Hall in 1954,[1] and becoming a beloved figure of the lively jazz scene of the San Francisco Bay area until an automobile accident in 1965 made a career change necessary. She then earned a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, San Francisco, and a Master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley. After teaching high school for some time she shifted careers again, rising to the position of Chief Administrator for the Department of Public Health in San Francisco.
That’s a remarkable life that combines a dynamic personality with music, education, and public service – a life that begins to open up before us once we begin to use our knowledge of Price’s success in DWEM arenas as a reason to learn more about her, not an excuse to go back to rehearsing our adoration of DWEM music. Because Midgett was one of Price’s students, as well as the dedicatee of Price’s gorgeous (and likewise unfortunately little-known) wedding song “God Gives Me You.”[2]
Finally, Midgett’s jazz voice speaks to us in Price’s sumptuous gem Summer Moon: the work has a deep vocal melody throughout, but its harmonic language is cut more from the cloth of jazz accompanying than from anything in the DWEM world. What strikes me the most is Price’s negotiation of the largely uncharted borderlands between those two worlds: the world of DWEM classical character pieces for piano and that of the beauties of African American jazz as it was spoken in the late 1930s. That negotiation – as brilliant as it is beautiful – would never occur to anyone who’s content to note that Price’s First Symphony reminds them of Dvořák ’s Ninth Symphony. And that is a real loss for those who stop before they get to Summer Moon.
Listen to this evocative gem, and think about it. You’ll be glad you did.
The following is adapted from the foreword to my edition of Summer Moon for G. Schirmer / Associated Music Publishers (New York, 2020). I am grateful to the Special Collections division of the University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayettevillefor granting access to these manuscripts and permission to publish the piano-solo arrangement.
Summer Moon (1938) is one of at least two of Price’s compositions associated with the well-known and beloved singer, jazz pianist, and social activist Memry Midgett (1920-2013).[1] A classically trained pianist, Midgett – who apparently studied piano with Price, and for whom Price wrote the beautiful wedding song “God Gives Me You” – eventually became a successful jazz pianist and vocalist, performing as one of Billie Holiday’s accompanists over a period of eighteen months (1953-54) and performing with Holiday and Count Basie in Carnegie Hall in 1954.[2] She became a beloved figure of the jazz scene of the San Francisco Bay area until an automobile accident in 1965 made a career change necessary – whereupon she pursued and attained a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, San Francisco, followed by a Master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley. After teaching high school for some time she shifted careers again, rising to the position of Chief Administrator for the Department of Public Health in San Francisco.
Although Summer Moon, written when Midgett was just seventeen years old,falls early in this career, it is tempting to discover in it something of the dynamic personality that endeared Midgett to audiences and colleagues wherever she went. Outwardly the work is in a conventional ternary form, with framing A sections in D-flat major and a central B section in B-flat minor, plus coda; and certainly the deeply songful melodies of the A sections are no stranger to Price’s style in general. Yet the richly chromatic harmonic language of Summer Moon, especially the streams of parallel non-functional seventh and ninth chords in mm. 10-11, 23-23, 43-48, 50-52, and elsewhere also evoke the harmonic idioms of jazz – and the pervasive influence of jazz harmonies in the B section is undeniable. In these senses, Summer Moon represents an instance of Price’s brilliance in seamlessly integrating the styles of concert and vernacular repertoires to produce a genre-fluid work whose title and motiving imagery – that of the summer moon – continue to evoke the post-Romantic sound-world whose poetic inspiration derived from the individual’s reflection on nature.
[1] The following material is adapted from Midgett’s online obituary (“Memory Midgett,” at Legacy.com, accessed 14 January 2020 [https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?n=memry-midgett&pid=166884222&fhid=2191]). Midgett’s music and life are themselves worthwhile subjects for future explorations of Price’s influence. The significant body of her life’s papers is held in the African American Museum & Library at Oakland, Oakland Public Library, Oakland, California (Memry Midgett papers, MS 163); see the Guide to the Memry Midgett Papers at Online Archive of California (https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c83f4vcq/admin/). [2] One set from Midgett’s work with Holiday is preserved in a recording of Holiday’s performance, with Count Basie, at Carnegie Hall on 25 September 1954 (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM0bYuRMUlA&list=RDAM0bYuRMUlA&start_radio=1). Although Midgett’s accompanying is mostly difficult to hear because of the quality of the recording, a glimpse of her style can be gleaned from the performance of “My Man” in this set (beginning at 6’41”).
[1] Although Midgett’s accompanying is mostly difficult to hear because of the quality of the recording, a glimpse of her style can be gleaned from the performance of “My Man” in this set (beginning at 6’41”). Midgett’s papers are held in the African American Museum & Library at Oakland, Oakland Public Library, Oakland, California (Memry Midgett papers, MS 163). [2] Florence B. Price, “God Gives Me You,” in 44 Art Songs and Spirituals by Florence B. Price for Medium/High Voice and Piano, ed. Richard Heard (Fayetteville, Arkansas: ClarNan Editions, 2015).
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