UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Date: 03 August 2007______

I, __Bethany Jo Smith______, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: Master of Music in: CCM Division of Composition, Musicology and Theory (Music History) It is entitled: “Song to the Dark Virgin”: Race and Gender in Five Art Songs of Florence B. Price

This work and its defense approved by:

Chair: __Melinda Boyd______

__bruce d. mcclung______

__Mary Stucky______

______

______“SONG TO THE DARK VIRGIN”: RACE AND GENDER IN FIVE ART SONGS OF FLORENCE B. PRICE

A thesis submitted to the

Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF MUSIC

in the Division of Composition, Musicology, and Theory of the College-Conservatory of Music

2007

by

Bethany Jo Smith

B.A., Manhattanville College, 2000

Committee Chair: Dr. Melinda Boyd ABSTRACT

The art songs of Florence B. Price (1888–1953) reveal a tumultuous history of the threat

of being black and a woman during the Negro Renaissance in Chicago. Price was one of the first

black women to be recognized as a composer; however, many of her art songs remain

unpublished. This thesis expands the existing scholarship on Price and her vocal repertoire, situating her works firmly within the context of the Negro Renaissance. I analyze five of her songs, “Fantasy in Purple,” “Forever,” “Night,” “The Heart of a Woman,” and “Song to the Dark

Virgin,” through an aesthetic lens of race and gender studies. My interdisciplinary analysis draws upon African American aesthetics, critical studies of Negro Renaissance poetry, feminist theory, race theory, and musical analysis. Exploring these topics within Price’s art songs

provides an explicit picture of her culture and the issues she faced as a black American woman

during the Negro Renaissance.

iii PERMISSIONS

Chapter Five contains the text of the poems “Fantasy in Purple” (Langston Hughes), “Forever”

(Paul Laurence Dunbar), “Night” (Louise C. Wallace), “The Heart of a Woman (Georgia

Douglas Johnson), and “Songs to a Dark Virgin” (Langston Hughes). “Fantasy in Purple” and

“Songs to the Dark Virgin” by Langston Hughes. Copyright © by the Estate of Langston

Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a Division of Random House

Incorporated. “Night” by Louise C. Wallace is to the best of my knowledge unpublished.

“Forever” by Paul Lawrence Dunbar and “The Heart of a Woman” by Georgia Douglas Johnson

are in public domain.

Appendices I-V contain the manuscripts of Florence B. Price’s art songs, “Fantasy in Purple,”

“Forever,” Night,” “The Heart of a Woman,” and “Song to a Dark Virgin.” “Fantasy in Purple”

and “Forever” are reprinted by permission of The Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers

Collections in the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections. “Night,” Copyright ©

1946 by ASCAP. Reprinted by permission of The Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers

Collections in the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections. “The Heart of a Woman” is reprinted by permission of the Marian Anderson Collection of Music Manuscripts in the

Annenburg Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the Van-Pelt Dietrich Library Center of the

University of Pennsylvania. “Song to a Dark Virgin,” Copyright © 1941 by ASCAP. Reprinted by permission of The Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers Collections in the University of

Arkansas Library Special Collections

iv

Copyright © 2007, Bethany Jo Smith

v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to the Special Collections at the University of Arkansas Libraries and the

University of Pennsylvania’s Annenburg Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the Van-Pelt

Dietrich Library Center for granting me access to the manuscripts and facsimiles of Florence B.

Price’s music for use in my research and in the reproduction of the five manuscripts and facsimiles that appear in this thesis. I wish to thank my committee members, Dr. bruce d. mcclung and Professor Mary Stucky, for their insight and interest in my research. I extend heartfelt gratitude to my thesis advisor, Dr. Melinda Boyd, for her enthusiasm and open- mindedness in advising this project. I also offer thanks to Dr. Hilary Poriss, who advised this thesis in its earliest stages. I would like to thank my voice teacher, Professor Karen Lykes, for her assistance in the preparation of these art songs. I offer a special thanks to Dr. Karin Pendle who sparked my interest in feminist musicology and has been an invaluable resource in my studies and research. My brother Justin, thank you for your help with proofreading. Most of all,

I would like to thank my parents, William and Rebecca Smith, for their continued support of my education.

This thesis is dedicated to the loving memory of my grandfather, Harry James Brown, Jr., whose spirit consistently guided me on this journey. I hope his compassion and respect for all humans, regardless of color or gender, imbued itself in my writing and will inspire others to investigate the wealth of artistic contributions that are too often ignored.

vi

“SONG TO THE DARK VIRGIN:” RACE AND GENDER IN FIVE ART SONGS OF FLORENCE B. PRICE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vi

Preface “Would that I were a jewel; a shattered jewel . . .” 2

Chapter

1. African American Vocal Music 7

2. The Negro Renaissance 25

3. The Art Song During the Negro Renaissance 40

4. Florence B. Price (1888–1953) 49

5. Songs to a Dark Virgin: An Analysis of Five of Price’s Art Songs 62

Epilogue “Would that I were a flame . . .” 97

Appendices: Appendix I: “Fantasy in Purple” 99 Appendix II: “Forever” 102 Appendix III: “Night” 106 Appendix IV: “The Heart of a Woman” 108 Appendix V: “Song to the Dark Virgin” 111

Bibliography 115

PREFACE “Would that I were a jewel; a shattered jewel . . .”1

The art songs of Florence B. Price (1888–1953) reveal the tumultuous history of being

black and a woman during the Negro Renaissance in Chicago. Price received her education at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and later established a career in Chicago as

an organist and teacher. She was one of the first black women to be recognized as a professional

composer. She composed over three hundred pieces, including her most famous work, the

Symphony in E Minor (1933). Well-known as a pianist and organist, Price composed numerous

keyboard works as well as other instrumental and vocal genres. Between 1934 and 1936 she

composed sixty-seven art songs, many of which remain unpublished.

Price employed the poetry of a variety of Negro Renaissance writers as the textual basis

for her art songs. Because of this choice in texts, political leaders viewed her as a “race hero,”

while newspapers presented her as a figure of racial “uplift.” Musical aesthetics surrounding the

concert music of the Negro Renaissance focused on the composition of long, multi-sectional

forms in the style of late nineteenth-century symphonies incorporating long melodies, sonata

form, and chromatic harmonies. The inclusion of black musical idioms expanded these romantic

compositional traditions. Much of Price’s oeuvre, including her collection of art songs, belongs

to this aesthetic approach. Similar in style to the lieder of Robert Schumann, Price’s art songs

embody compact structures while including extensive chromaticism and the use of text painting

to closely illustrate subtle messages tucked within the poetry. My research expands the existing

scholarship on Price and her vocal repertoire, presenting her not as just another woman composer

1 Langston Hughes, “Song to the Dark Virgin,” in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, ed. Arnold Rampersand and David Roessel (New York: Knopf, 1994), 61.

2 of art songs, but as a composer who used the medium of song to convey powerful social

commentaries.

This thesis presents a thorough investigation of the concert repertory of the Negro

Renaissance, focusing in particular on Price’s oeuvre. I explore five of Price’s songs including

“Fantasy in Purple,” “Forever,” “Night,” “The Heart of a Woman,” and “Song to the Dark

Virgin” through the lens of race and gender studies. My interdisciplinary analysis draws upon

African American aesthetics, critical studies of Negro Renaissance poetry, feminist theory, and

race theory. I apply musical analyses aimed at exploring Price’s musical elements that conform

to the ideals of the Negro Renaissance. Price’s songs use musical and poetic elements

characteristic of black music discussed in Samuel A. Floyd’s research, such as syncopated

rhythmic figures, repetition of short rhythmic patterns, antiphonal effects, moments of modally

ambiguous harmony, and the use of melismas and vocables to create a fusion of African and

American sounds.2

These analyses extend far beyond musical language and tonality as I consider the primacy of poetics as reflections of race and gender. I evaluate critical readings of the poetry, particularly focusing on issues pertinent to the setting of the art song, including hermeneutic interpretation and the use of literary devices that were popular during the period. Drawing upon feminist theory and its application to music, I emphasize the significance of black feminist thought. These theories support a thorough examination of the role of black women in society, in song, and through possible musical applications of these roles. Specific areas include

2 Samuel A. Floyd, The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 44–56.

3 interpretation and hermeneutic devices such as Henry Louis Gates’s idea of signifyin(g),3 euphemism as a way to avoid conflict, forced rhyme used as a spot marker, irony, and images of darkness.

I explore feminist theory and its application to music along with black feminist thought,

including ideas such as Zora Neale Hurston’s “race woman”4 and Barbara Christian’s concepts

of “rememory” and “looking high.”5 Also of importance are Michele Wallace’s theories of black feminist creativity as the “black hole,” the black women artist reinforcing the superwoman myth, and variations on negation confronting the impossible for the “Other of the Other,” which provide nwe methods of musical analysis to Price’s songs.6 Analyses of the nature of African

Americanism by E. Franklin Frazier, Melville Herskovits, and Stanley Stuckey also form a part

of my discussion of race theory. Exploring these interdisciplinary topics within Price’s art songs

provides a clear picture of her own culture and the issues she faced as a black American woman

during the Negro Renaissance.

Chapter One traces the development of African American music to the time of the Negro

Renaissance, examining in particular the role of the art song and situating the role of black music

composed by women in the context of a white patriarchal society. Specifically, I observe the

roots of African music and the American assimilation of these styles through the periods of

colonization, Reconstruction, and post-Reconstruction. I also assess the Negro Renaissance as

3 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

4 Zora Neale Hurston, “Art and Such,” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 22.

5 Barbara Christian, “The Highs and Lows of Black Feminist Criticism,” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 44–51.

6 Michele Wallace, “Variations on Negation and the Heresy of Black Feminist Creativity,” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 52– 68.

4 discussed in Floyd’s research and in the works of other black music scholars, including

Dominque-René DeLerma, John Gray, Eileen Southern, and Olly Wilson.7 After this stylistic examination, I evaluate the role of feminism in black music, and particularly focus on the role of the black woman composer.

The Negro Renaissance, in particular the movements in Harlem and Chicago, are the focus of the second chapter. Here I examine the development of artistic creativity within the movement, looking at progress in literature and music through critical theory and public reception drawing upon sources by Houston A. Baker Jr., Henry Louis Gates Jr., Melville

Herskovits, and Zora Neale Hurston.8 Musically, I focus on the importance placed upon concert works by leaders of the Negro Renaissance, and the position of women musicians and composers in Harlem and Chicago.

The third chapter situates the role of the art song in the context of the Negro Renaissance.

I examine the heightened interest in vocal concert music during this period and its placement in opposition to jazz. I also pose an important question: is the art song an act of assimilation into

7 Dominque-René DeLerma, Black Music in Our Culture (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1970); idem, Reflections on Afro-American Music (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1970); John Gray, Blacks in Classical Music (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988); idem, More than Dancing: Essays on Afro-American Music and Musicians (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985); Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997); Olly Wilson “Black Music as an Art Form,” Black Music Research Journal 3 (1982): 1–22; idem, “The Heterogeneous Sound Ideal in Afro-American Music” in New Perspectives on Music: Essays in Honor of Eileen Southern, ed. Josephine Wright and Samuel A. Floyd (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 1992): 327–38.

8 Houston A. Baker, Jr. Afro-American Poetics: Revisions of Harlem and the Black Aesthetic (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); idem, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); idem, “Our Lady: Sonia Sanchez and the Writing of a Black Renaissance” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 318–47; Melville Herskovits, The American Negro: A Study in Racial Crossing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964); idem, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990); idem, “Problem, Method, and Theory in Afro-American Studies,” Afroamerica 1, nos. 1–2 (1947): 5–24; Zora Neale Hurston, “Characteristics in Negro Expression,” in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Nathan Irvin Huggins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 344–46.

5 white America, or is it an entity rooted in African American tradition? In particular, I assess

Price’s contributions to the repertory of vocal concert music during the Negro Renaissance.

In Chapter Four, I survey Price’s life and musical education in a biographical context

tying together social issues relevant to her life and the Negro Renaissance. I refer to the works

of scholars including Rae Linda Brown, Barbara Garvey Jackson, Calvert Johnson, and Penelope

Peters.9 Through the examination of Price’s compositional style, I explore representative

musical examples of her piano and orchestral works and consider the influence of race and

gender on these pieces.

The final chapter provides comprehensive analyses of five of Price’s art songs. I apply

harmonic analysis to each piece and explore the primacy of poetics as reflections of race and

gender. Specifically, I examine the poetry she used as the basis for these art songs, focusing carefully on two songs set to texts by women. I analyze the songs within a sociological context, applying critical ideologies from race and feminist theory, and evaluate Price’s art songs as powerful social commentaries.

9 Rae Linda Brown, “Florence B. Price and Margaret Bonds: The Chicago Years,” Black Music Research Bulletin 12, no. 2 (Fall 1990): 11–14; idem, “Florence B. Price’s Negro Symphony,” in Temples for Tomorrow: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Geneviève Fabre and Michel Feith (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001): 84–98; idem, “The Orchestral and Chamber Music of Florence B. Price (1888–1953)” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1987); idem, “William Grant Still, Florence Price, and William Dawson: Echoes of the Harlem Renaissance,” in Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays, ed. Samuel A. Floyd (New York: Greenwood, 1990): 71–86; Barbara Garvey Jackson, “Florence Price (1888–1953),” Black Perspectives of Music 5, no. 1 (Spring 1977): 31; Calvert Johnson, “Florence Beatrice Price: Chicago Renaissance Woman,” The American Organist 34, no. 1 (Jan. 2000): 68–75; Penelope Peters, “Deep Rivers: Selected Songs of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds,” Canadian University Music Review 16, no. 1 (1995): 74–95.

6 CHAPTER ONE African American Vocal Music

Through the exploration of aesthetics within African American and black music, I will

attempt to trace the roots of song through Africa during colonization (1619–1861) by examining

various African societies and cultures, vocal music characteristics as performed by different

sexes, group singing, and the development of song applying Olly Wilson’s concept of African music as a type of “functional art.”1 I then look at the permutations of these song characteristics

in black American musical genres and the re-emergence of black aesthetics during the

Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction (1861–1919), as well as later in the vocal and concert music of the Negro Renaissance (1919–42) by examining African musical survivals.2 This historical framework elevates the importance of African American women musicians within the constructs of white patriarchy, the church and community, and prominent singers of vocal music.

Considering the presence of feminine aesthetics within black vocal music, I examine the music of prominent black women composers such as Florence Price and the application of feminist aesthetics.

African American and Black Musical Aesthetics

The terms “African American music” and “black music” are often used interchangeably,

despite their differences. There may be musical similarities within the two classifications,

particularly within black art songs; however, “African American music” denotes that the music

retains African elements, while “black music” makes no such claim. Samuel A. Floyd’s research

1 Olly Wilson, “Black Music as an Art Form,” Black Music Research Journal 3 (1982): 1–22.

2 Ashenafi Kebede defines the theory of survivalism as accounting for the retention of Africanisms in all phases of black American culture, religious and social attitudes, mannerisms, language, names, stories, dance, and music, in his book Roots of Black Music: The Vocal, Instrumental, and Dance Heritage of Africa and Black America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hill, 1982).

7 delves into the rich and varied area of scholarship on black music. While there is no simple way to answer the questions “What is African American music?” and “What is black music?,” I attempt to survey the aesthetics surrounding this music. Wilson writes convincingly that there is a surplus of definitions of black music by numerous scholars, which not only confuse the term, but also renders the entire field rather enigmatic.3 Floyd questions whether or not there is a

black aesthetic in music, asserting:

The question of black music and the need to define the term did not grow out of an awareness of the integration of Afro-American music in the “general music sound.” It arose out of dissatisfaction with the degree to which concert music by black composers had been integrated into the Western concert music repertory and from a desire by black scholars to insure that the achievements of black composers in the concert world be recognized.4

According to Floyd, black music should be considered Western music despite the fact that it

shares some Eastern musical traits such as short melodic motives and pentatonicism. As black

music is Western music, it demands a “Western approach to aesthetics.”5 Many historians,

composers, and musicians have attempted to define black music, but Floyd analyzes their concepts and aims to create a definition for a concept so broad it seems indefinable.6 Floyd writes, “Black music is that which reflects and expresses essentials of the Afro-American experience in the United States. Black music, while it includes Afro-American music, is a

3 Wilson, 2.

4 Samuel A. Floyd, “Black Music and Aesthetic Communication,” Black Music Research Journal 1 (1980): 15–16.

5 Ibid., 2.

6 Ibid., 2–3. Some definitions of black music include: “Any composition written by a black composer.” — T. J. Baker; “Music of black people, embracing the total black experience, based on a constant conflict of rhythms.” —David Baker; “Music based on a rich musical vocabulary arrived at from a distillation of original African sources…using cultural roots as a point of contact.” —Noel da Costa; “Music emanating from the experiences of black Americans.” —Herbie Hancock; and “Music created by people who mainly call themselves black, and whose compositions in their large or complete body show a frequent, if not preponderant, use of significant elements, derived from the Afro-American heritage.” —Undine Moore

8 broader category that includes concert and recital music.”7 Floyd defines a work of black music

as a “sonic temporal organism whose internal relationships express and communicate essentials

of the Afro-American experience.”8 Wilson posits that AfricanAmerican music has “influenced and been influenced in important ways by several non-black musical traditions thereby making it more difficult to pinpoint precisely the essential aspects of the music which make it part of a larger African or black musical tradition.”9

Communication in any type of black music (spirituals, rap, jazz, concert music, hip hop,

blues, funk, gospel, etc.) takes place when listeners are able to extract and appreciate elements of black musical expression and relate these expressions to their own lives and experiences. Floyd believes that black music should be evaluated on the same basis as any other music—on its ability to express and communicate.10 He further articulates that we should insist only that the

“idiomatic roots of black music be taken into consideration, and that they serve as central

considerations in our applications of universal criteria to black music.”11

As the roots of musicology and musical analysis lie in German repertoire, most scholars

neglected the music of French, Italian, Russian, women, and black composers; therefore, scholars and conservatory-trained musicians for the most part did not recognize black aesthetics in notated compositions until the late nineteenth century, which coincides with Guido Adler’s

7 Ibid., 4.

8 Ibid., 4–5. Floyd expands his definition, “The energy which creates the musical organism results from the organization and development of antecedent-consequent relations—tonal, rhythmic, textural, dynamic, and other dissonant-consonant configurations which reflect the characteristics of African-American music. The perception of all these related happenings represents the realization of form—energy organized from the black perspective.”

9 Wilson, 2.

10 Floyd, 10–12.

11 Samuel A. Floyd, “Towards a Philosophy of Black Music Scholarship,” Black Music Research Journal 2 (1981): 90.

9 aims to define musicology in 1884. The study of music by black composers continued to be

overlooked through the twentieth century. Orin Moe proposes that black composers aim to

create music “within and against a tradition,” so that scholars rarely view their music as

conservative and not stylistically progressive.12 The works created by many black composers

during the Negro Renaissance have not been given the chance to influence music history or style.

Yet, their music functions in a variety of historical contexts including the history of the

symphony, chamber music, solo works, art song, American music, black American music, and

nationalism within both American and black American music.

The Effects of Colonialism on African American Vocal Music (1619–1861)

The characteristics and style of African American music originate in Africa during the

period of colonization. Most slaves brought to North America were from West Africa, including the regions of Congo-Angola, Nigeria, Dahomey, Togo, the Gold Coast, and Sierra Leone.13

From 1619 through 1865, Europeans brought approximately ten to fifteen million Africans to the

New World on slave ships.14 Packed onto the ships, Africans were separated from their families

and not allowed to bring any of their belongings on their travels. Music, therefore, became a

communal activity on the ships.15 The African Diaspora is the story of how Africans, though

12 Orin Moe, “A Question of Value: Black Concert Music and Criticism,” Black Music Research Journal 6 (1986): 57.

13 Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 10. This section of Africa is commonly referred to as “Africa Proper” or “Black Africa,” while Europeans dominate most of South Africa.

14 Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History, 20. These dates reflect the period of the Atlantic slave trade portion of the global African Holocaust.

15 Ibid., 21.

10 separated from their families and tribes, preserved their varied cultural heritages while adapting

to their New World.

Scholars maintain different interpretations of the role or functions of music in the

Diaspora. In her study of black music, Eileen Southern divides occasions for this type of communal music making which permeated everyday life, into the two broad categories of community events and social events.16 Floyd proposes an “African cultural memory” that

remained dormant for many years which underlies this aesthetic founded in early folk tales,

sayings, superstitions, and learning about and playing black music.17 He discusses concepts that

distinguish African music, such as the lack of formal distinction between the sacred and profane,

the material and spiritual, traditional sacrifices and offerings to God in dance, drum, and song,

contrasting rather than blending timbres, syncopated rhythmic patterns derived from oral poetry,

and the communal and integrated relationships between dance, drum, and song.18 This suggests

that the function of African music is deeply embedded within everyday life.

Though geographically diverse and specifically dependent on the area where the music

occurs, scholars draw connections in regard to the features of African music. Southern observes

that African melodies typically include modal or pentatonic elements and repetitive short musical

units, often varying in repetition. Harmonies often occur at intervals of a third, fourth, or fifth

below the melody and include the frequent use of parallel intervals.19 Call-and-response singing

16 Ibid., 4–5. Community events consist of agriculture, inauguration of kings, joining of nation chiefs, re- enactment of historical war, victory celebrations, hunting, religious ceremonies, funerals, and litigation. Social events include birth ceremonies, the appearance of a first tooth, puberty, initiation rites, betrothal ceremonies, work songs, and recreational music.

17 Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 4.

18 Ibid., 15–33.

19 Southern, 4–5.

11 occurs, as does the use of clapping and drumming as an accompaniment to music and dance.20

Southern’s broad classification of musical features can be found within many African societies and emerge in the practices of professional musicians as well as people who perform functional music.

During slavery, vocal music took many forms, including calls and cries, which served

various functions. Calls served as a method of communication, consisting of a variety of short

messages that were sung to call attention, caution, eat, etc. The calls were part of a conscious

effort to transform speech into song but use of the calls eventually diminished with the abolition

of slavery. Cries served to convey intense emotional experiences. Plantation owners favored

work songs and noticed that the slaves worked harder if they sang. A lead singer often would

set the pace for the group, thus the slaves with stronger voices would usually sell for higher

sacred music. 21

Rituals and dances make up a large portion of the music in African society. The ring

shout (also referred to as the ring ritual) is a counterclockwise dance ceremony that can be

performed by either a group or solo dancer with call-and-response vocals, clapping, and beaten

stick percussion. Other variations of the ring shout occurred in Congo slave dances and spirituals, which altered the distinct African musical characteristics that Southern describes.

African religious ceremonies, particularly burial ceremonies, emphasize the circle in music and

dance, which encapsulates themes of inclusion and community, such as the ring shout. The

symbolism of the circle of the ring shout is also associated with marriage, fertility, and

20 Ibid., 15.

21 Kebede, 129–30.

12 childbirth.22 During the Negro Renaissance, the congregations of churches in Harlem and

Chicago also sang the ring shout, responding vigorously to the preacher, dancing and shouting on their feet.23

Derived from the black experience in America, spirituals are the most widespread of all

African American genres.24 Floyd asserts that the spiritual articulated existing tribulations and

achievements while preserving past traditions originating from the black American experience.

Spirituals also extend outside traditional religious boundaries and function as folk songs, songs

of freedom and faith, and commentary on slavery. They exist in two text types: sorrow songs, which focus explicitly on the suffering experienced by slaves and redemption through the Savior, and jubilees or “shout spirituals,” which express joy and hope for a better future.25 Sterling

Stuckey proposes that scholars often study spirituals as an entity separate from the ceremonies

with which they are so powerfully connected, treating them as a musical form unrelated to dance

and dance rhythms. He further extrapolates this point by stating that dance rhythms regulate all

the movement and singing within spirituals. 26 To gain a clearer picture of the function of music within society, it is necessary to examine these spirituals within their cultural context.

The spiritual, born out of African solo song, the lament, and the ring shout, is the clearest

example of an African survival we have to date. The most notable musical characteristics of the

spiritual are what Floyd refers to as the “rhythmic excitement of the shout” as well as call-and-

22 Stuckey, 11–15.

23 Ibid., 55.

24 Floyd, 35–39.

25 Ibid., 40–42.

26 Stuckey, 26–28.

13 response antiphony and call-and-refrain antiphony.27 A typical vocal melody consists of several

contrasting tone colors, rather than one single timbre. There is a relationship between the

African American calls, cries, and the spiritual. Similarities between the genres include

ametrical rhythm, pitch reiteration, and wordless intensifiers. Melodic characteristics include

microtonal inflections in pentatonic and modally ambiguous contexts, varied styles of vocalizing

ranging from rough to piercing to falsetto, the use of wordless sounds, ease of movement

between speaking and singing, and the use of grunts, hums, and melismas as integral to musical

meaning. Clapping, foot patting, and patting juba (a form of body percussion) make up rhythmic

traits, which are applied through the repetition of short motives, cross-rhythms, as well as

accented and isolated second beats. Song texts consist of tales, ballads, stories, and toasts, which

are told in metaphor and include figures of speech, implications, indirection, and personification

in dialect and call-and-response.28

Ashenafi Kebede points out many documented cases in Africa where people sang for

days without eating so that they might “sing away their woes,” which in turn promoted the development of African song.29 Also significant is that African involvement in music begins

before birth. Women are active in music making and singing songs to celebrate pregnancy and

birth; vocal music permeates the entire course of a person’s life.30 As music is woven into the

fabric of African life, it becomes clear why black American slaves were so protective of their

songs. Stuckey discusses the caution with which slaves guarded their religious ceremonies and

27 Floyd, 44. Here, call-and-response antiphony (also referred to simply as call-and-response) refers to a soloist or small group of singers that sing the solo sections alternating with the whole body of the group or chorus. In call-and-refrain antiphony, the group response is a standard unchanging refrain after each solo “call.”

28 Ibid., 46–56.

29 Kebede, 40.

30 Ibid., 37–40.

14 songs, as to prevent white discovery of the music.31 In this case, song was secret, a private and treasured genre; not the public celebration of life and lament of sorrow it previously was.

However, as European Americans began to promote black music throughout history (most apparent during the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction), the “secret” songs of the slaves

became a form of entertainment for white audiences. Melville Herskovits writes, “It has long

been held that the political contribution of the Negro to the culture of the Americas, and most

particularly to U.S. culture, lies in the expression of his musical gift.”32 This contribution that

Herskovits describes becomes apparent during the Reconstruction in the Fisk Jubilee Singers’

performances of concert spirituals.

Religious genres such as the spiritual are integral components of black vocal music in

America. The secret societies that met in West Africa are mirrored in the praise meetings of black America. Kebede suggests, “European influences have affected black religious music more than any other branch of black music because earliest black churches culturally used ready- made white spirituals and hymns.”33 For example, in 1801 Richard Allen’s Hymn Book was the

first hymnal assigned exclusively for an all-black congregation.

Black women slaves in colonial America kept their heritage alive through storytelling and

singing. Vocal music was the primary artistic and communicative expression for slave women who typically performed cradle songs and lullabies. The importance of the lullaby is of particular note; a soothing female voice, which comfortingly and lovingly lulls children to sleep, may be the first exposure they have to music of any sort.34 Irene Jackson posits that the house

31 Stuckey, 24.

32 Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 261.

33 Kebede, 133–34.

34 Ibid., 37.

15 slave, or “mammy,” made the greatest impact on American culture. Her cradle songs and lullabies are the basis of black American song tradition and they compose what Jackson views as

“the single most important part of the black feminine song tradition.”35 Many historical sources

concerned with American and African American music overlook the lullaby’s significant

influence.36 As music is an integral part of African life, possibilities of feminine aesthetics

derived from lullabies exist within African and black American song.

Other popular forms of music making for African American women during the period of

colonization included work songs, street calls and/or cries to sell food (reminiscent of field

hollers), food preparation for blessing, quilting songs, wash songs, healing songs (often

performed by women folk doctors), and lamenting, which frequently occurred in burial and

funeral songs.37 Women also achieved musical prominence at Christian churches during slavery

as the church assumed a central place in the lives of blacks. These churches later served as a

place where black composers could have their music performed in a concert setting. Many black

composers and singers began their careers in the church, composing piano and/or organ works,

art songs, or performing art songs spirituals.

Black Vocal Music During the Reconstruction and Post-Reconstruction (1861–1919)

The nineteenth century brought the Civil War (1861–65), which ended on 9 April 1865

when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant.

President Abraham Lincoln and most other white northerners were eager to put the country back

35 Irene Jackson, “Black Women and the African Song Tradition,” Sing Out! 25, no. 2 (July–Aug. 1976): 10.

36 Ibid., 10–11.

37 Ibid., 11–12.

16 together again as soon as possible through the process of Reconstruction. Union policy evolved

to embrace the total abolititon of slavery in the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which was

later superseded as Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865.

The political climate created a greater interest in black music. As the Reconstruction progressed, black musicians began performing European American religious, dance, and military music, which brought about a re-emergence of interest in black music. This performance of European music eventually resulted in a black tradition that reshaped the Euro-American musical qualities toward African American standards and included the process of cultural transformation, in which black composers often utilized pre-existing European American musical forms.

During the 1870s the Fisk Jubilee Singers toured Europe with renditions of Negro spirituals; however, these were not folk representations of spirituals. Concerts consisted of slave songs stylized to fit the vocal and expressive requirements of European choral singing. The style of the spiritual continued to model itself after the style of the Jubilee and the original spirituals sung by the slaves were altered. Despite this, the Fisk Jubilee Singers made black music more accessible within the cultural context of the United States. Middle class black and white aficionados praised the group.38

Religion played a considerable role in the music of the post-Reconstruction period. After

Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which deemed all former slaves and

African Americans as citizens, and the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 which denied the withholding of voting privileges based on race, blacks and whites worshipped in the same

churches. Integrated worship was short-lived until approximately 1900 when growing

discrimination resulted in segregation of the black congregation, despite the fact that segregation

38 Floyd, 60–64.

17 occurred in all other areas of life until the 1960s. The rise of separate churches initiated the

emergence of black community leaders and musicians. Women played an extensive role in these churches and often made up the majority of the congregations and choirs.

Black Vocal Music During the Negro Renaissance (1919–42)

Blackface minstrel shows and musical comedies became highly desired by white

audiences during the twentieth century. The musical traditions involving black minstrels, black

marching and circus bands, ragtime, arranged spirituals, black musical comedy, and jazz were

popular.39 The blues, which emerged after the Reconstruction, borrowed significant features

from the calls, cries, and hollers of the freed slaves and from spirituals of brush harbors and

church houses. Basic to most forms of black music, the blues were the most prominent factor in

maintaining community, and as Floyd states, may be viewed as the “Urtrope” of the tradition.40

It was a manifestation of primary features of African and African American song expression,

which included call-and-response musical features, elisions, repetition of short phrases, falling

and pendular thirds, timbral distortions, ululations, vocables, hums, moans, and other devices associated with the ring shout. Similarly, the origins of jazz are found in the ring shout ceremony. Emerging African American genre such as jazz were not formed by insertions of

African performance practices into formal European musical structures, as seen with the Fisk

Jubilee Singers. However, Floyd notes that these genres were molded into a progression that superimposed these European forms on the “rich and shimmering foundation of African religious

39 Wilson, 10.

40 Floyd, 78.

18 beliefs and practices.”41 This new syncreticized music in the form of jazz and the blues was rooted in Africa, not in Europe; thus, society often viewed it as a lowbrow artform:

Music of the Negro Renaissance mirrored class divisions in the black population. There was a small black middle class in the 1890s and the beginnings of the black upper class in the early 1900s comprised of professionals such as physicians, dentists, publishers, and lawyers. During the early 1900s; however, the black population consisted largely of the unskilled working class. This class division created a three-way schism within the black community. The middle class aspired to the values of the elite and embraced white culture, separating themselves from “blacks of the lowest class.” Meanwhile, the elite established high-status organizations, which excluded the working class blacks and included churches in some cases.42

These new genres of concert music during the Negro Renaissance lent themselves to settings of black poetry, which caused the music of the time to be known as “literary music” and society often viewed concert music as highbrow or more cultivated. These settings of black poetry mirrored the class structures within society as a movement to separate the middle and upper class aspirations to be a “literate” race, to effect “race progress,” and to the adoption of European “literary” settings of lieder and melodie.

“Signifyin(g)” is a literary device that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. researched in depth.43 It is a use of symbolic speech found in black vernacular that functions as a way of saying one thing and meaning another and has applications to black music, in particular the concert music of the

Negro Renaissance. In music, signifyin(g) acts in opposition to the European musical tradition, where the act of performance is more important than the performance itself. Floyd describes this as “the expectation that something will happen in the playing of the music . . . the something

41 Ibid., 85.

42 Ibid.

43 Gates, The Signifying Monkey.

19 fascinates, and elevates the expectation and places the hearer in critical mode.”44 Signifyin(g) is

extremely important to consider during the Negro Renaissance, particularly in the texts of black poets which were often set as art songs by composers such as Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1875–

1912), Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882–1943), William Grant Still (1895–1978), and Florence

Price.45 Musically, signifyin(g) may emerge through varied and changed presentations of

African idioms, formal or clichéd. While subtle and subjective in musical analysis, the literary

theory provides for the possibility of cultural analysis. Signifyin(g) occurs in many genres, from

concert music to jazz and blues; however, political leaders of the Renaissance, such as W. E. B.

Du Bois and Alain Locke, favored concert music over music used for entertainment purposes,

including jazz and blues, although several composers used these entertainment genres in their

“serious” concert works.46

Racial barriers for black concert musicians and composers during the 1920s and 1930s

posed many problems. Southern asserts publishers typically did not accept manuscripts from

black composers, and leading music organizations would not perform works composed by

African Americans. However, for the first time during this period, major symphony orchestras

performed works written by black composers, some opera companies hired black singers for

leading roles, black musicians conducted symphony and radio orchestras, black composers wrote

scores for full-length films, and African Americans appeared in drama and ballet productions on

Broadway. More than ever before, African Americans received recognition for their

44 Floyd, 95–97. On p. 98, Floyd discusses the fundamentals of materiality, which must be understood in order to comprehend the manifestations of signifyin(g) in its use in text settings in art songs of the Negro Renaissance, “Black musicians turned white texts into black as black musicians applied rhetorical strategies to European forms.”

45 Ibid., 102.

46 Ibid., 113.

20 achievements; however, these achievements were still tokens, not a widespread tradition that

gave equal time to black composers and musicians as it gave to whites.47 The period in which

these composers, musicians, actors, and dancers seemingly thrived was relatively short-lived and

was contemporaneous with the blackface tradition.48

Women musicians were important participants in black music tradition during the Negro

Renaissance. Mildred Denby Green maintains that both male and female black Americans

continued their African musical traditions. African Americans improvised vocal music in the

form of spirituals, work songs, hollers, and dance songs and used European musical practices to

preserve their music that was previously improvised and to identify composers. During the

twentieth century, black American women such as Nora Holt (1885–1974), Helen Eugenia

Hagan (1893–1964), Undine Smith Moore (1904–89), Margaret Bonds (1913–72), and Price

began to synthesize African and European styles of music.49

Black women played an active role in music making and are often associated with their

contributions to the genre of classic blues.50 Jackson observes the importance of gospel music

(which she refers to as the “religious counterpart of the blues”) in the black community as well.

47 Southern, 406–8. Black opera singers and concert recitalists of the time include Marian Anderson (1897–1993), Jules La Bledsoe (1898–1943), Mary Cardwell Dawson (1894–1962), Todd Duncan (1903–98), Lillian Evanti (1890–1967), William Franklin (b. 1906), Roland Hayes (1887–1976), Caterina Jarboro (1903–86), Dorothy Maynor (1910–96), Etta Morton (b. 1901), Julia Rhea (1908–92), and Paul Robeson (1898–1976).

48 Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer, eds., Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the Negro in American Entertainment (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968).

49 Mildred Denby Green, Black Women Composers: A Genesis (Boston: Twayne, 1983), 27–29.

50 Jackson, 13. Jackson goes on to explain the context of the classic blues, “The closeness of the rural community was re-created in an urban context; here women of the blues and the women of ‘sacred song’ merged their singing styles.”

21 Gospel is primarily a black feminine genre, rooted in the urban black folk church, an institution

largely sustained and supported by black women.51

The church often supported the development and training of prominent black vocalists,

many of whom made careers as soloists, in opera, or in vaudeville and musical theatre. One of

the most esteemed black American vocalists was contralto Marian Anderson (1897–1993),

known for her excellent technique as well as being successful in the world of cultivated music in

spite of racism. She became an artist-ambassador and in the process dissolved hostilities and

awakened the nation’s consciousness. Penman Lovingood’s Famous Modern Negro Musicians

(1921) cites Anderson as having “the most perfect vocal organ . . . in the race. She gives forth a prodigality of voice and tone that is unmatched in its wealth.”52 His compliment of Anderson is racially tempered and reflects the biases nature of music criticism of the time.

Particularly in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, society

celebrated black women composers less than vocalists. Women composers, black or white, were

often seen as embodying masculine characteristics.53 At the time, society did not perceive composing music as feminine or ladylike. Audiences viewed women as a spectacle, with their

bodies and mouths on display so the public could visually and aurally consume them. The music

world often views women composers as the Other; however, black women composers are dealt a

particularly difficult hand, as they marginalized in respect to race, again in sex, and again in their

choice of profession. With this many hurdles to overcome, it is possible that these obstacles might manifest themselves in the music. The unfortunate fact remains that most of these women

51 Ibid.

52 Penman Lovingood, Famous Modern Negro Musicians (New York: Da Capo Press, 1921), quoted in Raoul Abdul, Blacks in Classical Music: A Personal History (New York: Meade, 1977), 84.

53 In Pirkko Moisala’s essay “Musical Gender in Performance,” Women & Music: A Journal of Music and Culture 3 (Jan. 1999): 1–16, she addresses the career and public reception of composer Kaija Saariaho. Much of the public reception that describes Saariaho occurs in terms of her masculinity rather than her talent.

22 musicians are not acknowledged or recognized as music creators, even though America has been

raised listening to their lullabies, songs, and symphonies.54 Jackson asserts:

The music history of black women has been invisible, since most sources on Afro-American music rely on material and accounts that overlook the musical activities of women. Marginal alienation given to women in studies of black music suggests that women are incidental music makers and not essential bearers of the musical tradition—this is not so! The music of Afro-American women has been essential, particularly in the continuation of Afro-American culture—and American culture in general.55

While Jackson presents some undeniable facts, it is important to consider the reason that black women are often ignored musically is because their music is largely based on an oral tradition.

There are several black American women composers of note, many of whom were acknowledged during the Negro Renaissance. Some of these composers in addition to Price include Holt, Hagan, Moore, and Bonds. In the case of Price, I will later demonstrate that her compositions continually exhibit that black musical idioms are “worthy for use in her music” regardless of its genre.56 Black folk themes and rhythms permeate the sonic fabric of her

symphonies, chamber works, keyboard works, and songs.

While there is no concise or simple definition to explain African American music or

black music, it is clear that by tracing the history of vocal music within African and black

American cultures, women play an intrinsic role in its creation and performance. These women

are instrumental in the composition of vocal music of several genres as varied as the sacred spiritual and secular blues. The role of the black woman composer became more significant in

54 Jackson, 10.

55 Ibid.

56 Moe, 63.

23 American society, particularly during the Negro Renaissance where composers such as Price achieved recognition for their musical contributions.

24 CHAPTER TWO The Negro Renaissance

The creative and critical project of a black renaissance might more accurately be labeled the lasting Afro-American quest for re-evaluation. —Houston A. Baker1

The movement towards Pan-Africanism spawned the flowerings of the Negro

Renaissance in two cosmopolitan areas, Harlem (1917–1935) and Chicago (1935–1950).

Inspired by a heightened interest in African civilization and culture, artistic involvement in folk

art, literature, and music became the primary focus of Black Nationalist thought in the writings of authors such as W. E. B. DuBois (1868–1963), Alain Locke (1886–1954), and Marcus A.

Garvey (1887–1940). Notable poets of the Negro Renaissance included Gwendolyn Bennett,

Countee Cullen, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Fenton Johnson, Georgia Douglas

Johnson, James Weldon Johnson, and Claude McKay. Political thought during the period expressed the view that if African Americans demonstrated substantial abilities in arts and letters, then social, political, and economic freedoms would certainly follow. Despite this, most blacks during the Negro Renaissance who were not part of the “Talented Tenth,” both college educated and artistically adept, continued to struggle and worked blue collar jobs for minimal salary.2 As a movement the Negro Renaissance created a great interest in black concert music

and provided an atmosphere in which audiences praised Florence Price’s music for its artistic

contributions.

During the postwar period, American writers became interested in numerous social and

economic problems, specifically labor, housing, crime, social planning, and disarmament. This

1 Houston A. Baker, Jr., “Our Lady: Sonia Sanchez and the Writing of a Black Renaissance,” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 320.

2 Ibid., 321.

25 increased proclivity towards social issues manifested itself through the works of novelists,

dramatists, publicists, and other writers, both black and white, who reflected on racial issues and made the American public more conscious of the problem.3 Growing interest in the race

problem led to the emergence of more African-American writers during the postwar period.

Through advances in opportunity for higher education among blacks they “reached a level of

articulation which made it possible for them to transform their feelings into a variety of art

forms.”4 Arna Bontemps divides the period into two phases: Phase I (1921–1924) the period of

primary black propaganda and Phase II (1924–1931) the eventual additional impetus of white

society. Phase I supporters included W. E. B. DuBois, editor of The Crisis, an NAACP publication and Charles S. Johnson, editor of Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, a

publication of the Urban League, as well as the contributors to these journals.5

Alain Locke’s 1925 publication The New Negro stirred much controversy during the

Negro Renaissance. Due to his political ideologies, he is often referred to as the “interpreter of

the Harlem Renaissance.”6 In Locke’s analysis of the “Great Migration,”7 he states, “neither

labor demand, the boll weevil, nor the Ku Klux Klan were a basic factor . . . however

3 John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1967), 401.

4 Ibid., 402.

5 Warrington Hudlin, “The Renaissance Re-examined,” in The Harlem Renaissance Remembered: Essays, ed. Arna Bontemps (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972), 272–73. Arna Bontemps’s dates correspond to the development of the Harlem Renaissance (1917–1935) and demonstrate that the Chicago Renaissance (1935–1950) flourished after the occurrence of these events.

6 Franklin, 415.

7 The “Great Migration” refers to the large percentage of the black population who moved north to metropolitan areas in search of greater opportunities for employment and fairer social treatment due to injustices and conditions in the south. These involved discrimination, lynching, severe labor depression from 1914–1915, flooding in 1915, and the “red summer of 1919” which involved race riots in twenty-five cities and the lynching of many blacks.

26 contributory any or all of them may have been.”8 Locke notes, “Harlem is not typical, yet it is

significant and prophetic,” as it not only had the largest Negro community in America, but also

the first concentration of diverse elements representative of Negro life.9 The artistic

contributions of the New Negro provided fuel for Locke’s political statement, “It must be

increasingly recognized that the Negro had already made very substantial contributions, not only

in his folk-art, but in music especially, which has always found appreciation, but in humbler and

less acknowledged ways.”10

In W. E. B. DuBois’s 1933 essay “Race Pride,” he expounds upon Locke’s ideologies urging his audience to “be proud of your race, away with the ‘ashamed-of-yourself’ and ‘want- to-be-White!’” 11 In this political statement, DuBois posits two options for blacks: absolute segregation of the races and sections of the world, or justice and democracy for all, allowing whites to achieve international and intercultural status, while allowing blacks the highest honors

in England and the U.S.12 This ideology poses the most positive solution for musicians who traveled to give performances, or to premiere their compositions, thus allowing international and intercultural status. DuBois’s 1903 The Souls of Black Folks, while seldom mentioned as a precursor to the Negro Renaissance, had “more impact on aspiring young blacks than any other single work” and significantly influenced Langston Hughes and Claude McKay.13

8 Alain Locke, The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Atheneum, 1925; reprint, New York: Atheneum, 1968), 2 (page citations are to the reprint edition).

9 Ibid., 3.

10 Ibid., 8

11 W. E. B. DuBois, “Race Pride,” in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Nathan Irvin Huggins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 42.

12 Ibid.

13 George E. Kent, “Patterns of the Harlem Renaissance,” in The Harlem Renaissance Remembered: Essays, ed. Arna Bontemps (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972), 29.

27 Marcus A. Garvey, often referred to as “one of the great energizers of the New Negro

movement,”14 outraged both DuBois and James Weldon Johnson because of his radical political

views, including his separatist ideas on “Africa for the Africans.”15 Historian John Hope

Franklin attributes separatism in black literature of all writing during the Harlem Renaissance,

political or fictional, less to the writers’ desires to be different, or stylishly “exotic”; rather, their cultural heritage brings them closer together with a vision of social and economic reform.16

Although often inadvertently viewed as a revolt or uprising, writers and artists of the Negro

Renaissance were simply voicing their disapproval with the unjust operation of social systems.

In the same vein, not all of these artists were “crusaders,” some simply created art for art’s sake.

Regardless of whether the artistic movement occurred in Harlem, Chicago, Washington,

or Nashville, the preeminence of black writers, artists, and musicians raised two very important questions. Is a black artist’s highest responsibility to the work of art or to the progress of a race?

And can the two be reconciled?17 In this chapter, I will address another question: What

becomes of a work of art when the dominating social force, in this case, white patriarchy,

trivializes it? As Houston A. Baker, Jr. notes, “What is lauded or simply deemed acceptable

‘black’ accomplishment by white overseers has little to do with the authentic state of the Afro-

American soul.”18

14 Franklin, 402.

15 Marcus A. Garvey, “Africa for the Africans,” in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Nathan Irvin Huggins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 35–37.

16 Franklin, 402.

17 Ibid., 403.

18 Baker, 323.

28 Zora Neale Hurston labeled the many whites during the Negro Renaissance who were

extremely interested in life in Harlem and black communities in other cities as “Negrotarians.”19

Predominately white patronage was important to Harlem artists, both financially and as whites had greater access to publishing houses, galleries, and performing venues. During the

Renaissance, white involvement and support of black artists appeared to be part of the allure with the exotic, which was a “new fad in white society.”20

As exemplified by the state of white patronage to writers and artists in Harlem, New

York was already the center of American literary and artistic activity. It seemed to be no

surprise when many blacks moved to Harlem during the “Great Migration,” as New York offered

a wealth of job opportunities and an impressive cultural atmosphere in literary pursuits, theatre,

vaudeville, and music during the “Roaring Twenties.” Important genres for blacks in the arts

included non-fiction, fiction, poetry, musical theatre reviews and vaudeville, and jazz and

concert, or “cultivated” or “classical” music. The fascination with folklore and black heritage

coupled with the heightened interest in “race pride” moderated the artist’s sense of cultural

nationalism with “cultural dualism” and the need to recognize the influences of both Africa and

America. Hudlin notes that the Negro Renaissance “was not created in an ethnic vacuum.”21

Several social issues contributed to the movement including the deterioration of outdated ideas and values, a sense of adventure and rebellion amongst intellectuals, and open-mindedness among the status quo, all assisted by the economic upswing during in the twenties. Artistic

19 Franklin, 401.

20 Hudlin, 274.

21 Ibid., 271–72.

29 trends included the literary avant-garde, new interest in naturalism, the European craze for exoticism, and intellectual interest in the outcasts of society.22

Franklin posits that the Harlem Renaissance spread to include other cities, becoming a national movement before the end of the 1920s.23 He notes the importance of cities, such as

Washington where Georgia Douglas Johnson and Alain Locke were active. While similar movements occurred around the same time or later, Harlem and Chicago seem to have had the greatest significance, especially in the realms of literature and music.

The Negro Renaissance gained impetus in Chicago as the movement slowed in Harlem.

As a large, centrally located city, Chicago was home to events such as the 1933 World’s Fair and many national conferences celebrating Negro accomplishments in the arts. The city provided an exceptionally rich environment for writers, journalists, critics, as well as musicians and composers, such as Price. Black professional musicians and black music audiences increased during the “Great Migration” and hundreds of black music teachers from the south enrolled in

Chicago music schools.24 Many significant musical achievements occurred in Chicago during the period from the 1890s to the 1930s, including the first black organization of the American

Federation of Musicians, the first black-owned theatre, the founding of the National Association of Negro Musicians (hereafter NANM), and Chicago’s outstanding prominence in popular genres such as blues, jazz, and gospel music.25

22 Ibid.

23 Franklin, 416.

24 Ellistine Perkins-Holly, “Black Concert Music in Chicago, 1890 to the 1930s,” Black Music Research Journal 10, no. 1 (Spring 1990):146.

25 Ibid., 148.

30 Black concert life during the Chicago Renaissance included a “mix of church Lyceum

and Sunday clubs, Jubilee troupes, dramatic and music concert companies, choral clubs, theatre

concerts, and recitals.” 26 Events typically included concerts by internationally known black

opera singers, black army bands, vaudeville shows, and church concerts and recitals. Choral

study clubs were also a highly important aspect of concert life, as Chicago’s choirs were

synonymous with “good choral singing.”27

A significant number of black women were active composers during the Chicago

Renaissance, and it is historically important that Chicago provided the atmosphere for the first

recognition of black women composers due to the number of black churches and music schools

in Chicago, as well as the vital role of art music at the time. The 1893 Chicago publication

Noted Negro Women considers the role of women in black society and culture and demonstrates

an interest in documenting their accomplishments. Other publications in this genre included

Lawrence Scrugg’s Women of Distinction (1893) and Gertrude Mossell’s The Work of the Afro-

American Woman (1894), both of which include information on black women composers.28

Black musicians and composers faced difficulties in gaining respect within the field of serious art music; however, William Henry Hackney produced the first “Annual All-Colored Composers

Program” in 1914. The second annual concert premiered two pieces by black women composers, a piano concerto by Helen Eugenia Hagan and a song by Nora Holt.29 These

concerts aimed to “exploit the creative talents of the Negro, so that when the music of this

26 Ibid., 141.

27 Ibid., 142.

28 Helen Walker-Hill, “Black Women Composers in Chicago: Then and Now,” Black Music Research Journal 12, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 1–2.

29 Ibid., 3–4. Helen Eugenia Hagan performed her Piano Concerto in C Minor in a two-piano version with Tom Theodore Taylor, and Maude J. Roberts performed “Who Knows,” a song by Nora Lena James, better known as Nora Holt.

31 country, known as American music, has reached a high plane of development, the Negro can

show that he has had a part in its making.”30

Chicago provided an outstanding musical environment in terms of the numerous churches

and music schools available for the increasing number of black women composers. They found a nurturing atmosphere in the many black churches around Chicago that often provided monthly

concerts of classical music. Many black music schools were located in Chicago including the

American Conservatory, Chicago Musical College (later absorbed into Roosevelt University),

Chicago University of Music, and Coleridge-Taylor Music School. Music associations also

flourished, such as the R. Nathaniel Dett Club, Chicago Music Association, and NANM formed

in 1919 by a group of musicians including Nora Holt. Performing organizations such as the

1930s Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Frederick Stock and the Chicago Women’s Orchestra

under Ebba Sundstrom made significant efforts to include works by African American

composers.31 In the 1930s, the Chicago unit of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal

Arts Project also provided support for a number of composers.32

While Chicago was a metropolis of bountiful musical opportunity, it also embraced the literary trend established in Harlem. Much of the literati in Chicago consisted of journalists and

critics, rather than the novelists and poets so prevalent in Harlem. Literary criticism during the

Negro Renaissance aimed to place black authors and poets in a separate genre outside of white

literary criticism. Many writers during this period were prolific in both prose and poetry.

Harlem artists did not represent a “school,” instead they considered themselves “a group with no

30 Perkins-Holly, 143.

31 Walker-Hill, 6–7.

32 Ibid., 8.

32 single literary philosophy guiding them, nor a uniform perception of what was happening around

them.”33 Literature from the Harlem Renaissance, while steeped in the Romantic tradition and

filled with Victorian ideals, implored white America to consider the writers of the Harlem

intelligentsia “equal to or at least better than common blacks.”34 Literary figures noted for their poetry in Harlem included James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Countee

Cullen, and Langston Hughes. In 1922 James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) edited an anthology of African American poetry, The Book of American Negro Poetry, to remedy a lack of public

information on blacks.35 Like much poetry of the Negro Renaissance, Johnson’s works contain

the use of passive voice, avoidance of black and white binary oppositions, and the elaboration of

syllogistic logic in the attempt to convince the world to acknowledge the greatness of the Negro

people. He also collaborated with his brother J. Rosamond Johnson in editing two books of

American Negro spirituals in 1925 and 1926.36 Countee Cullen (1903–46), noted for his “lyric quality of poetry . . . rich with imagination and intellectual content,” penned several novels,

books of poetry, and an anthology of poetry, Caroling Dusk, in 1927.37 Hughes, “the poet

laureate of the Harlem Renaissance,” wrote novels, essays, and plays, and is known for the

quality of lyric sarcasm within his poetry. Franklin notes that the sarcastic nature of his poetry

symbolizes his restrictions by his race which equaled his freedom from the restrictions of form.38

33 Hudlin, 261.

34 Ibid., 270.

35 Barbara E Johnson, “Euphemism, Understatement, and the Passive Voice: A Genealogy of Afro- American Poetry, in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 204.

36 Franklin, 405.

37 Ibid., 407.

38 Ibid.

33 Other important literary figures included Jessie Redmond Fauset, Walter White, Nella Larsen,

Wallace Thurman, Eric Walrond, Rudolph Fisher, and Marita Bonner.

Georgia Douglas Johnson (1877–1966), from Washington, wrote two well known poetry

collections including Heart of a Woman in 1918 and Bronze in 1922. Critics lauded Johnson as

the first outstanding African-American poet since Frances Harper.39 Franklin describes her

poetry as “unsophisticated and emotional,” a typical criticism of literature by women prior to the

influence of feminism and the uncovering of works by important writers and artists.40

In black poetry, Barbara E. Johnson notes the importance of the “more covert strategies

of protest” embedded within the text.41 One of theses strategies manifests itself in Gates’s

theory of signifyin(g), which occurs in the poetry of James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, and Phillis Wheatley, among others.42 Euphemism in poetry is a way to avoid conflict, and

during the Negro Renaissance, the substitution of words acted as a way to address racial

problems without using black and white imagery. However, it also functions as an “x”, where

the poet can later say more. The “x” can also be represented by forced rhyme in lieu of bluntly

addressing the issue.43 These theoretical approaches for examining poetry are useful not only

analyzing texts of the Negro Renaissance, but can also be applied to music of the period.

39 Ibid., 415.

40 I will examine Johnson’s poetry in depth in Price’s setting of the poem “The Heart of a Woman” in the final chapter. Drawing upon literary criticisms used for male poets during the Negro Renaissance along with feminist theory, I will attain a comprehensive aesthetic view of Johnson’s poetry.

41 Johnson, “Euphemism, Understatement, and the Passive Voice, 204. I will examine Johnson’s theory again in detail in Chapter Five.

42 Gates, The Signifying Monkey.

43 Johnson, 207.

34 The spirit of the Negro Renaissance manifested itself musically in the late 1890s through

the 1920s in the work of Scott Joplin, Harry T. Burleigh, Robert Cole, Nathaniel Dett, William

Grant Still, and William Dawson, among others. Through the use of extended forms such as

symphonies or operas, which incorporated elements of the African American patchwork of

spirituals, blues, ragtime, and other folk genres, these composers aimed to create a distinct

aesthetic. This concept helped to blur the dichotomy between low and high culture, moving folk

music into the realm of concert music. The founding of NANM in Chicago aspired to “effect

progress, discover and foster talent, mold taste, promote fellowship, and to advocate racial

expression.”44 Although the Chicago Renaissance had less coherence as a cultural movement,

Dawson and Price accomplished musical ideals within this aesthetic, particularly the incorporation of black melodies, rhythms, and folk elements into extended forms.

The recital singers Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, and Paul Robeson, all of whom

performed spirituals alongside concert repertoire and opera arias, were the pride of the Negro

Renaissance. However, other black concert singers distinguished themselves by focusing on

“high” art music and bringing greater attention to art songs by African American composers,

including Price. As audiences favored concert music, leaders of the movement looked down

upon jazz and did not view it as part of the social elevation of the New Negro.45 Concert music

played a vital role among political leaders, and both Locke and DuBois wrote about its importance to the movement.

During the Negro Renaissance, there was also an important artistic collaboration between

writers and musicians. Richard A. Long’s research demonstrates that in no previous period of

44 Floyd, The Power of Black Music, 119.

45 Ibid., 108–9.

35 African American literature was there such a heightened awareness of music among writers.46

Long cites two reasons for this new level of consciousness: the availability of publications such

as the black newspapers Crisis and Opportunity, and the “intensification and amplification of

musical activity” caused by the development of jazz, the increase in the number of dance halls,

the growing popularity of vaudeville, and the exploitation of black music within the recording

industry.47 Writers such as W. E. B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, Alain

Locke, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston, among other poets, showed special interest in music and often focused on themes such as black composers and performers, the art of performing, and traditionally black genres such as the spiritual and the blues within their novels, essays, and poetry.48

Concert music during this period stood far above jazz and the blues in the hierarchy

created by movement leaders as black composers “steeped themselves in European musical

traditions.”49 The Chicago Defender included positive coverage on jazz music as it “had potential for material ‘uplift’”; however, it also reinforced black stereotypes. The Defender regularly covered classical music as it facilitated “uplift” and was linked to “moral improvement and racial ‘evolution,’” often used as a sign of “race progress.”50 Lawrence Schenbeck notes

that virtually all the news surrounding classical music in the Defender supports “uplift” ideology,

46 Richard A. Long, “Interactions between Writers and Music during the Harlem Renaissance,” in Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays, ed. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. (New York: Greenwood, 1990), 129.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 Rawn Spearman, “Vocal Music in the Harlem Renaissance,” in Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays, ed. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. (New York: Greenwood, 1990), 41.

50 Lawrence Schenbeck, “Music, Gender, and ‘Uplift’ in the Chicago Defender, 1927–1937,” Musical Quarterly 81 (1997): 349.

36 as classical music was widely associated as a representation of social prestige, owing much to the efforts of well-educated women.

In the concert hall, the spiritual gained much higher status than it previously had and was well received by both blacks and whites.51 Bass-baritone Paul Robeson was best known for singing entire programs of spirituals and folk songs, and in fact seemed to favor those genres.52

Concert singer Roland Hayes underscores the importance of the spiritual:

My people have been very shy about singing their crude little songs before white folks. They thought they would be laughed at—and they were! And so they came to despise their own heritage . . . . If as I truly believe, there is [a] purpose and plan in my life, it is this: that I shall have my share in rediscovering the qualities we have almost let slip away from us; and that we shall make our own special contribution—only a humble one perhaps, but our very own—to human experience.53

Hayes began programming more spirituals on programs around 1918:

I still had to be taught that I, Roland Hayes, a Negro, had to first measure my racial inheritance and then put it to use. It remained for me to learn, humbly at first, and then with mounting confidence, that my way to artistry was a Negro way.54

As spirituals grew in popularity, many black composers incorporated them into pieces based on the European classical tradition. Negro themes, often derived from African rhythms and dance melodies, were prominent in this type of art music. African American musical heritage appears in works by Price, Coleridge-Taylor, Still, and Dett, among others.

Chicago provided a nurturing atmosphere for black women composers such as Nora

Holt, Florence Price, and Margaret Bonds that not only supported traditional values, but

51 Spearman, 48.

52 Long, 129.

53 Spearman, 48–49.

54 Ibid., 49.

37 provided a “charged, confrontational city atmosphere in which the individual black artist had to

fight for her small piece of the action.”55 Holt composed approximately two hundred orchestral,

chamber, and vocal works, held a position as a critic as the first music editor of the Chicago

Defender, and edited and published the magazine Music and Poetry from 1918–1922.56 Price gained national and international attention after her move to Chicago, specifically for the premiere of her 1929 solo piano work Fantasie negre and her Symphony in E Minor at the 1933

World’s Fair.57 Bonds, Price’s student, was influenced by her rich Chicago environment and

affluent social status. Bonds’s mother, Estelle Bonds, held Sunday afternoon salons for

musicians, composers, and writers, and her home is still fondly remembered as “the place where

young black students could meet famous writers and musicians during the 1920s and 1930s.”58

Margaret Bonds composed popular songs, art songs, and theatre pieces, appeared as the first black pianist soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and ran The Allied Arts Academy, a black music school. These three composers contributed greatly to the musical atmosphere during the Negro Renaissance in Chicago and promoted the status of women within black society.

Thus, the Negro Renaissance was not solely a male phenomenon. Many women writers were involved, but as is the case with most women artists, musicians, and writers, they were long ignored. Cheryl A. Wall notes that when women of the period “explore the vernacular using modernist techniques, they modify and extend ideas in gender-inflected ways.”59 The decadence

55 Walker-Hill, 19.

56 Ibid., 9.

57 Ibid., 10–11.

58 Ibid., 11.

38 of the twenties also plays a role with the perception of women based on their sexuality. It is also important to note that in poetry, sex was taboo, and handled only with the most discreet language. During the period, leaders of the Negro Renaissance as well as journalists and critics did not view blues verse as poetry as it did not provide racial “uplift,” thus blues singers could and did perform more vulgar verse.

As the Negro Renaissance flourished, moving from Harlem to Chicago and extending to other cities, the public widely appreciated blacks for their contributions to the arts, especially music. For the first time, audiences applauded black women composers in the United States.

Composing symphonic works in the classical tradition and setting contemporary poetry by blacks for their art songs, audiences viewed composers such as Price as “race champions,” raising the status of their race with every successful undertaking covered by journalists and critics.

59 Cheryl A. Wall, Women of the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 12.

39 CHAPTER THREE The Role of the Art Song during the Negro Renaissance

Although there is much scholarship on the American folk song and the folk song

tradition, America also had a strong concert music tradition at the turn of the twentieth century.

Composers such as Charles Ives (1874–1954), John Alden Carpenter (1876–1951), and Charles

Tomlinson Griffes (1881–1920) combined elements of American folk song with the European

song tradition, as varied as the German lied or French melodie. Black composers wrote art songs

around the same time period and created a new tradition. A significant portion of this chapter is

devoted to black art song and how it deals with the problems of race. The black art song is

neither completely assimilated into white America, nor is it solely rooted in African tradition.

Instead, it is an art form drawing from both American and African literary, musical, cultural, and

social traditions. Once the nascent form of the black art song was established, it became a

central genre among black composers during the Negro Renaissance. The black American art

song reached its zenith during this period due to a heightened interest (mainly among white

concertgoers) in vocal concert music, poignant compositions based on black poetry, and

compelling performances by recitalists such as Roland Hayes and Paul Robeson.

Carren D. Moham stresses that while black art songs are written by black composers, to refer to them as “African-American art songs,” or for the purposes of this thesis, “black art

songs,” places emphasis on the race of the composer in relation to the song.1 While this is true, I

will refer to the songs as “black art songs.” I do not use this label in a pejorative context, rather, just to clarify between the European, American, and black traditions and the overlapping of the three.

1 Carren D. Moham, “The Contributions of Four African-American Women Composers to American Art Song” (D.M.A. thesis, Ohio State University, 1997), 2.

40 The political climate surrounding slavery and abolitionism in America at the close of the

Civil War and the re-emergence of black artistic accomplishment possibly contributed to the

popularity of black poets including Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, and Georgia

Douglas Johnson. Aldrich Wendell Adkins asserts that the black art song, like the German lied

was deeply grounded in the poetry and also shows a lineage from the African roots of the

spiritual.2

The sub-genre of Creole song is also an important and often understated influence on the

black art song. The origins of Creole songs remain cloudy; however, there has been recent

scholarly interest in Creole music through which it has become known that many of these songs

were arranged and included on art song programs. Composers also wrote piano accompaniments

for the songs, characterized by their varied rhythmic syncopations.3 While Price did not

compose songs within the Creole sub-genre, it is possible that this fusion of complex and syncopated dance rhythms influenced her compositions. In the musical analysis of many of

Price’s works, these dance rhythms are present although they contain slight alterations to maintain formal structures of Western classical tradition such as antecedent-consequent phrase structures and large-scale sonata forms.

Adkins considers the black art song as “the result of a complex synthesis. It is part

African, part Afro-American, and part Euro-American. The rhythmic complexities and

syncopations of African song remain apparent.”4 Ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax proposed his

2 Aldrich Wendell Adkins, “The Development of the Black Art Song” (D.M.A thesis, University of Texas, 1971), 3.

3 Ibid., 87. These syncopations often included variants of Spanish, French, and Brazilian dance rhythms, particularly the habañera, quadrille, and maxixe, which later permutated into popular ragtime dances such as the cakewalk. More information can be found in Brooke Baldwin’s article, “The Cakewalk: A Study in Stereotype and Reality,” Journal of Social History 15 (1981): 205–18.

4 Adkins, 5–6.

41 theory of cantometrics in 1970, a type of analysis that aimed at classifying particular styles of singing and the song styles of Africa. Recent scholars feel this theory is outdated.5 This type of analysis is particularly looked down upon in studies of music as culture, particularly in the research of ethnomusicologists Bruno Nettl and Steven Feld.6 However, Adkins notes that studies in cantometrics are somewhat useful in determining broad similarities in musical styles between cultures.7 While cantometric study has some applications, for the purpose of this study

I will focus on broader similarities within African song, rather than on a narrow focus on vocal production and style, which may have been Westernized in ethnomusicological transcription.

The art songs not only exhibit African musical idioms, but also evident are the distinctive harmonies of the work songs and spirituals, which are the results of the Afro-American experience.8

5 Alan Lomax, “Universals in Song,” The World of Music 19, nos. 1–2 (1977): 117–29. A lengthier discussion of Lomax’s theories can be found in his Cantometrics: An Approach to the Anthropology of Music (Berkeley: University of California Extension Media, 1977). In “Universals in Song” Lomax presents the ideas of cantometrics to draw universals (or not) between songs of different cultures using a set of descriptive scales. Cantometrics aims to provide “outlines of entire performance style traditions” for easy comparability. Lomax chooses ten representative songs from each culture as enough to delineate a profile. He is obviously not concerned with the completeness of the repertory, but more interested in finding universals as ten songs hardly seems enough to delineate a profile. He outlines thirteen factors of song style which have a generally similar function including differentiation, ornamentation, orchestral organization, vocal cohesiveness, choral organization, noise tension level, energy level, rhythm, melody, phrase length, melodic range, position of the final note, and polyphonic type. This list is part of a more general human system of social relationships focusing on relations between song style factors and key social correlations. While cantometrics also provides gendered universals and person-to-person relationships, the concept seems too simple and fraught with issues, and thus has been dismissed by ethnomusicologists such as Steven Feld in “Sound Structure as Social Structure,” Ethnomusicology 28 (1984): 383– 409.

6 Studies of music as culture, which dismiss Lomax’s theories include Bruno Nettl, “Recent Directions in Ethnomusicology” in Ethnomusicology: An Introduction, ed. Helen Myers (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992): 375– 97. Steven Feld, “pygmy POP: A Genealogy of Schizophrenic Mimesis,” Yearbook for Traditional Music 28 (1996): 1–35. In recent ethnomusicology, there is an increased interest in music as a process rather than a product (i.e., looking at music as culture.)

7 Adkins, 94.

8 Ibid., 5–6.

42 Adkins divides the black American art song into three song periods. The songs in the

first period (1900–34) are typically straightforward and musically simple. Adkins notes the lack

of thriving traditional African musical idioms within America (typically referred to as African

survivals) due to the social “inferiority of blackness at this time and the desire of the black

composer to meet the approval of his [white] teacher.”9 1934–49 marks the second song period

in which composers wrote the majority of black American art songs. Most of Price’s songs I will

discuss in Chapter Five fall within this period. Adkins recognizes this period as utilizing the

greatest number of African survivals. The poetry and songs of this period embody protest and

vindication, while composers added intensity through the carefully planned use of black musical

idioms.10 The final song period (1950–71) includes a more subtle musical application of black

idioms, no longer solely confined to texts written by black poets. This period also demonstrates gradual leanings towards modernism and experimental composition techniques.11 Adkins also

presents the percentage of black art songs that use black poetry within each period. The statistics

jump from fifty-three percent to sixty-three percent in the second song period. The third period

boasts the greatest use of black poets, at sixty-five percent.12

Even with these findings, these percentages include published art songs. Therefore, these

statistics do not include the large body of unpublished art songs composed by black women

9 Ibid., 131–33.

10 One of the most favored poets during this time was Langston Hughes, and many black composers during the period (including Price) set his poetry in the form of art songs for the concert stage. Some of the more prolific composers of Hughes’s texts included Margaret A. Bonds, Harry T. Burleigh, William Grant Still, Undine Smith Moore, and John Work. In 2002, NAXOS released Dreamer: A Portrait of Langston Hughes (CD B00006I9HH) a recording by Darryl Taylor of various settings of Hughes’s poetry by black composers which includes Still’s Songs of Separation, Bonds’s Dream Portraits and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Burleigh’s “Lovely Dark and Lonely One,” as well as Price’s “Song to the Dark Virgin.”

11 Adkins, 131–33.

12 Ibid., 134–35.

43 composers, like Price. The statistics show only a general trend and would likely differ upon the

inclusion of women composers with a large body of unpublished songs. What is more, the result

would likely not fit into three periods as Adkins suggests, especially as the third period is most

applicable to composers who wrote in the modernist style. There are two schools of composers

writing art songs post 1950: the modernists, such as Tania Léon and Dorothy Rudd Moore (who

mainly avoided genres such as the art song), and the traditionalists, such as Julia Perry and Betty

Jackson King, who continued the trend of expressive melodic writing, use of chromaticism, and

text painting to express the plethora of black poetry available. Price can be classified as a

traditionalist as her art songs demonstrate the aforementioned melodic and harmonic traits.

While Adkins’s findings surrounding music and poetry highlight some interesting points,

musical form of the songs within this genre should also be taken into account. Despite the varied origins of the American art song and its influence, in general strophic form comprises the most

common musical form in art song literature. Adkins emphasizes that in the black art song, the

rise of black poetry written by consistently highly educated, sophisticated, and talented poets

corresponded with the rise of black song.13 How did composers set these poems to music?

Many black art songs written during the 1930s and 40s by contemporaries of Price are typically

modified strophic, da capo form, through composed, or variations or hybrid versions of these basic forms, similar to German and French song of the nineteenth century. As Price’s art songs use much of this elevated and sophisticated poetry, few of the songs I analyze are in strict strophic form; rather, she used varied formal structures in her compositions.

Adkins lists several features he considers components of the black art song, which

together render it a complex genre. Aside from the existence of a black composer and poet,

13 Ibid., 82.

44 these elements include the misplaced rhythmic accent, a minor scale with a raised or omitted

sixth scale degree, modality or pentatonicism, flatted third or seventh scale degrees, a major

scale with a flatted seventh scale degree, overlapped antiphony, or repetitious melody and

rhythm.14 These musical characteristics are very similar to the musical properties Samuel A.

Floyd examines in The Power of Black Music: Interpreting its History from Africa to the United

States, which I discussed in Chapter Two.

As these musical features are so prominent, it is simplistic to group these black art songs

as an act of assimilation into white America or as rooted solely in African tradition. Clearly,

there are arguments for each standpoint. A significant factor in the assimilation of the spiritual

into white America is the elevation of the genre to art-song status. Adkins points out the

“whitening” of the spiritual: “These slave songs were dressed up with dignified, restrained keyboard arrangements.”15 In these spiritual arrangements, composers incorporated rhythmic syncopation and pentatonicism into the lush, Romantic piano accompaniments; an attempt to shape the remnants of nineteenth-century vocal writing to their cultural aesthetic.16 Another

significant point is the direct Western influence on black art songs. The art song itself is a

Western form. Black composers such as Price typically trained in the European male tradition.17

While the black art song is neither assimilated into Western tradition nor completely derived

from African musical practices, it mirrors nineteenth century European musical trends

incorporating black musical idioms, and thus merits its own method of study and analysis.

14 Ibid., 90–92.

15 Ibid., 82.

16 Ibid., 86.

17 Ibid., 138.

45 The amalgamated nature of the black art song presented concert singers during the Negro

Renaissance with the opportunity to perform works that were culturally important to them.

Singers incorporated these songs, as well as traditional spirituals, in recitals that presented them as equal to the standard repertoire of arias and lieder. Bass-baritone Paul Robeson gained immense popularity among white concertgoers who enjoyed his repertoire of spirituals and folk songs. Many black concert singers focused on concert music due to financial reasons. Singers were typically able to begin touring careers if they were well funded and pleased the large percentage of white concertgoers in attendance. For most, this meant performing traditional concert repertoire for an audience made up mainly of white concertgoers who often viewed the musical achievements of blacks as additional entertainment.

Some celebrated composers of art song included American composers Harry T. Burleigh

(1866–1949) and William Grant Still (1895–1978). Burleigh, best known for his contributions to spiritual arrangements during the Negro Renaissance, made his first efforts in solo vocal composition with the 1898 set of Four Little Songs, which consists of “If But You Knew,” “A

Birthday Song,” “Life,” and “Dreamland.” He also composed “Achievement Song,” “And as the

Gulls Soar” in 1905, as well as the 1914 song cycle Saracen Songs. Still was a prolific composer in the genre of black art song. Some of his song sets and individual pieces include Caribbean

Melodies and “Plainchant for America” for low voice, both composed in 1941; “Rising Tide” in

1942; the 1945 collection Songs of Separation (five songs for high voice); “Grief” and Rhapsody

(four songs for high voice) in 1955; and From the Hearts of Women (four songs for high voice) in 1961, among others.

Other composers who contributed to the art song genre included Margaret Bonds (1913–

72), Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912), Mark Fax (1911–74), Frederick Douglas Hall

46 (1898–1982), Nora Holt (1866–1956), Hall Johnson (1888–1970), James Weldon Johnson

(1871–1938), Undine Smith Moore (1904–89), Howard Swanson (1907–78), and John Work

(1901–67). Moham asserts while there were several women contributors to the genre of the black art song, such as Bonds, Holt, Moore, and Price, they are often better known for their arrangements of Negro spirituals.18 The most popular of Bonds’s songs are also the most accessible in publication. She based her song cycle, Three Dream Portraits, on poetry by

Langston Hughes, with whom she had a close working relationship. Moore, like most of these composers is better known for her large-scale orchestral or choral works, rather than her art songs; however, her art songs include “I Am in Doubt” and “Love Let the Wind Cry.” Concert soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs praised Price’s art songs: “Florence Price’s art songs are very beautiful and expressive. It is truly a shame that more of them are not available for performance.”19 Most of Price’s art songs are housed in the library collections at the Special

Collections of the University of Arkansas Libraries and in the Marian Anderson Collection at the

University of Pennsylvania Library.20

18 Moham, 6.

19 Ibid.

20 The Florence B. Smith Price Special Papers Collections at the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections contains 164 items that include personal correspondence, published and unpublished scores, concert programs, and photographs. This collection contains various manuscripts of her art songs including “An April Day” (n.d.), “Dreaming Town” (1934), “The Envious Wren” (n.d.), “Fantasy in Purple” (n.d.), “Forever” (n.d.), “Love-in- a-Mist” (n.d.), “Night” (1946), “Nightfall” (n.d.), “Out of the South Blew a Soft Sweet Wind” (1946), “Pittance” (n.d.), “Resignation” (n.d.), “Songs to the Dark Virgin” (1941), “They Lie, They Lie” (1946), and “To My Little Son” (n.d.). The Marian Anderson Collection of Music Manuscripts is located in the Annenburg Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the Van-Pelt Dietrich Library Center of the University of Pennsylvania. This collection contains Anderson’s personal papers including letters, scores, concert programs, photographs, and sound recordings in addition to several of Florence Price’s art song and sacred vocal manuscripts. The songs include “Because” (n.d.), Two Short Songs (1935) which include “Aradella” and “Dream Ships,” as well as “A White Rose” (n.d.) and “The Washerwoman” (n.d.), which Moham analyzes in her dissertation. This collection also contains “Poet and His Song” (1940) and “What’s the Use?” (1937), as well as twelve undated songs which include “”Beside the Sea,” “Bewilderment,” “Dawn’s Awakening,” “The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face,” “The Heart of a Woman,” “I Grew a Rose,” “My Neighbor,” “The Retort,” “Ships that Pass in the Night,” “A Song of Living,” “Sympathy,” and “Wander Thirst.”

47 The examination of the black art song as a unique genre that synthesizes European and

American forms and musical style as well as black American musical idioms demonstrates that

black art songs do not neatly fit into our accepted view of the constructed narrative of music

history. Instead, the art songs overlap nineteenth century European trends in regard to short

compact settings, form, use of extended chromaticism typical of the late nineteenth century, and

the primacy of text. While some research and statistics are available on the black art song, much

of it does not acknowledge the art songs written by black women composers, as many of their

works remain unpublished. The genre is historically important as it was the central genre among

black composers during the Negro Renaissance. The songs were also an especially popular genre with women composers as they could be easily performed at church concerts and in parlor

settings. As the songs grew in popularity and as prominent recitalists began programming

concerts of these works, composers such as Price received more attention.

48

CHAPTER FOUR Florence B. Price (1888–1953)

Florence B. Price’s extensive musical training allowed her to overcome many barriers of

race and gender. She endured many obstacles throughout her life based on her skin color and

sex, among those exclusion from musical organizations and denial of employment, the death of

her son, a failed marriage, as well as becoming a single parent and the economic issues that

accompanied that role. She continued composing throughout her hardships and included black

American idioms within her music. She composed in most genres but became well known

during the 1930s for her virtuosic piano pieces and her Symphony in E Minor. In this chapter, I

will survey Price’s biography, tying together social issues relevant to her life and the Negro

Renaissance, while also examining her compositional output and consider her public reception.

During her life, Price composed over three hundred pieces and was an integral part of the Negro

Renaissance in Chicago.

Price was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, “the Pride of the South,” which was

referred to as “Negro Paradise” for the opportunities the city offered blacks.1 She came from a

prominent family: her father was the first black dentist to have his own office and laboratory,

and her mother was a talented soprano and concert pianist. Price’s class is an important factor in

her extensive musical training as she was definitely not low or working class.

As a child, Price studied piano, organ, and violin, and showed much promise as a musician. At age fourteen, she enrolled in the New England Conservatory (NEC) in Boston, where she double majored in piano and organ, studied composition with George Whitefield

1 Rae Linda Brown, “Florence B. Price’s Negro Symphony,” in Temples for Tomorrow: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Geneviève Fabre and Michel Feith (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 84.

49 Chadwick and Frederick Converse, and music theory with Benjamin Cutter.2 Price wrote her

first string trio and symphony during her studies at NEC, received her Artist Diploma and

teaching certificate, and graduated with honors in 1906. While at the conservatory, one of her

compositions was published and she received payment for another.3 Price then began her career

as a music educator at a school for blacks supported by a white northern church organization.

White musician Neumon Leighton, a voice instructor in Tennessee, promoted her vocal works,

her art songs in particular, through student recitals.4

In 1912 Price accepted a position in the music department at Shorter College in Arkansas

and taught violin, piano, and organ lessons. She later became head of the music department at

Clark University in Atlanta, Georgia.5 After her marriage to attorney Thomas J. Price, she gave birth to three children: two daughters, Florence and Edith, and one son, Tommy, who was stillborn. After his death, Price set Julia Johnson Davis’s poem “To My Little Son” in his memory.6 Once her children were born, Price abandoned her college teaching career and set up a private music studio in her home, composing if time permitted. She did not see herself as a

“serious composer” and focused instead on writing pedagogical pieces for her students.7 Price endured the escalating racial tensions in Arkansas, which eventually affected her as a musician.

She applied for membership to the Arkansas Music Teachers’ Association, but her application

2 Mildred Denby Green, Black Women Composers: A Genesis (Boston: Twayne, 1983), 31.

3 Carren Denise Moham, “The Contributions of Four African-American Women Composers to the American Art Song” (D.M.A. thesis, Ohio State University, 1997), 7.

4 Green, 32.

5 Brown, 85.

6 Green, 32.

7 Brown, 85.

50 was denied despite her impeccable academic and teaching credentials.8 Racial tensions

continued to increase in Little Rock, and Price’s former music student, Mrs. Lawrence Finn,

recalled many black families leaving Little Rock around the time that Price and her family left

for Chicago in 1927. The incident that provoked these families’ departure involved the lynching of a black man who was accused of assaulting a white woman. The man was hanged on a corner in the heart of the wealthy black neighborhood “to maximize the emotional impact on the black community.”9

After her move to Chicago, Price took advantage of the many opportunities for study,

attending classes at Chicago Musical College, Chicago Teachers College, Chicago University,

Central YMCA College, Lewis Institute, and The American Conservatory of Music.10 There is no documentation as to why she attended all of these schools, but one can speculate that she enrolled in one or two courses offered at each institution. During this time, Price’s marriage to

Thomas became strained and ended around 1935. When the marriage ended, Price was forced to

move in with her close friend Estella C. Bonds due to her financial situation. Margaret Bonds

stated, “At one point Miss Price was in such bad financial shape [due to her failed marriage] that

my mother moved her into our house with her two children in order to relieve her mind of

material considerations.”11 Bonds was a musician, a prominent figure in Chicago’s black social

and cultural scene, and mother of composer Margaret Bonds. Some of Mrs. Bonds’s friends

8 Green, 32.

9 Mildred Denby Green, “A Study in the Lives and Works of Five Black Women Composers in Amercia [Florence B. Price, Margaret Bonds, Evelyn Pittman, Julia Perry, Lena McLin]” (D.M.Ed thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1975), 121.

10 Green, Black Women Composers, 32.

11 Green, 33.

51 included violinist and composer Will Marion Cook, singer Roland Hayes, and poet Langston

Hughes.12 During this time, Price gave composition lessons to Bonds. Price’s friend Neumon

Leighton commented on Bonds’s training: “Florence never tried to make Margaret copy her

[Price’s] style of composition. She heard and encouraged Margaret’s concepts and style of

composing.”13

Price’s financial situation at the time did not hinder her creativity. She continued to

compose, participate in competitions, and promote her piano pieces. By the 1930s Price’s music

was regularly performed by a “professional coterie of friends and colleagues in Chicago as well

as by some of the leading concert singers of the day . . . including Marian Anderson, Harry

Burleigh, Roland Hayes, Abbie Mitchell, Leontyne Price, and Blanche Thebom.”14 During the

30s, the Chicago unit of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Arts Project provided

support for Price; however, the her strongest support came from “vital family support and a black

community hierarchy of values in which education, culture, and the ‘finer things in life’ ranked

high.”15

Price preferred descriptive music and in addition composed many programmatic

instrumental works, while her art songs and choral pieces are typically based on descriptive

poetry. As Price was proud of her African American roots, she applied the traditional European

study and compositional style she learned at New England Conservatory to her neo-romantic

compositions. She incorporated her African American heritage through musical idioms such as

melodies from spirituals, use of pentatonicism, blues-oriented harmonic language, call-and-

12 Moham, 8.

13 Ibid.

14 Brown, 86.

15 Helen Walker-Hill, “Black Women Composers in Chicago: Then and Now,” Black Music Research Journal 12, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 8.

52 response formal structures, or African dance rhythms, and through setting the poetry of black

poets, thus creating a modern musical expression.

George Whitefield Chadwick inspired her to use Negro folk materials in her

compositions.16 These idioms are predominant in her symphonies in E Minor and C Minor,

Concert Overtures 1 and 2, Three Little Negro Dances, Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint for

String Quartet, and the Third Movement of her Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, based on the

African rhythms of the Juba dance.17 Mildred Denby Green maintains: “Price harmonized the

melodies of raw folk material effectually and simply. Her vivid harmonic and rhythmic

imagination, found in other works, served her well in arranging the folk song.”18 Price’s use of

black musical idioms is clearly present in her Two Traditional Negro Spirituals, “I am Bound for

the Kingdom” and “I’m Workin’ on my Buildin,’” as well as her original spiritual “My Soul’s

Been Anchored in de Lord.” Her use of folk themes such as spiritual melodies are evident in her other compositions for keyboard, orchestra and chamber ensembles, solo instruments, traditional

SATB and women’s choruses, as well as her songs for solo voice.

Price’s virtuosic pieces for solo piano, such as her 1929 Fantasie Negre, are challenging

to perform. Fantasie Negre is dedicated to her “talented little friend, Margaret A. Bonds.” This is one of her most ambitious works, combining both large forms and a free fantasia style on the theme of the spiritual “Sinner, Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass.”19 In addition to her solo

performance works, she also wrote and published numerous teaching pieces. Many of these

16 Ibid., 85.

17 Green, 34.

18 Ibid., 38.

19 Walker-Hill, 11.

53 piano etudes include African musical influences, such as the juba rhythm. One of the most

representative of these pieces is Price’s Three Little Negro Dances, published in 1933 by

Theodore Presser Company, which includes the etudes “Hoe Cake,” “Rabbit Foot,” and

“Ticklin’ Toes.” Price later arranged these etudes for two pianos, which the publisher

subsequently arranged for performance by standard and symphonic bands.20

Rae Linda Brown’s analysis of Price’s Symphony in E Minor highlights the use of pentatonicism with simple harmonization evocative of Afro-American songs in the first movement, while the second movement utilizes African drums in a verse and refrain form

similar to African American spirituals and sacred music.21 The third movement, “Juba Dance,” is

based on the syncopated rhythms of the antebellum folk dance. Price suggests the rhythmic element was of “preeminent importance” and discusses her use of the juba:

In all of my works which have been done in the sonata form with Negroid idiom, I have incorporated a juba as one of the several movements because it seems to me to be no more impossible to conceive of Negroid music devoid of the spiritualistic theme on the one hand than strongly syncopated rhythms of the juba on the other.22

In Brown’s study on Price’s Negro Symphony, she provides a thorough analysis of the African

American themes used within the work. In the Negro Symphony, Brown notes:

Cultural characteristics are borne out in the pentatonic themes, call-and-response procedures, syncopated rhythms of the juba dance, a preponderance of altered tones, and timbral differentiation juxtaposing instrumental choirs against large and small African drums. These themselves might be exclusive to black music,

20 Green, 42. Linda Holzer’s research focuses specifically on Price’s piano selections. Linda R. Holzer, “Selected Solo Piano Music of Florence B. Price (1887–1953)” (D.M.A. thesis, Florida State University, 1995).

21 Rae Linda Brown, “William Grant Still, Florence Price, and William Dawson: Echoes of the Harlem Renaissance,” in Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays, ed. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. (New York: Greenwood, 1990), 79–81.

22 Florence B. Price quoted in ibid., 81–82.

54 but in combination they are fundamental to the African-American musical tradition.23

This symphony demonstrates Price’s synthesis of black American musical idioms within

strict European form, which comprise her stylistic tendencies for catchy melodies and

spirited rhythms. This application of idioms and her musical style also appear in her

vocal writing.

Price’s interest in the musical portrayal of words through descriptive techniques is also apparent in her choral works for traditional SATB chorus as well as women’s chorus. “Song for

Snow,” published in 1937 by Carl Fischer, with text by Elizabeth Coatsworth, is for SATB

chorus. This work includes extensive use of text painting and pictorialism. Remich Music

Company published another of her choral pieces, “Moon Bridge,” scored for three-part women’s

chorus with lyrics by Mary Rolofson Gamble in 1950. This choral work is an arrangement of

Price’s 1930 art song “Moon Bridge,” and like “Song for Snow,” text painting and pictorialism

are prominent throughout.24

Price also preferred descriptive poetry and applied her imaginative sense of text painting

and chromaticism used in her choral music to highlight and interpret the text in her art songs.

Moham notes that Price’s art songs, including her “Song to the Dark Virgin” (1941), “Night”

(1946), “Out of the South Blew a Wind” (1946), and “An April Day” (1949), display this

tendency towards descriptive textual imagery, liberal use of text painting, and chromatic

harmonies. Moham argues, “The beauty and rhythmic flow of the text dictated the style and

23 Brown, “Florence B. Price’s Negro Symphony,” 91–96.

24 Irma Rigby Collins is currently completing a dissertation, “The Choral Music of Florence B. Price (1888–1953),” at the University of Florida with more detailed information on Price’s choral music.

55 timbre of Price’s songs.”25 Price’s attraction to poetry prompted her to set the works of well-

known poets, including Hughes and Dunbar. Penelope Peters writes, “In the songs of Florence

Price we find gripping, effective settings that fuse [her] music with compelling images of the

African American poet Langston Hughes thereby creating unified, lyric structures.”26 Moham examines five of Price’s art songs in the Marian Anderson Collection at the University of

Pennsylvania Library including the undated songs “Because,” “A White Rose,” and “The

Washerwoman,” and her 1935 Two Short Songs “Aradella” and “Dream Ships.” Her analyses of

Price’s songs focus on the use of text painting and nationalistic use of African American idioms.

In addition to Moham’s analyses of black musical idioms, Lisa Lee Sawyer and Penelope Peters also provide interpretive readings of the art songs.27 While these songs do not require virtuosic

vocal techniques, they are challenging, involve intense study of the poetry, and require a singer

with imagination and impeccable dramatic intuition.

Many American women composers struggled to have their works performed and

published. However, black women were especially discriminated against in this respect and

were largely unable to have their works performed, much less published. Price’s art songs make up a considerable portion of these unpublished works. In fact, the largest body of her unpublished compositions consists of her songs. Despite the fact that there were few avenues for promotion and publishing available to blacks at the time, Price funded her musical endeavors by promoting her compositions and submitting her work to competitions.

25 Moham, 12.

26 Penelope Peters, “Deep Rivers: Selected Songs of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds,” Canadian University Music Review 16, no. 1 (1995): 74.

27 Other available resources on Price’s art songs, in addition to Moham, include Lisa Lee Sawyer’s 1990 D.M.A. thesis, “The Unpublished Art Songs of Florence B. Price,” from the University of Missouri and Penelope Peters’s article “Deep Rivers: Selected Songs of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds,” cited above in n. 47

56 Price received Opportunity Magazine’s 1925 Holstein Award in vocal composition for

her song “In the Land of Cotton.” In 1927 she became active in the Chicago Music Association,

one of the host chapters of NANM, and again won the Holstein Award for her song “Memories

of Dixieland.”28 Her first significant achievement in composition was success in the Robert

Wanamaker Musical Compositions Competition. The competition was established specifically for black composers and awarded a total of one thousand dollars in prizes through NANM.29 At the 1931 Hampton Institute Convention, Price was awarded honorable mention in the

Wanamaker Competition for her piano piece “Cotton Dance.”30 Price won the first place

scholarship in the 1932 Wanamaker Scholarship Competition, winning five hundred dollars for

her first prize Symphony in E Minor and two hundred and fifty dollars for her first prize Sonata

in E Minor for piano. 31 In addition to financial rewards, the competition brought Price’s music

to the attention of Frederick Stock of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.32

In 1933 the Illinois Host House presented Price in a program of her compositions and

performed her works for the International Council of Women at the Century of Progress

Exhibition.33 Groups including the Women’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago performed her

orchestral works. The same year, the Florence B. Price A Cappella Chorus gave their premiere

28 Ibid., 9.

29 Willis Charles Patterson, “A History of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM), the First Quarter Century, 1919–1943” (Ph.D. diss., Wayne State University, 1993), 133.

30 Ibid., 183.

31 Ibid., 281.

32 Rae Linda Brown, “Florence B. Price and Margaret Bonds: The Chicago Years,” Black Music Research Bulletin 12, no. 2 (Fall 1990): 12.

33 Green, 33.

57 performance under the direction of Grace W. Thompkins.34 In 1934 Price conducted her

Concerto in F Minor for piano and orchestra with Bonds appearing as the soloist in a program

devoted to women’s music.35 Price also appeared the same year as a soloist in her Concerto in D

Minor at the Chicago Musical College commencement. The Concerto in D Minor received

another performance with Price as soloist in Pittsburgh. Eleanor Roosevelt attended a rehearsal

of Price’s Symphony in E Minor and was so impressed that she cancelled her engagements to

stay for the performance. Roosevelt reported: “They played two movements of a new

symphony by Florence Price, one of the few women to write symphonic music . . . who has

certainly made a contribution to our music. The orchestra rendered her symphony beautifully.”36

In November 1940, the WPA Symphony Orchestra premiered Price’s Symphony No. 3 in C

Minor in Detroit. In the same program, she also performed her Concerto in One Movement. Sir

John Barbirolli, British conductor and former conductor of the New York Philharmonic

Symphony Orchestra, asked Price to write a suite for strings based on black American spirituals,

which was later presented in Manchester, England.

Price focused on the composition of larger orchestral and chamber works, but she found that publishers sought shorter pieces.37 While publishers looked for art songs, many publishers

at the time would not publish the work of a black woman composer. As a result, most of her

larger works remain in manuscript in special collections at the University of Arkansas Library,

University of Pennsylvania Library, and the Yale University Library. Some of her spiritual

arrangements, works for choir, piano, organ, violin, and art songs for solo voice were published.

34 Brown, 12.

35 Moham, 9.

36 Green, 34.

37 Moham, 11.

58 In the effort to promote her music, Price gave manuscripts to established and budding artists.

Marian Anderson included “Song to the Dark Virgin” on her second American concert tour, and

after hearing the piece, three publishers contacted Price. Eugene Stinson, music critic of the

Chicago Daily News, commented that “‘Song to the Dark Virgin’ was, as Miss Anderson sang it,

one of the greatest immediate successes ever won by an American song.”38 Some of the most

renowned singers, including Anderson, Hayes, Carol Brice, Mattiwilda Dobbs, and Leontyne

Price, performed Price’s art songs and spirituals, positioning her as the mother of the black art

song. 39

Critics and journalists viewed women such as Price as holding the key to race progress.

A woman with as many accolades as Price would typically be mentioned in various publications.

As Geneviève Fabre and Michel Feith state in their 2001 introductory essay to Temples for

Tomorrow:

Composer Florence Price seems to have made the clear choice to “uplift” vernacular forms by integrating them into the classical idiom, thereby giving them an artistic dignity recognizable by white people. After all, was that not exactly what the German romantics had done to their own popular tunes, and what Dvořák had been commissioned to perform for American musical identity?40

Robert S. Abbott (1868–1940), editor and publisher of The Chicago Defender, alluded to Price in

his column “The Week” as “the beautiful, harmonious strains of a composition by a Race woman

. . . . But there were other thrills—greater thrills . . . and the best was yet to come.”41 Price’s music is mentioned but her name is not, and in this column, her music ranks third among a

38 Green, 35. The song was published by G. Schirmer in 1941.

39 Moham, 10.

40 Geneviève Fabre and Michel Feith, “Temples for Tomorrow,” in Temples for Tomorrow: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Geneviève Fabre and Michel Feith (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 25.

41 Schenbeck, 351–6.

59 performance by Roland Hayes and a composition by John Alden Carpenter. Lawrence

Schenbeck comments that Abbot’s decision to render Price anonymous may be indicative of

Abbott’s “inability to ‘see’ a woman as an artistic creator.”42 The first time a major orchestra

performed a work composed by a black woman, it was not even considered worthy of mention;

The Chicago Defender writers overlooked the female composer who could potentially “uplift”

the race.43 In a newspaper run by men, she would remain invisible, that is, until women writers

took an interest in her music. Both black and white women journalists featured Price with more

visibility and with greater respect after 1933, helping her to become a more prominent figure of

race progress for women and men alike.44

Price found her role as the first recognized African American female composer difficult

at times, and she sought to promote her compositions through friends, performers, and conductors. In her July 1943 letter to Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony, she wrote:

Dear Mr. Koussevitzky,

Unfortunately the work of a woman is preconceived by many to be light, frothy, lacking in depth, logic, and virility. Add to that the incident of race—I have colored blood in my veins—and you will understand some of the difficulties that confront one in such a position . . . . I ask no concessions because of race or sex, and am willing to abide by a decision based solely on the worth of my work.45

In addition to her accomplishments as a composer, Price advocated the status of women in music by obtaining membership in two musical organizations as the first black member of the Chicago

42 Ibid., 357.

43 Ibid., 356.

44 Ibid., 359.

45 Florence B. Price, Chicago, to Serge Koussevitzsky, Boston, July 1948, letter in Special Collections, Library of Congress, Music Division, Washington, D.C.

60 Club of Women Organists and the Musicians Club of Women.46 Price was also the first African

American composer represented by the Illinois Federation of Music Clubs. At the New York

NANM Convention in 1935, Price led a composers’ conference entitled, “A Brief Survey of the

Composer’s Task” and appeared later that evening in a concert featuring her music performed by the Bronx Symphony Orchestra and the Julliard School of Music, with Price performing as soloist in her Concerto in D Minor.47 The Florence B. Price Music Study Guild later became an official branch of NANM.48

Price continued her composition and concert careers in Chicago until her death in 1953 following a lengthy illness. She established a national reputation as a composer, placing her among black male contemporaries. Her fusion of classical European formal structures and

African American musical influences inspired many black women composers. The synthesis of culture, race, and gender within Price’s music provides social commentary on early-twentieth century America and offers renewed interest in her often neglected musical output and its importance in American music history.

46 Brown, “Florence B. Price’s Negro Symphony,” 86.

47 Patterson, 218.

48 Ibid., 246.

61 CHAPTER FIVE Songs to the Dark Virgin: An Analysis of Five of Price’s Art Songs

The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood. —Mary McLeod Bethune1

Florence Price’s art songs demonstrate her exceptional application of musical trends

within the context of the Negro Renaissance, thus positioning her as the mother of black art song

during the first half of the twentieth century. In this chapter, I examine a selection of five of

Price’s songs including “Fantasy in Purple” (text by Langston Hughes), “Forever” (text by Paul

Laurence Dunbar), “Night” (text by Louise C. Wallace), “The Heart of a Woman” (text by

Georgia Douglas Johnson), and “Song to a Dark Virgin” (text by Langston Hughes) as social

commentaries of the Negro Renaissance.

Methodology

I apply a four-step interdisciplinary methodology in my approach to analyzing the songs

employing literary criticism, musical analysis, race theory, and feminist theory. Specifically, I

evaluate the literary characteristics and interpretations of the poetry, apply harmonic analysis with careful attention to text setting and the applications of black musical idioms, evaluate the

possibility for sociological and cultural readings within race theory, and employ aspects of

feminist theory, particularly black feminist thought. This methodology allows for alternative

readings into race and gender and to consider the circumstances surrounding the lives of black

American women, the issues they may have faced, and the emotions they may have felt.

1 Mary McLeod Bethune, “A Century of Progress of Negro Women,” in Black Women in White America: A Documentary History, ed. Gerda Lerner (New York: Vintage, 1992), 583.

62 As Price favored setting the poetry of black poets in her art songs, I discuss the selected poems as a group to establish the historical context of the poetry and to address the prominent themes and imagery that occur within them. The selection of songs demonstrates the intertwined relationship of text and music. The literary tradition and criticism of black poetry is instrumental in the understanding of Price’s songs and the musical applications of these texts in general. I focus my readings on literary criticism concentrating on the poetry of Langston Hughes, Paul

Laurence Dunbar, Louise C. Wallace, and Georgia Douglas Johnson and the major poetic themes occurring during the Negro Renaissance. I explore common subjects, tropes, and symbolism in poetry of the Negro Renaissance such as anger and rage toward whites, images of darkness and light, hope amid despair, alienation, religious (mainly Christian) imagery, issues of identity, juxtaposition of the grotesque against the beautiful, and strength. My readings will also incorporate literary critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s theory of signifyin(g), which is directly applicable to a large portion of Negro Renaissance poetry. Price’s art song settings highlight these poetic themes through her use of black musical idioms juxtaposed against traditional forms and late Romantic harmony, which provides the opportunity to explore these texts and their musical settings. Considering these literary devices, I present possible poetic interpretations and assess connections between the poems, linking them as unified group that would make a dramatic statement on any recital program.

As Price’s art songs are powerful social commentaries, the exploration of the sociological and cultural applications of race theory presents an important avenue for approaching these songs. By first considering the situation of black poets and composers during the Negro

Renaissance as token figures of race progress, the question remains as to whether the work

(exhibited in either the poetry or music) serves to “uplift” the race. I will also draw upon poetic

63 and musical analysis within the songs to provide possible readings regarding the sociological

atmosphere of the Negro Renaissance.2

Traditionally, scholars applying feminist critiques or analyses ask: do women have a

specific creative “style”? Do women assert creativity in communities or is it more of an

individual effort? Why are creative women defined as their own detached society and yet compared against the male-dominated canon? While these questions are worth exploring in

depth, as Susan McClary examines these issues in Feminine Endings, the possibilities regarding

female creativity are endless and subject to interpretation.3 As women were often limited in the

types of genres that could be performed and published, they composed a great deal of what many

considered to be “lowbrow” genres such as art songs, piano solos, and chamber works.

However, looking at art beyond the narrow scope of stylistically progressive aesthetics gives

scholars an opportunity to debunk the hierarchical influences of culture placed upon all areas of

creative art, including the dichotomy between “highbrow” and popular culture. Cultural theorist

Janet Wolff notes that these theories are only “partial and provisional” and that questioning their

intentions is critical.4 Although Price’s songs could be analyzed from the perspective of

2 Sources on literary criticism include Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds., Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present (New York: Amistad, 1993); Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford Press, 1988); Barbara Johnson, “Euphemism, Understatement, and the Passive Voice: A Genealogy of Afro-American Poetry,” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 204–11.

3 Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). McClary addresses female aesthetics and female creativity in her chapter “Getting Down Off the Beanstalk: The Presence of a Woman’s Voice in Janika Vandervelde’s Genesis II,” 112–31.

4 Janet Wolff, Feminist Sentences (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 89.

64 l’écriture féminine, I do not ascribe this approach to her songs.5 Instead, I propose that Price’s

imagery or musical language is no less or more “feminine” than other composers of the period

and that Price’s style stands out due to her own distinct history, emotions, and musical talents.

Despite her role as a woman composer writing in a genre performed mainly by women, Price

herself seemed to deny that her musical voice was “feminine.” Although she did not view

herself as embodying “feminine” musical aesthetics, this does not rule out potential readings

incorporating various views on feminist theory from the standpoint of her position as a black

woman. My ideas are suggestions for further investigation into these pieces. By assessing the

roles of critical analysis within text and music while also considering the importance of societal

factors such as race and gender during the Negro Renaissance, I hope to gain a clearer view of

the possible interpretations of these five art songs.

Textual Analysis of the Grouped Poems

Although not conceived as a “song cycle,” examining the five songs as a group

demonstrates the many prominent themes, literary devices, and common imagery that occur

within the poems. Arranging the songs as a set creates an opportunity for unity of themes

(literary and musical) and the potential for readings using Gates’s theory of signifyin(g). The

texts of each poem appear on the three following pages.

5 L’écriture féminine is a school of feminist thought derived from the French poststructuralist scholars such as Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigiray, and Monique Wittig. Cixous first uses the term “écriture féminine” in her essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,” in New French Feminisms, ed. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (New York: Schocken, 1981), 253. The concept of l’écriture féminine was originally a literary theory, which has since been embraced by musicologists and typically embodies non-linear, cyclical styles of writing that place experience before language.

65 “Fantasy in Purple”

Beat the drums of tragedy for me. Beat the drums of tragedy and death. And let the choir sing a stormy song To drown the rattle of my dying breath.

Beat the drums, Beat the drums of tragedy for me And let the white violins whirl thin and slow, But blow one blaring trumpet note of sun to go with me To the darkness where I go.

—Langston Hughes6

“Forever”

I had not known before “Forever” was so long a word. The slow stroke of the clock of time I had not heard.

‘Tis hard to learn so late. It seems no sad heart really learns But hopes and trusts and doubts And fears and bleeds and burns.

The night is not all dark Nor is the day all it seems But each may bring me this relief My dreams.

I had not known before That “never” was so sad a word. So wrap me in forgetfulness I have not heard.

—Paul Laurence Dunbar7

6 Langston Hughes’s poem “Fantasy in Purple” appears in Arnold Rampersand and David Roessel’s edited collection, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (New York: Knopf, 1994), 56. Copyright © by the Estate of Langston Hughes, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a Division of Random House Incorporated.

7 Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “Forever” appears in Joanne M. Braxton, ed. Collected Poetry (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993), 240. “Forever” is in public domain.

66 “Night”

Night comes, a Madonna clad in scented blue. Rose red her mouth and deep her eyes, She lights her stars and turns to where, Beneath her silver lamp, the moon, Upon a couch of shadow lies A dreamy child, The wearied Day.

—Louise C. Wallace8

“The Heart of the Woman”

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird soft winging so restlessly on Afar on life’s turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

The heart of a woman falls back with the night And enters some alien cage in its plight And tries to forget it has dream’d of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.

—Georgia Douglas Johnson9

“Song to the Dark Virgin”

Would That I were a jewel, A shattered jewel, That all my shining brilliants Might fall at thy feet, Thou dark one.

8 The text of Louise C. Wallace’s poem “Night” was transcribed from Florence Price’s manuscript of “Night” from the Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers Collections in the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections, Series 2 (Musical Scores), Subseries 2 (Voice), Box 2, Folder 5. To the best of my knowledge, “Night” is unpublished and in public domain.

9 The text of Georgia Douglas Johnson’s poem “The Heart of a Woman” was transcribed from Florence Price’s manuscript of “The Heart of a Woman” from the Marian Anderson Collection of Music Manuscripts in the Annenburg Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the Van-Pelt Dietrich Library Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “The Heart of a Woman” is in public domain.

67

Would That I were a garment, A shimmering silken garment, That all my folds Might wrap about thy body, Absorb thy body, Hold and hide thy body, Thou dark one.

Would That I were a flame, But one sharp leaping flame To annihilate thy body, Thou dark one.

—Langston Hughes10

Although both men and women authors wrote the poems used for these songs, the gender

identity of the narrator in each poem remains ambiguous. At times, I hear a distinct female

narrative voice within some of the poems, while at others a male perspective is also possible. I

do not wish to discount the intentions of Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, or the men who have studied and performed these songs or wish to do so in the future. For the purpose of

interpretation, I assigned a female narrative voice to some analyses of these poems, while male

and gender-neutral voices for others, to allow for varied gender readings.

I use Gates’s methodology in the analysis of the poetry Price set in her art songs, in order

to unveil the coded symbolism of race and gender apparent in many of these poems. Gates aims

to prove that literary criticism can be applied to black literature and is not something confined to

the white literary canon.11 Following his model, I demonstrate this is also true of black music, particularly in the poetry Price used in her song settings. Gates describes his theory of

10 Langston Hughes’s poem “Songs to the Dark Virgin” appears in Arnold Rampersand and David Roessel’s edited collection, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (New York: Knopf, 1994), 61. Copyright © by the Estate of Langston Hughes, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a Division of Random House Incorporated.

11 Gates, The Signifying Monkey, xx.

68 signifyin(g): “Free of the white person’s gaze, black people created their own vernacular

structures and relished in the double play that these forms bore to white forms. Repetition and

revision are fundamental to black artistic forms, from painting and sculpture to music and

language use.”12 Signifyin(g) combines circumlocution and double-speak that is often used to

avoid directly stating controversial words and instead substitutes more socially “appropriate” speech. Black writers often used euphemism to address topics such as slavery and lynching in their works through using words such as trapped, caged, burning, aflame, etc., as a way to

discuss these themes without the explicit comprehension of whites. Binary oppositions were also

used as a way to express racial difference (black and white, dark and light, night and day, etc.)

and manifest themselves through signifyin(g). These techniques look past the literal meanings of

the text and can be seen in these poems. Gates further explains, “The black literary tradition is

double-voiced.”13 The trope of the Talking Book, double-voiced texts that talk to other texts, is the unifying metaphor within this book. Signifyin(g) is the figure of the double-voiced, resulting in four types of double-voiced textual readings which include tropological revision, the speakerly text, talking text, and rewriting the speakerly.14 Gates’s concept of the “double-voiced textual readings” emerges through this grouping of poetry as the poems interact with one another and common themes, tropes, imagery, and literary devices become evident. In the tradition of Negro

Renaissance literature, I view these five poems as signifyin(g) not only the literary themes within them but also signifyin(g) each other. In the sense that these texts “speak” to one another (to

12 Ibid., xxiv.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid., xxv. Gates further explains tropological revision as the manner in which a trope is repeated with differences between two or more texts. The speakerly text is a peculiar play of voices at work in “free indirect discourse,” as in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God; Gates describes the talking text in his discussion on how texts can engage in discussions with one another.

69 paraphrase Gates), they reflect tropes and literary devices so culturally embedded that each poem shapes the others and the entire set in such a way that the reader distinguishes the impact of these relationships.

This grouping of poems reflects the style, literary devices, imagery, and themes that evoke the historical context of the Negro Renaissance. Langston Hughes is likely the best known poet of the Harlem Renaissance and composers favored his poems for text settings due to their lyrical nature. “Fantasy in Purple” and “Songs to the Dark Virgin” are no exception. His verse is less restrictive in terms of form in comparison to other poets of the Negro Renaissance but his use of imagery and often blunt musical phrasing in motifs dramatically impacts the reader. In terms of style, both of his selected poems are short and address race through binary opposition and signifyin(g). These literary devices are evocative of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s influence upon Hughes. Dunbar’s poetry encompasses two distinct styles, classical English poetry and poetry written in the dialect of the turn-of-the-century black American community.

Despite a fine output of standard English poetry, publishers preferred that he write in black vernacular. “Forever” represents his classical style. Price set many of his poems as art songs including “Dreaming Town” (1934) and “Nightfall” (n.d.). While Dunbar adheres to stricter form in “Forever,” he employs binary oppositions and euphemism as a way to avoid conflict.

Louise C. Wallace’s poem “Night” is in a much less structured form than those of Hughes and

Dunbar. Metaphor and imagery feature prominently within the poem, and Wallace uses binaries and euphemism in a similar fashion to other poets of the Negro Renaissance. “Night” also contains comparable themes that appear in Hughes and Dunbar’s works. Georgia Douglas

Johnson’s “The Heart of a Woman” is the centerpiece of her 1918 poetry collection of the same name. While the collection presents emotional themes from a woman’s perspective rather than

70 focusing explicitly on race, the poem contains elements that occur in the examples by Hughes,

Dunbar, and Wallace such as signifyin(g), binary oppositions, and euphemism. These literary

devices unify the poems from an artistic standpoint but also reflect the historical context of the

Negro Renaissance, particularly in the application of Gates’s theory of signifyin(g).

“Fantasy in Purple” (n.d.)15

Hughes’s “Fantasy in Purple” is a compact poem in two stanzas in which each stanza is made

up of a quatrain in ABCB form; however, Hughes adds an additional line for dramatic impact in the

second stanza. This additional line is not only impassioned, but also contains the main theme of the

poem comprised from the two four-line stanzas. The first two statements “Beat the drums of tragedy

for me. Beat the drums of tragedy and death” present a solemn funeral dirge through the imagery of the percussive drum. The next section “And let the choir sing a stormy song to drown the rattle of my dying breath” finishes with end rhyme and depicts the narrator descending into death as the church choir sings passionately above. I interpret the metaphor of death as signifying current plight, slavery, or blackness . . . something unjust that the narrator is not willingly prepared for. The second stanza begins similarly to the first, “Beat the drums, Beat the drums of tragedy for me.” This time Hughes leaves out the emphasis on death, as the next section depicts the narrator’s ascent, “And let the white violins whirl thin and slow, But blow one blaring trumpet note of sun to go with me.”

The “white violins” and the “blaring trumpet note of sun” can metaphorically represent heaven through hope, freedom, and whiteness. The final line of the poem states “To the darkness where I

15 Please see page 66 for the full text of the poem and Appendix I for Florence Price’s manuscript of “Fantasy in Purple” from the Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers Collections in the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections, Series 2 (Musical Scores), Subseries 2 (Voice), Box 2, Folder 4. “Fantasy in Purple” is reprinted by permission of The Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers Collections in the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections.

71 go.” In conjunction with the previous line, the narrator indicates through metaphor that hope will

bring some light into the “darkness” or current status as a black American existing in a world where

she does not have the same rights as her white counterparts and is therefore confined to darkness.

This confinement may also be interpreted as a metaphorical death. However, the “blaring trumpet

note of sun” provides the hope that even the worst situations, such as death, are surmountable

through salvation.

In the poem, the binaries of life and death, lightness and darkness, and hope and despair

occur. In addition to the binary oppositions so common among literature of the Negro Renaissance,

“Fantasy in Purple” makes use of signifyin(g) in reading the imagery of death, dying, and darkness

as the oppression of slavery and white society. Thematically, Christianity and the importance of the

church was an integral part of life (and musical life) during the Negro Renaissance, so it is not

surprising that these images appear within the poem. Hughes describes a funeral chorus sung by the

church choir in the first stanza. Christian imagery also appears in Hughes’s “Song to the Dark

Virgin” as well as Wallace’s “Night.”

Price’s setting of “Fantasy in Purple” provides good examples of the musical application of

literary elements such as signifyin(g), binary oppositions, and euphemism. It is a moving piece,

which employs the use of African musical elements and formulates a compelling statement about

race and status. The piece embodies what Floyd describes as the “African cultural memory” through

its rhythmic and textual references to drumming, as well as Southern’s observations of melodic and intervallic patterns in African music with the emphasis on perfect fourths and fifths.16 Penelope

Peters observes: “To provide continuity with her African heritage, Price incorporates melodic and

16 Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. The Power of Black Music: Interpreting its History from Africa to the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 4; Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 4–5.

72 aesthetic aspects of spirituals, the harmonic language of the blues, and the improvisatory character of

jazz. Price appropriated the vivid images and raw emotions crammed into Hughes’s taut, compact

verses and fashioned them into a unified African American musical expression.”17 While Price

applies black musical idioms within the song, she simultaneously depicts constrictiveness through

her musical commentary. Price’s musical setting provides an underlying framework, a repetitive

harmonic and rhythmic pattern that represents the drumming, which acts as a restrictive force

against Hughes’s text in the vocal melody.

In the “Fantasy in Purple” manuscript in Appendix I, the piano introduction provides a tonic

prolongation in F minor of a short, repeated rhythmic figure of quarter and eighth notes over open

fifths in the lower register of the piano, creating a percussive effect that emulates the drumming.

This accompaniment acts independently from the vocal line throughout the song, which might be

perceived as a composing-out of the polarity at work within the text. A simple triadic melody in the

voice emphasizes the tonic prolongation as the same accompaniment continues on “Beat the drums

of tragedy for me” at mm. 3–9. While the melodic figuration in the voice centers on the structurally

important notes F-Ab-C, outlining the tonic triad, there is an interesting accented passing note that

emphasizes the first syllable of “tragedy” on the Bb downbeat in m. 7. From the outset of the piece,

Price employed clear use of the drum rhythm, which represents the theme of confinement inherent within the poem.

In addition to the racial context of the poetry and music, these relationships also demonstrate

connections to black feminist thought. For instance, I interpret mm. 10–24 as the “purple” or

racially othered section of the song, as this portion appears in an augmented harmony on Ab in

contrast to the framing sections in F minor. At the end of the first phrase, the Eb in the Ab Major

17 Penelope Peters, “Deep Rivers: Selected Songs of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds,” Canadian University Music Review 16, no. 1 (1995): 76.

73 chord in the piano accompaniment moves to E-natural in m. 10, facilitating a common-tone shift on

the pitch C to an augmented harmony on Ab. This augmented triad of Ab-C-E is very striking and

creates a disorienting effect for the listener. The ostinato accompaniment is transformed into an

arpeggiated triplet at m. 12, as the voice sings the pitches of the triad (C-Ab-E-natural), declaiming,

“Beat the drums of tragedy and death,” clearly embodying imminent despair. The repetitive and

percussive accompaniment and the narrow one octave range of the melody apparent in mm. 1–16

metrically and melodically confines the performer.18 In m. 17 text painting emphasizes the

vocalist’s chromatic melody with crescendo, “And let the choir sing a stormy song to drown the

rattle of my dying breath,” only to not be subsumed by despair as the last word “breath” is left

hanging on the E-natural leading tone and resolves as it returns to the opening ostinato on the word

“Beat” at m. 25.

When the opening material returns at m. 25 (where the E-natural now functions as the

leading tone of F minor), the voice sings piano, surrendering to the inevitability of “death.” Price

applies the emphasis on hope to her song as a brief moment of hope emerges again at mm. 31–35,

“and let the white violins whirl thin and slow, but blow one blaring trumpet note of sun to go with me” as the voice rises to the melodic apex of the song and the piano accompanies in large block chords in both the high and low registers. On the third beat of m. 34, an F-Major triad occurs on the word “sun”; a musical representation of binary opposition, possibly representative of hope, heaven, and whiteness. I interpret mm. 31–35 as the “white” phrase, which appears as high and loud,

moving toward a tonicization of Gb minor (m. 34), the supertonic and a contrast to the minor

modality of the “black” phrase in F minor (mm. 36–41, “to the darkness where I go”), quiet and

18 Susan McClary uses a similar analysis to express “containment” in Lucia’s mad scene in Gaetano Donizetti’s 1835 opera Lucia di Lammermoor in the chapter “Excess and Frame: Musical Representations of Madwomen,” in Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 90–99.

74 rhythmic.19 After the appearance of the dominant of F minor in second inversion at m. 37, the

harmony moves back toward the tonic in descending motion, mirroring the descent into darkness as

the voice decrescendos, returning to the opening ostinato in the root position of F minor at m. 38.

The ostinato lacks its initial power and solemnly repeats the introductory material.

In this song, Price creates a setting of Hughes’s poem through a musical depiction of the

binary oppositions of black and white, dominant and submissive, and high and low using musical

binary signifiers such as major and minor, as well as diatonic and chromatic, to depict constructs

within race. There are many factors at work in terms of text and music relationships as well as musical signifiers. I find it intriguing that the song centers around F minor, yet the key signature

appears in C minor. Perhaps this dual reading of key signatures/tonal centers also represents the duality of the binary themes within the poetry, as well as the independent nature of the vocal line and piano accompaniment. It is also entirely possible that the signature of three flats represents the

Dorian key signature for F minor. Although “Fantasy in Purple” is relatively short, it is filled with musical euphemism and binaries, which I interpret as a representation of the social constrictions surrounding African Americans in the 1930s.

“Forever” (n.d.)20

“Forever” exemplifies Dunbar’s classical style of poetry, which is demonstrated in its

structure of four quatrains that use a rhyme scheme in ABCB form. Hope emerges as the central

19 The tonicization of Db Major contains added sevenths that occur in m. 32, 34, and 35 (on beat 3). Gb minor functions as the flat supertonic, while Db functions as the dominant of the flattened supertonic.

20 Please see page 66 for the full text of the poem and Appendix II for Florence Price’s manuscript of “Forever” from the Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers Collections in the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections, Series 2 (Musical Scores), Subseries 2 (Voice), Box 2, Folder 5. “Forever” is reprinted by permission of The Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers Collections in the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections.

75 theme in “Forever” as he explores the trope of anticipated hope through the metaphor of the stasis of time in the first stanza, in the third line of the second stanza as the heart hopes, in the “dreams” of the third stanza, and again in the final phrase of the last stanza where the narrator opts to ignore the

word “never” in hope of something better.

Dunbar integrates signifyin(g) of race and euphemism in the application of the metaphor of

hope and oppression. Dunbar also uses binaries as a method of signifyin(g) through the opposition

of night and day and darkness and light. This poem presents more of a tendency to use euphemism

as a way to avoid conflict than Hughes’s examples, as plight and suppression appear coded in the

emphasized themes of love and time. Similar to “Fantasy in Purple,” the narrator focuses on the

idea of hope and I interpret the “sad heart” found in the second stanza as signified racial shame as it

fears, bleeds, and burns, as the literal fate of many black Americans when faced with slavery. In the

sense of burning, “Forever” is also connected to the themes within “Songs to the Dark Virgin.”

Musically, Price adheres to Dunbar’s classical structure and reflects his concealed signifiers,

metaphors, and euphemism in a traditional late-romantic style in G minor. Price incorporates dense

chromatic harmonies to depict the text within A-B-A' song form, also used for “Fantasy in Purple.”

The widely arpeggiated harmonies are consistent with Price’s other art song accompaniments and

piano repertoire. While the piece does not present black musical idioms as clearly as Hughes’s

“Fantasy in Purple,” Price does emphasize the binary oppositions of night versus day, and light

versus dark through the use of text painting. Price emphasizes significant words metrically

throughout the piece through longer note values, such as “word” in m. 6, “time” in m. 8, “hopes” in

mm. 15–16, “doubts” in m. 17, “fears” in m. 18, “bleeds” in m. 19 and “burns” in m. 20, which is re- emphasized in the next measure. In addition to these metric extensions of note values, Price shifts from triple to duple meter in m. 17 which further accentuates “doubts,” “fears,” “bleeds,” and

76 especially “burns,” which I interpret as a subtle acknowledgement of the euphemisms underpinning

racial shame. Musically, dramatically, textually, and tonally, Price draws the most attention to the

text at the climax of the piece: “The night is not all dark nor is the day all it seems but each may

bring me this relief my dreams, my dreams” (mm. 24–34). This section encapsulates the entire

theme of the song. While time is important and is related to the plight and suppression (possibly

symbolic of slavery) of the narrator, the “dreams” offer a diversion from the reality of time and life.

Here, Price emphasizes “dark” and “day” by using longer note values that stress the importance of

binary relationships. In addition to longer note values, pitch also stresses the distinction of the binaries as Price set the word “day” (C) one step higher than “dark” (Bb). The dramatic melodic

motion of “but each may bring me this relief” in mm. 29–30 accentuates the pleading nature of the

narrator and the wish to disengage from reality. Price later emphasizes the important final phrase,

“So wrap me in forgetfulness I have not heard, I have not heard” in mm. 39–45 using pitches

repeated an octave higher than within the A section, varying the original presentation of by placing

“heard” on the high F of the chordal seventh of the dominant seventh chord in m. 42.

Harmonically, “Forever” is similar to Price’s other songs in terms of its dramatic chromaticism. The song is in the key of G minor and emphasizes the harmonic scale (which does not make sense to analyze modally, despite the modal relationship to African music and Negro spirituals) as well as the melodic scale found in rising figures. Price uses a common-tone harmonic progression in mm. 10–14. She moves from Eb using G as the common tone in m. 13 to the

secondary dominant seventh chord in A Major in third inversion in m. 14, then moving to Db Major in second inversion through stepwise motion to F in the bass. The chromaticism intensifies through the use of an ascending vocal line using half steps to emphasize critical words within the poetry in mm. 15–20. In m. 20 on the word “burns,” Price moves to a diminished seventh chord in second

77 inversion on the pitch A. At the repetition of the word “burns” in m. 21 with a leap of a major sixth

in the vocal line from Gb to Eb, she moves to a diminished seventh chord in second inversion built on

F# (a respelling of Gb). While the chord contains the same notes, it now functions as the leading

tone to the tonic. This is the most dramatic harmony in the song and supports the readings of the

implied euphemism within Dunbar’s text through the presentation of diminished seventh chords that

stand out to the listener. The diminished seventh chord resolves to the tonic at m. 22, which is prolonged through m. 34. The quick triplet motion in the accompaniment remains in the tonic G minor, with a slight melodic variation at A' in m. 35. The bold scalar passages beginning in m. 39 resolutely end the piece. The final statement of “I have not heard” in m. 44 musically evokes binary oppositions through a tonic major-minor seventh chord in root position. While it sounds like a tonic resolution, listeners may “hear” the cadence as an implied dominant-tonic resolution. Although the

musical findings are not as overt as those found in “Fantasy in Purple,” I find Price’s use of musical

euphemism in her adherence to late nineteenth-century harmony and form that mirrors Dunbar’s text

to be very effective.

The binary of dark and day evident in the textual analysis of Dunbar’s poetry echoes the

gender issues at work within this song, particularly the importance of the Other. Simone de

Beauvoir asked the complex question “What is woman?” and attempted to answer it through posing

a barrage of questions focusing on gender and sexuality. Beauvoir addresses the man as Subject

and woman as the Other.21 This view of woman (or any minority group for that matter) as the

Other pervades musical and textual analysis. While the subdued text of Dunbar’s “Forever” is

apparent due to emphasized euphemism, Price’s setting of the song reproduces these qualities

through conventional romantic idioms. Despite the subtlety of the nuances in poetry and music,

21 Simone de Beauvoir, “Introduction to The Second Sex,” in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, ed. Linda Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1997), 11.

78 my aim is to address the Otherness found within this song and Price’s other works, while situating

them in the context of a white patriarchal society through pointing out black musical idioms and

literary techniques and how they fit within the context of a European musical form such as the art

song. Although the applications of these concepts are subtle, Price’s music reflects the themes of

racial Otherness that Dunbar’s poem subtly addresses in the imagery of black (night) and day

(white) found in the third stanza.

Through the examination of musical euphemism in regard to racial Otherness, it is also

necessary to consider this piece within the context of black feminist thought. It is important to bear

in mind that Price composed this and many of her other art songs as singers and pianists were

readily available and vocal recitals were easily organized. As both parlor songs and art songs were

popular at the time and since the art song was not deemed a particularly “new” or innovative genre,

critics often ignored it. In Michele Wallace’s theory of black feminist creativity as “the black hole,”

she addresses the lack of criticism (both literary and musical) on black women’s artistic

contributions. There is a lot of scholarship available about these women and their contributions;

however, few discuss the works critically. This is particularly true of women’s compositions during

the Negro Renaissance as demonstrated by Lawrence Schenbeck’s findings in Chapter Three.

Wallace claims, “Black women have next to nothing to say about the nature of commentary and

interpretation in their respective fields.”22 In her view, arts are a byproduct of diverse interpretation

and analysis and as black feminist creativity is virtually nonexistent, she labels it “the black hole.”

This black hole in black feminist creativity “represents the dense accumulation without expansion

22 Michele Wallace, “Variations on Negation and the Heresy of Black Feminist Creativity” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 55.

79 or inventory.”23 She finds it difficult even among scholars of black music and literature to

recognize black feminist creativity as a coherent and sustaining cultural tradition.24 The continual

view that persists in labeling black women and their creative accomplishments as a void stems from

an invisibility resulting from the social pressures and stigmas of race, class, and sex.25 This may

also be linked to Barbara Christian’s concept of “rememory,” which suggests reconstructing the

past to move beyond prescribed categories.26 She writes, “Ignoring women’s voices truncates our

movement and limits our process until our voices no longer sound like women’s voices to

anyone.”27 This is precisely why Price’s songs require further critical investigation to uncover the

possibilities of race.

“Night” (1946)28

Unlike many of the poems Price set that adhered to a more formal poetic structure, Louise C.

Wallace’s poem “Night” is a free-form septet in which the first and fourth as well as second and fifth

lines rhyme. Mysterious and enigmatic in both its structure and imagery, the poem heavily relies on

the use of metaphor to create an atmospheric depiction of the transition of night to day. In the first

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., 55–60. Wallace divides social hierarchy into different levels: 1. White men (universality), 2. White women (complementarity), 3. Black men (the Other), 4. Black women (X—designates radical negation). She finds the unrelenting logic of dualism and binary oppositions are essential to the discourse of dominant culture and automatically erases black female subjectivity.

26 Barbara Christian, “The Highs and Lows of Black Feminist Criticism,” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 48.

27 Ibid., 51.

28 Please see page 67 for the full text of the poem and Appendix III for Florence Price’s manuscript of “Night” from the Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers Collections in the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections, Series 2 (Musical Scores), Subseries 2 (Voice), Box 2, Folder 5. “Night,” Copyright © 1946 by ASCAP, reprinted by permission of The Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers Collections in the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections.

80 line, Wallace introduces “Night” as a feminine figure: a “Madonna” dressed in blue, with red lips

and deep set eyes. A vision from the heavens, “she lights her stars” as if they were candles. The

second half of the poem is also rich with metaphor and imagery as Wallace presents the moon as a

lamp, which shines its light upon “Day.” Here, “Day” is a “dreamy child” who rests upon a couch

of shadows.

Like Hughes and Dunbar, Wallace uses binary oppositions; however she emphasizes the

concept of darkness as the central theme of her poem. Although she presents darkness as an

ethereal, mysterious quality, dreamy, and full of the hope that both Hughes and Dunbar allude to in

their poems, I understand darkness within this context as signifyin(g) something magical and

religious in its nature. There is evident euphemism through the copious amounts of visual and color

descriptors permeating the poem, which provide Price with the ample opportunity for the use of text

painting to evoke the celestial quality of the text.

Wallace personifies night as the female narrator, a Madonna. Through the Madonna, Wallace

uses the concealed speaker often used as a metaphor to depict women in Negro Renaissance

literature, to symbolically give voice to our “woman half in shadow.”29 As in the writings of Marita

Bonner, the binaries in Wallace’s poem are less prominent and appear muted and mysterious instead

of conflicting and contradictory. Euphemism through the description of colors, the female

description of physical features, and the alignment of this mysterious mother figure with celestial properties such as stars, the silver moon, and a couch of shadow presents a realistic commentary on the positive stereotypes concerning how most of society viewed women during this period: motherly and religious (Christian) figures. As stated in Chapter Two, women and feminine aesthetics were an integral part of religious life during the Negro Renaissance.

29 Cheryl A. Wall, Women of the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), Prologue.

81 As religious mysticism is so innate within the poem, it is intriguing that Price introduces her

setting of “Night” with a banal open position harmony in C Major. As the song progresses, Price

creates an ethereal otherworldly atmosphere through the use of chromatic harmonies and borrowed

harmonies from C minor. The piano accompaniment includes arpeggiated harmonies and oscillating

chords throughout. The C-Major harmony utilizes a broad range on the piano, while the scalar

passages and arpeggiation create a twinkling and magical effect. Unlike “Fantasy in Purple,” which

overtly demonstrates African musical influences both musically and textually, “Night” musically

signifies the language of European art music through its overt application of text painting and places

subtle emphasis on the coded messages within the text through extended chromaticism.

Price’s application of borrowed and chromatic harmonies particularly accentuate the words

“Madonna” in m. 4 and “blue” in m. 6 using the flat sixth (Ab Major). To emphasize “eyes” in m.

11, Price uses a ninth chord which then moves to a third-inversion altered dominant of the flat sixth

in m. 12 and resolves to an Ab Major second inversion triad on the third beat. “She lights her stars”

uses common tone motion on the pitches C and Eb at m. 13 to reach a diminished seventh chord of

the dominant in second inversion on the F# leading tone through m. 14, which resolves to the tonic at

m. 15. Here, the poet refers to the black Marian images (generally medieval Byzantine icons) that

can be found in various shrines throughout Europe and the artistic representations of these icons.

While the Black Madonna has darkened features, she is not an explicitly African representation for

the Virgin Mary. There are several theories concerning the origin of the Black Madonna.

Suggestions include that the blackened images grew out of pagan earth traditions or were derived

from the Egyptian goddess Isis. Another possibility that the icons embody is the illustration of the

line “Nigra sum sed formosa” (I am black, but beautiful) from Song of Songs 1:5; however, there is

82 no scholarly consensus on the origin.30 A theory that may apply to female writers during the Negro

Renaissance is the Jungian idea that Black Madonnas express a repressed sexual feminine power not

fully conveyed by a fair-skinned Mary, often represented in terms of obedience and purity.31

Themes of the Black Madonna are common in black literature, most recently in Sue Monk Kidd’s

2003 novel The Secret Life of Bees.32

Price musically explores the Otherness that night represents within the poetry. There is an

emphasis on certain intervals in this song, including perfect fifths, minor seconds, as well as the

liberal application of tritones. Price utilizes the Wagnerian notion of common tone movement

throughout. “Night comes” in mm. 1–3 outlines a perfect fifth in C Major, while the shift to Ab

Major through the common tone of C at m. 4 on “Madonna” emphasizes the flat submediant. In mm. 4–6, Price’s setting of “clad in scented blue” outlines a perfect fifth from Ab to Eb and begins to emphasize the tritone, here on Ab to D-natural. On the text “rose red her mouth and deep her eyes,”

the first beats of mm. 8, 9, 10, and 11 all outline a descending scalar motion of the tritone, moving

from E-natural to Bb in the voice. Hints of chromaticism, such as the use of tritone, highlight

Wallace’s poetry, evoking the mysteriousness of night through harmonic ambiguity. Price’s use of

long, sustained phrases also creates the effect of the seamless and velvety approach of night and

darkness.

The climax at mm. 15–19, “and turns to where, Beneath her silver lamp the moon,” provides

the dramatic highlight of the song, both melodically and harmonically. The C-Major progression for

30 For further information on black Madonnas, please see Ean Begg, The Cult of the Black Virgin (New York: Penguin, 1985); James J. Preston ed., Mother Worship: Themes and Variations (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); and Stephen Benko, The Virgin Goddess: Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots of Mariology (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 1993).

31 Ean Begg, “The Symbolic Meaning of the Black Virgin, in The Cult of the Black Virgin (New York: Penguin, 1985), 126–52.

32 Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees (New York: Penguin Books, 2003).

83 the four measures begins on a tonic triad, which changes to a dominant seventh chord with an

implied F on the third beat that is prolonged through m. 17. In that measure, a second inversion

tonic triad alternates with a third inversion dominant seventh, oscillating with the dominant seventh

G-Major triad fluctuating between third inversion and root position in m. 18. The resolution to the

dominant occurs in m. 19, as the non-dominant chord tones resolve to a cadential dominant and

finally a secondary dominant seventh in D Major at m. 22.

The harmony resolves to the tonic at mm. 23–25 as an anticipation of the cadence as night

fades away into the “dreamy child” as the melody falls a perfect fourth, an inversion of the perfect

fifth vocal introduction. Beneath this melody the piano accompaniment outlines the secondary

dominant moving through a second inversion tonic triad in m. 23, a first inversion tonic triad in m.

24, and the final dominant to tonic motion through fifth motion in the bass in mm. 25–27. As the

“wearied day” returns in mm. 26–27, Price emphasizes the major third in the vocal line at the

cadence. This emphasis of tonic and dominant relationships is particularly notable as it supports the

poetic binaries that Wallace presents. Night represents the Other . . . mysterious in its use of

seventh harmonies, twinkling, and languorous, while shadow reveals the day in its tonal stability, cheery, and bright. Thus, Price reconciles Wallace’s religious imagery and visual metaphors through chromatic harmonies, twinkling pianistic effects, and text painting. While a the analysis of this song reflects musical metaphors of the Black Madonna, it would be interesting to see further investigations and more focused readings of the Black Madonna within the song literature of Price and other composers during the Negro Renaissance.

84 “The Heart of the Woman” (n.d.)33

In her poem “The Heart of a Woman,” Georgia Douglas Johnson uses a similar quatrain structure seen in Hughes’s “Fantasy in Purple.” “The Heart of a Woman” consists of two quatrains, using the AABB rhyme scheme. Thematically, the poem focuses on the woman’s spirit that is caged and expresses its need to break free. Themes within the poem include restlessness, echoes, as well as the symbolism of the night and the cage. Confinement, repression, oppression, and longing for freedom are common signifiers found within Negro Renaissance poetry. What makes Johnson’s poem particularly interesting is its approach to these themes from a distinctly feminine perspective.

I interpret this poem as an expression of resisting patriarchy and trying to break free from those

restrictions. Rather than Wallace’s “black hole” in the song “Forever,” Price allows the poetic

language of “The Heart of a Woman” to manifest musically into an anthem for the value of

femininity restrained by patriarchy.

Douglas’s poem incorporates the theme of night in terms of signifyin(g) oppression and

longing for freedom. As in both of Hughes’s poems, the binary opposition of night and dawn represent racial shame, slavery, and oppression. Hope also acts as a central theme within this poem,

as the visual of the trapped heart recalls Dunbar’s “sad heart” which contradictorily both feared and

hoped for freedom. As in Dunbar’s “Forever,” Douglas presents the heart as a complex entity, capable of multiple emotions, particularly hope.

During the Negro Renaissance, black women experienced restricted freedoms, particularly

with respect to traveling without chaperones. Fear of the black woman on the road alone may have

33 Please see page 67 for the full text of the poem and Appendix V for Florence Price’s manuscript of “The Heart of a Woman” from the Marian Anderson Collection of Music Manuscripts in the Annenburg Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the Van-Pelt Dietrich Library Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “The Heart of a Woman” is reprinted by permission of the Marian Anderson Collection of Music Manuscripts in the Annenburg Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the Van-Pelt Dietrich Library Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

85 perpetuated stereotypes of the promiscuous black woman with licentious sexual behavior. Society

dubbed black women either as mammies or as sex objects; however, Johnson’s poem demonstrates the longing hope within a woman’s heart, and how even love, peace, and goodness cannot break the bars of patriarchy that restrain them. I interpret Johnson’s use of the woman’s heart as a metaphor

for the goodness within humankind, not solely womankind, regardless of race. However, with all of

the social constructs at the time, it is possible that Price may have been drawn to this poem due its

artistic presentation of her personal social status.

The lack of introduction, harmonic ambiguity, far-related key areas, and shifting meters

within Price’s song all represent the restlessness and confusion surrounding the narrator’s position

trapped within her own heart, unable to pursue her joys. “The Heart of a Woman” is tonally

ambiguous: there is no firm statement of the tonic, Eb Major, until the final cadence at mm. 24–26.

The harmonic ambiguity mirrors the poetry as the narrator transforms from “the lone bird”

relentlessly winging to being trapped inside an “alien cage” before her heart breaks. Perhaps the

harmonic ambiguity also signifies the indefinable nature of the heart and the myriad of emotions

contained within it. Price musically depicts this restlessness in the first three measures, as the bass

line moves chromatically by step. In m. 8 a sudden tonicization occurs in Db Major along with a

meter change from 6/8 to 9/8 and returns to 6/8 in m. 9, further demonstrating the restless and fragile

nature of the narrator’s heart.

Melodic motion in this song is also of particular interest, as the vocal melody emphasizes one

important pitch (usually through meter) in each measure and spirals around it before moving to the

next significant pitch, usually through stepwise motion, while also drawing attention to tritone

relationships. For example, Price emphasizes the pitch C in m. 2 as the melody moves C-Bb-C-C#-

D-Eb, before stressing the pitches F and F# in m. 3 through the motion F-Eb-F-F# and the next

86 structurally important pitch G in m. 4.34 The tonic chord in second inversion on the downbeat of m.

4, is also approached by half step in the bass from B-natural to Bb. The vocal melody in the first

three measures moves from Bb to F#, mirroring similar motion in the bass line which moves from E-

natural to B-natural. At mm. 8–11 similar melodic movement occurs in the vocal line moving from

Db to G, in the first beat of each measure, which ascends by half step. This motion speeds up at m.

10 when the Eb occurs on the first beat, E-natural occurs on the third beat, finally reaching the G on

the first beat of m. 11. While the melodic motion remains the same throughout the piece, the

intensity increases dramatically throughout, especially at m. 17 as the narrator sings of entering

“some alien cage in its plight.” Here, the tritones function as musical representations of the “alien

cage” and containment. The climax of the song occurs at the end, where the heart breaks on the

fourfold repetition of the word “breaks” using stepwise motion in the voice in mm. 22–24. This

ascending chromatic pattern in the voice continues as it moves from Bb to the Eb in contrary motion

with the bass.35 Just like the narrator who escapes her longing for freedom into sunken dreams, the singer is finally allowed escape from the short chromatic patterns and the stultified hopes soar on the final high pitch. Although the melody finally lands on the Eb tonic at the end, it arrives through half-step voice leading, rather than the usual dominant function. Due to the voice leading, the arrival of the tonic does not sound conclusive as the tonic moves from root position in the first beat of m. 25 to first inversion in the third beat. In my interpretation, this suggests that though the narrator is still restrained under patriarchy and has future hopes for freedom, she does not feel completely and securely free within society.

34 In m. 3 in the manuscript, the right hand chord in the piano accompaniment is missing the F#, likely due to a copying error.

35 The ossia on G in mm. 25–26 may also be sung. This produces an even more inconclusive sounding cadence.

87 While the chromatic and syncopated melodic gestures that appear throughout this song

indicate the possibility of blues and jazz elements, these elements emerge with extreme subtlety

within the structure of the song. Price does not employ the use of explicit black idioms; however, the combination of the chromatic and syncopated melody as well as chromatic harmonic motion in relation to the text certainly demonstrates that these issues are present within the song. Chromatic melodies appear throughout the piece and there are few melodic leaps. While the use of chromatic motifs is highly subjective as a signifier for race and/or gender, the syncopated rhythms that occur within the song found in mm. 5–6, 19, and 23–24 correlate to the euphemisms of hope and

oppression within the poetry. Stylistically, the syncopated rhythms do not cause the listener to hear jazz influences, as the structural framework and harmonic presentation do not allow the rhythms that freedom. However, although the syncopation does not “sound” jazz-like to a twenty-first century trained ear, it is evident in looking at the manuscript. These syncopated rhythms occur at various places of signifyin(g) within the text, such as the description of the bird that signifies freedom in “a lone bird soft winging so restlessly on” in mm. 4–7. The next syncopated figure happens in the second stanza in the depiction of the “alien cage” in mm. 18–19 through the end of the poem as it

“breaks on the sheltering bars” in mm. 23–26. These instances of syncopation demonstrate Price’s connection to literary devices such as signifyin(g) and the subtle euphemisms within Johnson’s poem as the syncopated sections are even more apparent and heard as the Other in contrast to the metric restrictiveness of the piece, which pulses throughout.

The poetic reference to “night” at m. 16, juxtaposed against the imagery of “a cage in its plight” at m. 17 evoke the common trope of night as a representation of blackness. In particular,

Johnson presents blackness within a cage, enslaved. Among opera scholars, it is a popular notion that chromaticism is symptomatic of women who are unable to break free from the oppression

88 and/or confinement of social structure, which is often represented as formal structure within the

poetry or music.36 I find not only chromaticism evocative of the narrator’s struggles for freedom,

but also the repetitive melodic figures that do not propel forward harmonically. Time after time the

music circles around various tritones and when it does reach the tonic, it cadences inconclusively. In

addition to chromatic melodies, motivic repetition, harmonic ambiguity, metric shifts, and

syncopated rhythms further express the narrator’s discontent with her oppression. “The Heart of a

Woman” examines the plight of woman and her struggle against patriarchy.

“Song to the Dark Virgin” (1941)37

Hughes’s “Song to the Dark Virgin” contains three stanzas, an octet framed by two quintains.

Typical of Hughes’s poetry, “Song to the Dark Virgin” contains a refrain within the poem, which

first appears in the last line of the first stanza, “Thou dark one,” and is repeated at the end of each

stanza. In the poem, Hughes juxtaposes beautiful images against the ugly reality of life for a black

American in the south in the form of a prayer to the “dark one.” There are several issues at work

within the poem underneath the greater theme of racial shame, shame of one’s body, and shame of

oneself. First, the prayer-like invocation, sacrifice, and praise of “thou dark one” throughout the

poem creates a religious parallel, which emphasizes the importance of the church within the black

36 McClary, 90–99. Other resources using similar approaches include Catherine Clément, Opera or the Undoing of Women, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988); Susan McClary, Georges Bizet’s Carmen, Cambridge Opera Handbook (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Mary Ann Smart, ed., Siren Songs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).

37 Please see page 67–68 for the full text of the poem and Appendix VI for Florence Price’s manuscript of “Fantasy in Purple” from the Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers Collections in the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections, Series 2 (Musical Scores), Subseries 2 (Voice), Box 2, Folder 6. “Song to a Dark Virgin,” Copyright © 1941 by ASCAP, reprinted by permission of The Florence B. Price Smith Special Papers Collections in the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections. There seems to be some discrepancy over the title of this song. Hughes’s poem is titled “Songs to the Dark Virgin” and Price’s song is titled “Song to the Dark Virgin.” In publication, G. Schirmer printed Hughes’s title on the sheet music, rather than Price’s title of the piece, perhaps due to Hughes’s fame at the time.

89 community during the Negro Renaissance. From the title, the reader gleans that the dark one is male; the virgin referred to in the title. I interpret this as an overt reference to the Black Madonna

alluded to in Wallace’s “Night.”

While the religious themes between Wallace and Hughes’s poems remain central, Hughes

presents the virgin in a much more racially shamed context. Rather than focusing on racial

shame, Wallace employs euphemism through her use of color descriptors, positioning the

narrator as a heavenly creature that coincides with the motherly and religious stereotype of black

women. The binary contrasts between shining, shimmering, flame (all representative of light)

and darkness appear in “Songs to the Dark Virgin,” while both Hughes’s and Wallace’s poems

euphemize darkness as the oppression of slavery and white society. However, “Songs to the

Dark Virgin” expresses more overt racial shame as the narrator first appears in a state of penance

before the dark virgin, then covers and attempts to hide his skin, and finally burns his body as

though lynching himself in flame.

In the first stanza the narrator wishes to transform himself into a shattered jewel so that he

might sacrifice himself to the dark one. The collective shame in the narrator’s race and his body

becomes the focus of the second stanza, so much so that he wants to hide her body in folds of

garments. In the third stanza, the narrator wishes to destroy the virgin in the most violent fashion.

He wills himself to become a flame so he may annihilate her. I interpret this as the narrator’s

attempt to lynch the dark virgin, performing the ultimate sacrifice to the dark one, his race, and

himself. Although lynching is not explicit in the text, signifiers such as “flame” and “burning”

demonstrate Hughes’s euphemisms. The anti-lynching movement began to form around this time

and Schirmer published Price’s “Song to a Dark Virgin” only two years after Billie Holliday insisted

90 on recording the song “Strange Fruit” with a specialty label because her record company refused to record the song.38

Due to the musicality innate in Hughes’s poetry, Price often used his works in her art song

settings. She found his poetry well suited for her style of song composition. Peters expands on

Price’s interest in Hughes’s poetry:

Price was extremely proud of her heritage and looked for ways to celebrate and memorialize it in her life’s work; yet the musical traditions of their studies and compositions were European, not African American. She was faced with a dilemma of discovering a means of reconciling the musical traditions of their heritage with those of their training. She found a solution in the poetry of Langston Hughes . . . . Content and manner of expression in Hughes’s poetry engages the reader immediately—he presents realistic pictures of present day African Americans in gritty urban areas but elegantly expresses their attitudes and emotions in imagery that reaches every audience . . . . A powerful device in Hughes’s poetry is the opposition of nonchalant humor on the surface against a background of pathos. Another striking feature is the infusion of ethnic consciousness.39

“Song to a Dark Virgin” exemplifies the melding of Price’s music to more dramatically deliver

Hughes’s poem.

Price’s neo-romantic songs, which contain diatonic harmonies, are indicative of the

compositional style in terms of genre and form of other early twentieth century composers,

particularly Amy Marcy Beach (1867–1944).40 However, Penelope Peters draws parallels between

elements of Price’s art songs and plantation songs. Plantation songs typically feature call-and-

response structure, in which the leader ends on a long, sustained pitch. The use of vocal flourishes, a

38 Billie Holliday recorded “Strange Fruit” in 1939. Abel Meeropol, a Jewish teacher, wrote the song and lyrics under the pseudonym Lewis Allan. There have been numerous articles and books on this song including David Margolick’s Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and a Cry for Civil Rights (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2000) and Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, (New York: Ecco Press, 2001).

39 Peters, 75.

40 Carren D. Moham, “The Contributions of Four African-American Women Composers to American Art Song” (D.M.A. thesis, Ohio State University, 1997), 4.

91 sustained pitch over homorhythmic choral declamation, frequent repetition, straightforward rhyme

schemes, and short verses using memorable tunes all characterize the genre. The pitch structure falls

into one of two categories, either pentatonic/modal or melodies that contain diatonic characteristics.

Price often combined both pentatonic or modal and diatonic melodies in her art songs.41 She also uses various pentatonic-type cadences as a “deliberate allusion” to the plantation songs. The typical formal structure of the plantation song, which Price frequently models in her art song, consists of two or more antecedent phrases followed by a consequent phrase (for example, AAAB evident in the familiar spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”).42 While the piece is interesting in

terms of genre, it also demonstrates Price’s attention to text through her musical application of

literary devices.

Word painting occurs throughout the song, particularly in the second stanza. Green suggests

that the text “might wrap about thy body” parallels the range-crossing line in the piano

accompaniment at mm. 10–11.43 This “wrapping” is also present in the accompaniment from the

introduction of the song until m. 13 where the arpeggiation fluctuates between the right and left

hands. The next instance of text painting occurs at the word “hold” from the text “hold and hide thy body” in m. 13 sustained over an unexpected harmonic progression. She comments, “The harmonic progression here is not the chordal movements one would expect; however, the progression does

41 Peters, 76–77.

42 Ibid., 77–78. The text for “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” follows the AAAB poetic and formal structure of the plantation song: Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, sometimes I feel like a motherless child, sometimes I feel like a motherless child a long way from home. Sometimes, the last line is repeated for dramatic effect.

43 Green, “A Study of the Lives and Works of Five Black Women Composers in America [Florence B. Price, Margaret Bonds, Evelyn Pittman, Julia Perry, Lena McLin],” 125.

92 reflect the text.”44 Specifically, Green analyzes this harmony as a secondary dominant that resolves

to a dominant ninth chord built on the lowered second degree of Bb, the Neapolitan sixth chord in A

minor.45 While the setup of the secondary dominant does appear in m. 13 and the dominant ninth

chord on Bb occurs in m. 14, I do not think the dominant ninth functions as a Neapolitan harmony.

Price approaches the ninth chord through common tone movement (similar to the harmonic writing of the other songs presented here) via the Ab, which also functions as common-tone motion to the Gb

minor ninth chord in m. 15, which then resolves itself through voice leading to the subdominant

harmony in C minor in m. 16. Price’s use of seventh chords in this section is of interest. The

interval of the minor seventh appears throughout the piece, and Price typically uses it for dramatic

textual emphasis. The interval occurs at m. 4, in its inverted form at m. 12, and most notably at m.

24 on the word “annihilate.” The use of minor seventh intervals occur in Price’s other art songs,

most notably “Night” where it is also used for textual emphasis.

Green notes that the poet envisions the narrator as a jewel, a garment, and a flame. The

introduction to each stanza occurs in the tonic and then moves to the dominant harmony to

emphasize each object addressed in the song. The sweeping vocal melodies emphasize the poetry

through a mixture of high pitches and syncopated rhythms. This is particularly evident at mm. 3–5

“that all my shining brilliants might fall at thy feet, Thou dark one,” again at mm. 9–12 “that all my

folds might wrap about thy body, absorb thy body,” and at mm. 21–23 “to annihilate thy body”

(italics mine). As the end of each stanza approaches, the narrator’s emotions overcome the

descriptive powers of the text and the voice reaches its apex at mm. 24–28 on the phrase “but one

44 Mildred Denby Green, Black Women Composers: A Genesis (Boston: Twayne, 1983), 36.

45 Green, “A Study of the Lives and Works of Five Black Women Composers in America [Florence B. Price, Margaret Bonds, Evelyn Pittman, Julia Perry, Lena McLin],” 125.

93 sharp, leaping flame to annihilate thy body.”46 Price emphasized all three presentations of “Thou dark one.” In m. 5, she emphasizes the text through the ritardando and slow harmonic rhythm. The use of a melody and accompaniment in a lower range and rolled chords in C minor create a subtle significance evocative of the theme of darkness in the second presentation at mm. 15–18, which is especially prevalent in the bass notes. Green analyzes the ending of the piece as emphatic with “a sense of resolution.”47 The high range of the vocal melody and arpeggiated accompaniment further

accentuates the final appearance of the dark virgin, in flame, at mm. 25–29. Like Hughes’s poetry,

Price’s song expresses the hope and freedom found within religion that often acted as the only escape from the harsh reality of society during the Negro Renaissance. The theme of shame permeates both the text and music and represents the horrible reality many black women faced—a double shame of discomfort in their body and their race.

Gendered readings in Price’s songs are suggested as they complement the themes of racial

shame, degradation, and destruction. The concept of the virgin permeates the song both textually

and musically, thus creating an atmosphere of mysteriousness and piety. This dark virgin could very

well be a representation or embodiment of the Black Madonna, which both the text and music

supports through themes of religious praise as well as arpeggiated accompaniments and large rolled

chords, typical to that found in church hymns. In addition to poetic themes, musical similarities

present themselves between this song and “Night,” particularly in the form of minor seventh

intervals used to emphasize certain sections of the text, particularly at m. 4 “all” and mm. 23–25

“annihilate.” Both pieces also use far-related key areas for emphasis. In particular, mm. 14–25

moves through various key areas, incorporating blues and jazz harmonies such as diminished ninth

46 Ibid., 36.

47 Ibid.

94 chords, which stress the theme of shame. The poetic and musical focus on shame manifests both as

a race and gendered issue, which Price reconciles in her setting of Hughes’s text.

Like Price’s other songs, “Song to the Dark Virgin” is a well-written dramatic vocal piece

that connects with social history. She dedicated the song to her daughter, Florence L. Price. Marian

Anderson began performing the song around 1940, and G. Schirmer published it in 1941.48 While the dynamics and tempo markings in the Schirmer edition cannot be verified as Price’s original markings, they appear similar in phrase structure, form, and attention to text as they do in her other songs and effectively convey emotion. The piece is rich with text painting and typical late nineteenth-century harmonic writing with liberal application of dominant seventh and dominant ninth chords, as well as especially chromatic passages. This is one of Price’s best known and most- often performed art songs. “Song to the Dark Virgin” is an intensely compact piece rich in content, subtlety, and pathos that raises the social consciousness of both performers and audiences.

Conclusions

In joining the above songs together as a group, many themes, literary devices, and

societal issues centered on race and gender emerge. The most obvious presentation of

signifyin(g) emerges in the appearance of binary oppositions (whether subtle or overt) that occur

in all five poems. These recurring binaries signify race and demonstrate the juxtapostion of

black and white in several ways. Hughes uses the overt imagery of whiteness versus darkness in

“Fantasy in Purple,” while his “Songs to the Dark Virgin” employs the more popular binary of

light versus dark that is also found in “Forever” and “Night.” These binaries becomes apparent

as the theme of night versus day can be found in “Forever,” “Night,” and “The Heart of a

48 Mildred Denby Green, “A Study of the Lives and Works of Five Black Women Composers in America [Florence B. Price, Margaret Bonds, Evelyn Pittman, Julia Perry, Lena McLin],” 124.

95 Woman.” The poems link together these images that signify race and its interconnected role in society. Although there are many signifiers for race within the group of poems, racial shame is a recurrent theme in both overt and more subdued presentations within “Songs to the Dark Virgin” and “Forever.” Hughes bluntly describes shame and need to “hide thy body” in the second stanza, while Dunbar references the “sad heart” in the second stanza that subtly signifies the disappointment of racial shame. These signifiers, obvious or subtle, unify the themes within the poetry.

Examining the poetry beyond signifyin(g), it becomes obvious that the recurring themes further link these poems. The overlapping imagery consists of Christianity and Christian images; burning, fire, or flame; hope; and oppression. Hughes’s “Songs to the Dark Virgin” as well as

Wallace’s “Night” further expound on representations of Christianity through referencing the

Black Madonna which signifies not only race but also gender. “Fantasy in Purple,” “Forever,” and “The Heart of a Woman” emphasize themes of oppression and hope, which further reiterate the importance of the racially coded signifiers that unify all five poems as well as the way these signifiers and others mutate, reinforce, and color the poetic readings. “Fantasy in Purple,”

“Forever,” “Night.” “The Heart of a Woman,” and “Song to the Dark Virgin” highlight not only

Price’s tremendous skill as a composer but also her attention to poetic detail. Her musical settings of the poems demonstrate signifyin(g) as well as possible interpretations that reiterate the euphemism and binary oppositions present within each poem, sometimes overtly as in

“Fantasy in Purple” or subtly as in “Forever” and “Night.” Her art songs demonstrate her musical skill and poetic gift during the Negro Renaissance in Chicago.

96

EPILOGUE “Would that I were a flame . . .”1

Price’s art songs demonstrate the social situations and struggles of black women in

patriarchal society, both thematically and musically. Aside from that, they establish her as an

important composer during the period of the Negro Renaissance in Chicago. Her art song are

well-crafted compositions, beautifully evocative of a tradition of faithfully capturing the poetry,

a practice often neglected by modernist composers of the 1930s and 1940s, who tended to favor

form and harmony above text. Political leaders and critics during the Negro Renaissance hailed

Price as a “race champion,” yet her art songs never received the attention that her Symphony in E

Minor did and many of the songs remain unpublished today. Despite this, Price’s songs situate her as an important composer, incorporating her own cultural idioms within European classical form.

The five songs presented here demonstrate the possibility of looking beyond what many

consider traditional art songs and unveiling compelling social commentaries on race and gender.

These songs, in addition to the other unpublished works not discussed in this thesis, are worthy

of further performance and study. Price’s finely nuanced treatment of the poetry and her

commitment to a dramatic presentation of the text showcases her songs for interpretive

performance. Her vocal repertoire exhibits accessible melodic writing and elegant melodies.

Price had a distinct gift for capturing the poetic voice and creating complex and compact

musical structures that embodied the fine detail within the text. My interpretation of the pieces

open the possibility to discover latent themes in her art songs, such as confinement, darkness,

and night and the musical development of these themes. The analyses provide a point of

1 Langston Hughes, “Song to the Dark Virgin,” in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, ed. Arnold Rampersand and David Roessel (New York: Knopf, 1994), 61.

97 departure in the exploration of Price’s art songs, as well as the analysis of other works by women

composers during the Negro Renaissance. With further investigation of her vocal repertoire,

there are limitless possibilities to be found and with each performance undertaken, Price’s

compositional skill is again revealed. Students of American music must continue to delve into

the music and composers neglected by our history books, such as Price. Addressing issues such

as race and gender within the music of Price and other composers only further illustrates that

music reflects our complex social history. Angela Y. Davis eloquently expresses this sentiment:

“If it is true that music in general reflects social consciousness and that African-American music

is an especially formative element of black people’s consciousness in America, the roots of the

music in our concrete historical conditions must be acknowledged. For black women in

particular, music has simultaneously expressed and shaped our collective consciousness.”2 As music reflects our social consciousness, I hope that drawing attention to the culmination of specific genres such as the black art song during the Negro Renaissance creates a greater interest in the interconnectedness of the literary and musical contributions. Through the exploration of the art songs of Price and other black women composers, I anticipate that others will aspire to further uncover the intricacies of race and gender embedded within these intriguing social commentaries.

2 Angela Y. Davis, “Black Women and Music: A Historical Legacy of Struggle,” in Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afro-American Culture in the Contemporary Literary Renaissance, ed. J. M. Brazton and A. N. McLaughlin (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 3.

98 APPENDIX I “Fantasy in Purple” Manuscript (No Date) Poetry by Langston Hughes Music by Florence B. Price

99

100

101 APPENDIX II “Forever” Manuscript (No Date) Poetry by Paul Laurence Dunbar Music by Florence B. Price

102

103

104

105 APPENDIX III “Night” (1946) Poetry by Louise C. Wallace Music by Florence B. Price

106

107 APPENDIX IV “The Heart of a Woman” Manuscript (No Date) Poetry by Georgia Douglas Johnson Music by Florence B. Price

108

109

110 APPENDIX V “Song to the Dark Virgin” (1941, G. Schirmer Publishing) Poetry by Langston Hughes Music by Florence B. Price

111

112

113

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118 Moe, Orin. “A Question of Value: Black Concert Music and Criticism.” Black Music Research Journal 6 (1986): 57–66.

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______. Readings in Black American Music, 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1983.

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______. “The Heterogeneous Sound Ideal in Afro-American Music.” In New Perspectives on Music: Essays in Honor of Eileen Southern, eds. Josephine Wright and Samuel A. Floyd, 327–38. Warren MI: Harmonie Park Press, 1992.

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FLORENCE B. PRICE

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120 NEGRO RENAISSANCE MUSIC

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Walker-Hill, Helen. “Black Women Composers in Chicago: Then and Now.” Black Music Research Journal 12 (1992): 1–23.

WOMEN’S STUDIES

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121 ______. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999.

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______. Gender and the Politics of History, rev. ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

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______. “Music by Black Women Composers at the American Music Research Center.” American Music Research Center Journal 2 (1992): 25–32.

Wallace, Michele. “Variations on Negation and the Heresy of Black Feminist Creativity.” In Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 52– 68. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.

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______. Feminine Sentences. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.

______. “Towards a Sociological Aesthetics.” In Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art, 2nd ed., 105–15. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.

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