Symphony No. 3 in C Minor

A brooding, majestic American symphony flavoured with popular Black songs and dances, Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3 represents a high point in her orchestral output. Price composed this, the third of her four symphonies, in 1940, on a commission from the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Music Project. The premiere, by Valter Poole and the Michigan WPA Symphony Orchestra, was a critical success, and touted by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in her syndicated newspaper column, My Day. Nevertheless, Roosevelt’s endorsement was not enough to overcome the barriers of racism and sexism that served to keep this and other Price works at the periphery of concert life. In a 1940 letter, Price explained that the symphony is “Negroid in character and expression”, but that it did not quote folk songs. Rather, it portrayed “a cross-section of present-day Negro life and thought with its heritage of that which is past, paralleled or influenced by concepts of the present day.” While echoing the past, Price was staking her claim to the modernist compositional language of 1940s America. After a mysterious introduction, the first movement features a turbulent, harmonically rich main theme followed by a lush second theme in the style of a Black spiritual. Both are extensively developed. The “Andante ma non troppo” second movement is infused with call-and-response gestures, while the third movement is a “Juba”, a traditional African American dance with jaunty syncopations. Price caps the symphony with a whirling “Finale” that builds to a fierce, brass-infused coda.