Florence Price's "Go Down Moses" from her 4 Negro Folksongs for String Quartet, Catalyst Quartet

Recorded live in concert at Music Mondays in NYC

By the year 1935, Florence B. Price came to be known as the "Dean of Negro Composers of the Middlewest", a title in deference to "The Dean of American Negro Composers" William Grant Still. The title was attributed to her by the Chicago Defender for her numerous professional accomplishments, but also importantly, because she composed music with which African Americans could identify. Indeed, Price herself embraced her own heritage as a means of self expression, and much of her composing is rooted in a Black folk idiom, delivered through studied European techniques.

Price's 4 Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet (c.1947) are often confused with her Five Folksongs in Counterpoint, also for String Quartet, but written in 1951. The confusion probably lies around the fact that the 4 Negro Songs-- Go Down Moses, Somebody's knocking on yo door, Little David Play on your harp, and Joshua Fit de battle of Jericho-- have yet to be republished after being rediscovered in an abandoned house outside Chicago in 2009, in conjuction with the fact that Price originally named the 5 Folksongs of 195, Five Negro Folksongs, but changed the title twice before settling on the current title. This confusion has done a great disservice to the popularity of this quartet, as it is an incredibly rich and electrifying work that has much to offer, but is scarcely known.

Florence B. Price was herself, a participant in the Great Migration of Blacks in the early 20th century, escaping the violent racism of her native Little Rock, and moving to Chicago, where she became an important contributor in the great Chicago Renaissance between 1935 and 1950, regularly associating with icons Langston Hughes, Marion Anderson, and Margaret Bonds, and creating a body of work that spoke authentically to the American voice whilst breaking down race, gender, and economic barriers. Her roots as a deeply religious southern Black woman are particularly on show in the 4 Negro Folksongs, and she uses the gravitas of the songs' Spiritual motifs as building blocks for dramatic narratives, where the four voices of the quartet are conversing, interacting, commenting, and at times battling. The use of Go Down Moses is of particular affect as the opening movement. The Spiritual's origin is attributed to the Underground Railroad, where "Conductors" would sing the Song as secret code to lead Slaves North. Its historical power as well as its allegorical depiction of Blacks escaping bondage give the Song a vitality few others can match. Price taps into this ethos and infuses the entire movement, leading up to a point that can only be described as Moses parting the Red Sea-- where the inner voices oscillate tremendous tremelandi while the first violin recites the theme in octaves. It is a powerful moment that ends in all four voices blistering towards the finish line, reaching the promised land.

Throughout the history of Western classical music, there have been many compositional voices who have made enormous contributions to the musical landscape, who as a result of their race or gender, have been sidelined. The Catalyst Quartet's UNCOVERED project brings together the missing gems of the string quartet repertoire by composers Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Florence Price, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, William Grant Still, George Walker, and Le Chevalier de Saint George. They each have contributed beautifully crafted work to the repertoire, but are not widely celebrated because recordings and performances of their music are rare or non existent. Despite this, each composer has his or her own incredible story and unique compositional voice, that exemplifies their individual struggles and triumphs as pioneers of black-art in a traditionally white environment. It is imperative that their stories are told, and that we hear all the voices that have shaped and contributed to classical music.