Moods for Flute, Clarinet, and Piano by Florence B. Price

Florence B. Price’s Moods for Flute, Clarinet, and Piano performed by Maja Pechanach, Eden West, and Ella Hursh on Ella’s 11/24/24 senior recital.

Florence Beatrice Smith Price was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She gave her first piano performance at age four and published her first composition at age 11. She graduated high school as valedictorian and went on to double major in organ and piano teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she graduated with honors in 1906. Shortly after, she became the head of the music department at what is now Clark Atlanta University at age 23. Following the Lynching of John Carter, Price and her family left the South and moved to Chicago, where Price started the most prolific era of her career, becoming part of the movement known as the Chicago Black Renaissance. Price is known as the first Black woman to have her music played by a major orchestra. In 1933, the Chicago Symphony played Price’s First Symphony on a concert as part of the Century of Progress World’s Fair along with works by Harry T. Burleigh, Samuel-Coleridge Taylor, and John Alden Carpenter. Maude Roberts George, then president of the Chicago Music Association, had to pay the equivalent of about 5,000 dollars today to have Price’s work included in the concert. Her works were more often performed by the Women’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago, whose long-term partnership helped her gain recognition. Price was also renowned as a performing pianist.

In 2023, Dr. Paul Kratoska purchased a Chicago apartment that was previously owned by clarinetist Casja Ilo. In the apartment, he found a complete autograph score of Moods inscribed by Price and a separate, written-out piano part. He donated these parts which, along with the previously discovered flute and clarinet parts, made it possible for Moods to finally be published about three months ago, almost 80 years after it was composed.

On the inside cover of the score is an inscription dedicating the piece to Lillian Juanita Poenisch, a clarinetist and conductor who founded the Chicago Women’s Concert Band and co-founded the Women’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago. It is possible that Moods was first performed at a concert given by the Lake View Musical Society, which included Poenisch, flutist Carol Solfronk, and pianists Helen Calihan, Irene Albrecht, and Norma Bennett, according to the Chicago Tribune.

To our knowledge, this performance will be the second public performance of this new publication edited by John Michael Cooper.