Patrick Bade
Florence Price and William Grant Still

Patrick Bade - Florence Price and William Grant Still

- So before I start on my lecture and before I switch off my image again to improve the sound, I just want to wish a very happy 92nd birthday to Carol Beddy, who’s one of our most faithful listeners. So happy birthday, Carol. Right, now I’m going to… How can I do this? No. Actually, I don’t know how to get rid of my image. So I think I’ll just continue and hope the sound is okay. I’m talking tonight about two composers of whom I’d never even heard 10 years ago: William Gran Still and Florence Price. And the fact that I’ve become really quite familiar with their music is entirely down to BBC Radio 3, which is the most wonderful musical educational resource. I would say that Radio 3 has formed a very important part of my musical education over the last half century. Sadly, the BBC has become a kind of political and cultural football. People on the right think it’s a socialist conspiracy, people on the left think it’s a Tory mouthpiece. Everybody thinks BBC is biassed and always against them. I’ve never actually met anybody who said BBC is biassed for them, which suggests to me that, at least some of the time, the BBC is getting it right. But the BBC has also got swept up in the current culture wars: woke and anti-woke. And this is very relevant, really, to the composers I’m talking about tonight. It’s very clear that Radio 3 currently has a quota system, and they have to reach a certain quota for women composers and for Black composers. And Florence Price, being a Black woman, she ticks those two boxes. So we get to hear an awful lot of her, every day in fact. My guess is that BBC Radio 3 offers more airtime to Florence Price than it does to Brahms or Tchaikovsky.

And you can argue the rights or wrongs of that. I worry slightly that it’s perhaps not in her, the long-term interest of her reputation to get so much overexposure really. But on the other hand, if it were not for this basically woke idea, we probably wouldn’t have, I certainly wouldn’t be talking about her tonight or William Grant Still. She was a very prolific composer, even though she came to composing relatively late in her life, in her 40s. It’s estimated that there are over 300 works by her, very varied. She was very a versatile composer, so there are symphonies, there are concertos, there are songs, there’s chamber music, and so on. And she was born in Little Rock in 1887. I checked on the internet today, it currently has a population of 200,000. I imagine it was probably somewhat less than that in the late 19th century. This is what it looked like when she was a girl, the image on the right hand side. And there you see her as a young woman. And she was born into, I would say, a middle class mixed race family. Her father was a dentist, her mother was a teacher. And they were able to afford to send her to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. When she was growing up, race relations in Little Rock were apparently relatively calm and benign. It was only somewhat later, in the 1920s, that things started to get very rough and that Black people started to become, be persecuted and come under attack. But all the same, her mother urged her that when she went to college, that she should pretend to be Mexican rather than Afro-American, and that this would be some kind of protection for her.

When went back to Little Rock, she became a teacher and a professor of music. But then she got married and she had two children, and so her musical career was put on back burner. Things changed in the late 1920s when there were, as I said, there were attacks on Black people, there were lynchings. And she and her husband and her daughters decided to make the great trek northwards that so many Black families did at this time. But instead of going to New York, they went to Chicago. And it was a very exciting time to be in Chicago. I’ve talked about the golden age of opera in Chicago, which was in the interwar period, particularly the 1920s. It was boom city. And everybody who went to Chicago in this period was thrilled by it. It was an extraordinarily exciting, if sometimes rather dangerous place. This is, of course, the period of prohibition and Al Capone and mobsters and so on. But Chicago was enjoying a parallel Black renaissance to the Harlem Renaissance I talked about last week. And so Florence Price was very stimulated by this. Times were hard financially. Her husband was apparently abusive. The marriage broke down and she divorced. And it was round about 1930 that she started to devote herself more seriously to music. And a very important mentor and friend to her was this woman, Margaret Bond, who was also a composer, but a successful concert pianist. And she encouraged Florence Price in her career as a composer.

And she also had very important contacts, particularly with figures in the Harlem Renaissance that I talked about already, people like Langston Hughes and Alan Locke; Marian Anderson, the great singer that I’m going to be talking about in a week or or so, who sang songs by Florence Price. And her breakthrough was a symphony in E minor. This was performed at Chicago’s World Fair in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under its conductor Frederick Stock. And this was a remarkable milestone ‘cause this was actually the very first time that a symphonic work by a Black woman had been performed by a major American symphony orchestra. And it’s a very beautiful work. I’m going to play you the opening. You could say it is somewhat derivative. It’s very influenced by Dvorchak. It’s interesting how many of these Afro-American composers of this period looked to the example of Dvorchak. Of course Dvorchak had come to America in the 1890s, and he had been very taken with both Native American and Afro-American culture and was very attracted to the music of spirituals and so on. And so offered an example, I think, to many Black American composers in the early 20th century of how they could write symphonic music, but incorporate their own cultural heritage. And so I’ll play with the opening. Certainly it will remind you very much of Dvorchak. But it has these rather plaintive musical themes that are both reminiscent of Dvorchak, but also, I think, bring to mind the kind of melodies that you hear in Afro-American spirituals. Some obvious echos there of Dvorchak’s “New World Symphony.” Now, I think it’s very a technically accomplished music, but of course it’s very conservative.

So this is, I would say, another reason why her music and that of William Grant Still was neglected. It wasn’t only the colour of their skin that caused them to be neglected. Snobbish critics dismissed them as being passe and old fashioned. And I would like to say something about this, that, you know, it’s a mistake, it seems to me, to assume that because something is avant-garde, because it’s cutting edge, it’s necessarily better. That is not always the case. The music of Bach was very passe, very retrograde in his time, in the later part of his career. But, you know, after a certain amount of time, of course, that becomes completely irrelevant. And there are other examples of early 20th century composers, like Rachmaninoff and Korngold, who, say, in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, were dismissed as being old fashioned and passe. I’m just looking for the little link here. I seem to have lost it. I wanted to play you the third movement, but it’s disappeared from the screen. One of those mysterious things. Anyway, moving on to her piano concerto. She was, herself , a very accomplished pianist. And she actually played the solo in the premiere of this symphony in 1938. And as you’ll hear, it’s quite a showy and difficult piece, so she must have been pretty good. This, again, was premiered in Chicago. And it had a moderate success, but it disappeared from the repertory, like, well, really all of her music And the original manuscript of the full score was lost. So it’s only quite recently that the score was able to be reconstructed from various different manuscript sources.

So I’ll play you the opening of this, great flourish. And here, I think, there’ll be some memories both of Grieg and of Rachmaninoff. So big romantic gestures there. In 2009, a very remarkable discovery was made in an abandoned summer house that Florence Price had lived in towards the end of her life. She’d had moderate success and fame in the 1930s with performances of her work in many cities. But after the Second World War, she really felt into oblivion, I think as much for the conservative style of her music as for the fact that a Black woman was not taken very seriously at this time. But so, as I said, in 2009, somebody broke into this abandoned house and discovered a huge cache of manuscripts of her work, many of which had never been performed and all of which had never been published, and they included a symphony and two violin concertos and a lot of chamber music. And I’m going to play you now a quintet that was in this cache of music. And it’s a very lovely work. I mean, rather extraordinary to think how easily this could have just been put onto a skip or lost or burned or whatever. It’s a quintet in A minor. I’m going to pay you two excerpts. Firstly, the opening movement, which is very European, very European late 19th century, rather Brahmsian. So very attractively melodic music. Here is the interior of the abandoned house where the manuscripts were found. Obviously it had been ransacked, but I suppose the people who ransacked the house were not looking for musical manuscripts, they were looking for other things.

So I’m going to play you, now, the third movement of that quintet. Both these composers, I think, were, in a certain sense, conflicted. They were learning European idioms. They wanted to be in that European classical tradition, but also influenced by the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance and the Chicago equivalent. They wanted their music to be recognisably Afro-American and different from that European tradition. And so both of them incorporate elements of popular Afro-American song and dance music into their work. And you hear that in this third movement, which incorporates a Juba, which is a popular street dance. This is William Grant Still who was born eight years later, in 1895, in Woodville, Mississippi, but as a young child moved to Little Rock. It seems a rather extraordinary coincidence that the two leading Afro-American composers of classical music of the first half of the 20th century were brought up, as far as in this small, I think, relatively small town of Little Rock, apparently completely unaware of one another. They must have come into contact later in their careers. He also came from a middle class mixed race family. It was obviously quite a cultured family. He was introduced to music at an early age. And he was very well educated. And he was initially intending to become a doctor, but became so involved in music that he gave up his medical studies. And here he is as a young man. And he went to study at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he was also unofficially tutored by the great French avant-garde composer Edgard Varese, who was really one of the most sort of cutting-edge figures of the early 20th century.

But although they got on well, he doesn’t seem to have wanted to follow in the footsteps Varese. And like Price, he turned to a very conservative, late romantic idiom. So having served briefly in the military at the end of the First World War, he took up his career, very successfully, in the 1920s, as an arranger for popular bands and performers. He arranged compositions of Artie Shaw and Paul Whiteman. And when sound came at the end of the '20s, he also worked as an arranger for the movies for film stars like Bing Crosby and others. And so he’s really had quite a flourishing, successful career in the 1920s involved in popular music. And it was not till 1931 that he had his, 1933, that he had his big breakthrough with what he called his “Afro-American Symphony.” And he was, in this, he was doing, of course, what Gershwin had just done a few years earlier with “Rhapsody in Blue” and an “American in Paris.” He was trying to blend Afro-American rhythms with the classical tradition. And he said, “I knew I wanted to write a symphony. I knew it had to be American. And I wanted to demonstrate how the blues, so often considered a lowly expression, could be elevated to the highest musical level.” So I’ll play you the opening of the “Afro-American Symphony,” which was an immediate huge success played around America. And it has remained to this day his best known and most popular work. And you’ll hear this very attractive, wistful, bluesy idiom of the opening. That movement was subtitled “Longing.” Each movement of the “Afro-American Symphony” is supposed to express a different emotional state.

And the third movement is subtitled “Humour.” And rather like the third movement of the Florence Price quintet, it incorporates the rhythms of popular dance music. When I play this to you, it’s going to sound very familiar. You’ll think, “Oh, yes, I recognise that tune,” 'cause it’s very similar to a famous tune by Gershwin. But according to the CD notes of the CD that I took this from, it was actually William Grant Still who wrote his melody first before Gershwin. There’s no suggestion, I think, that one borrowed from the other. These things can happen, really, quite naturally. But as I said, I think you’ll think that you recognise this tune. Yeah, strikingly similar, of course, to “I Got Rhythm.” He, like so many Black artists and intellectuals of his generation, he was keen to reconnect with his African roots. This was something that Alan Locke and Du Bois and others were urging them to do. And this, he tried to do in an orchestral suite that he entitled “Africa.” And I’m going to, again, play you the opening bars of this suite, which probably, I suppose, are no more authentically African than the score of a Tarzan movie would be, 'cause we have a composer who’s born in America, brought up in America, never been to Africa. So Africa for him was something of a fantasy. So you might ask the question, since I was bringing up the subject of woke and anti-woke earlier: “Is this what the woke warriors would call cultural appropriation?” Although, you know, I’m basically very much in sympathy with many of the ideas and principles of wokeism, it does seem to me that one of the most absurd ideas of the whole work movement is cultural appropriation.

Surely, what is culture? How does culture exist? How does it develop? Only by means of appropriation from other cultures. This is how cultures are enriched and how they develop and how they move on. I am not sure if I’m getting any sound here or not. I know it starts very quietly. Yes, I think so. Sounds, honestly, quiet to me. Oh, here it comes. Yeah. The subtitle of that was “Song of a New Race.” So he was certainly very aware of and very involved in the burgeoning civil rights movement. And he was widely respected and more successful than any other Black classical composer of his time. His work was taken up by leading conductors like Leopold Stokowski and Pierre Monteux in particular. But even he had to deal with some pretty humiliating racist treatment. It’s rather extraordinary to think that when he wanted to marry for the second time in 1939, he was living in California at the time, he had to cross the state boundary into another state to get married because in California, of all states, one thinks of California as being so open and so liberal, but there was a law in California at the time forbidding interracial marriage.

I mean, a law similar, of course, to the laws that we condemn, Nuremberg Laws in Europe, which forbade the marriage between Gentiles and Jews. So he went on to write five symphonies in all. And I’m going to play you the opening of the second symphony, which seems to me to show considerable musical progress, very subtle and beautiful orchestration. So in 1943, he wrote a three-movement suite for violin and orchestra that was inspired by illustrations in the book “The Negro in Art” by Alan Locke. And each movement is inspired by a particular work of art. On the left we have the first movement inspired by Richmond Barthe’s bronze sculpture “The African Dancer.” And the last movement is by Augusta Savage’s bronze head entitled “Gamin.” But I’m going to play you the middle movement to end this talk tonight. I think this absolutely gorgeous and a real musical delight. I hope it gives you as much pleasure as it does me. And this is inspired by this image of a mother and child by Sargent Johnson. Now that’s what Sir Thomas Beecham, I think, would have called a musical lollipop.

Q&A and Comments:

So other people wishing happy birthday to Carol. That’s nice.

“Sound is fine.” Thank you very much.

“No quota for Jewish artists.” Come on. They don’t need it. They’re on the radio every day, both performers and composers.

“Music is both delicate and powerful.” Absolutely, I agree. I think that last piece is a good example of that. And I’m glad you like it, Miriam.

Q: “Is Florence Price’s summer cottage still standing?”

A: I don’t know. I do hope it’s being preserved.

“Juba sounds like Scott Joplin.” Yes, it comes from the same source.

Q: “Besides utilising folk songs, did these composers incorporate jazz other than ragtime syncopation?”

A: I suppose it slightly depends on how you define jazz. I don’t think so, really. I mean, I don’t think it’s a… I think it’s a, in a way, a rather superficial way that they incorporated some elements.

And, of course, Debussy’s “Golliwog’s Cakewalk” comes from ragtime as well. Debussy didn’t live long enough to hear proper jazz. “This is Shelly from suburban Chicago. Chicago Classical Radio Station has been showcasing, like BBC, non-dead white men composers for the past five years. As a woman who adores 18th century music, I like dead white composers.” Well, of course, so do I.

“Luckily there are 18th…” And Chevalier de Saint-George, yes, who was a very good composer, contemporary of Mozart. Yes. I don’t about it, really. I mean, I’m very, very happy to have rediscovered so many wonderful women composers. BBC 3, must be about three or four years ago, they had a whole week of nothing but women composers for a whole week. And I must say I was getting rather desperate by the end of the week. I said, “Gimme a bit of Beethoven.” “Non-men, non-white composers.” Yes. Thank you, Nick.

Q: “Were either of them in personal contact with Gershwin?”

A: I feel particularly there’s no… William Grant Still and Gershwin must have known each other 'cause they had so many contacts in common. I’m not sure about Florence Price. Thank you, Diane.

Little Rock, Arkansas, would’ve been considered a mid-size city in 1922, with a population of…“ If it had 204,000 in 1922, it had a bigger population than now. Oh, the names of the artists, are the… Yes, they are known, actually. You’re talking about the ones I showed you at the end that were in Alan Locke’s book. Yes, they are quite well known. And, for instance, the Richmond Barthe, I know, is in museum. I think probably all three of them are in museums.

"The song that sounds like Gershwin’s 'I Got Rhythm’ also sounds like Kern’s ‘Show Boat.’” Yeah, I think it’s something that was in the air at the time. I don’t think anybody’s stealing from anybody else. Do I think their compositions and are their works nowadays… No, they are performed, yes, widely performed. Now, do I really think… If you, hand on heart, I can’t say I think either of them are really major composers. But we don’t always want, I don’t want to hear Beethoven and nothing but Beethoven. Even Bach, who is god for me, you know, sometimes I want to hear Offenbach. So it’s a little bit invidious, really, to try and measure them in comparison with the greats of the classical tradition.

Thank you all very much for bearing with me with this slightly obscure corner of American 20th century culture. I hope it will become less obscure. And I’m off to Paris on Tuesday with a group, with a opera visit. I’m very excited. Looking forward to three wonderful operas with wonderful casts: “Adrienne Lecouvreur,” “Giulio Cesare,” and “Beatrice di Tenda.” So that’s going to be really wonderful four days for me. A great opera every night and wonderful meals and museums. What could be better, really? And I get paid for it. So I’ll be back with you after that, in a week’s time.