Good afternoon and thanks for tuning in to Little Rock Public Radio and Classical
KLRE-FM, 90.5. I’m Eric Harrison, I write about arts and culture at the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette and I’ll be your host for the next two hours.
You’re listening to “Major and Minor Masterpieces,” where we focus each week on a
broad range of classical music, from chamber music to choral works to full symphonies
and maybe even a touch or two of opera.
Today’s focus: Symphonies by African-American composers, two of whom are from
Little Rock.
William Grant Still, born in Woodville, Miss., in 1895, died in Los Angeles in 1978. He
was raised in a deeply religious, upwardly mobile household in Little Rock, where he
attended the same elementary school as Florence Price (whose First Symphony you will
hear later in the program).
His Symphony No. 1, titled “Afro-American,” is probably his most famous work, and got
its first performance, by the Rochester Philharmonic, with Howard Hanson conducting,
on Oct. 29, 1931. It was the first symphony by an African-American composer to be
performed by a significant American orchestra.
Still began sketching it in 1924 shortly after he had finished playing in the pit orchestra
for Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle’s musical comedy “Shuffle Along,” which, by the way,
launched the careers of Josephine Baker and Florence Mills. And, according to Langston
Hughes, helped inaugurate the Harlem Renaissance. He took it up again in 1930,
explaining to a biographer that, “It was not until the Depression struck that I went jobless
long enough to let the Symphony take shape. I rented a room in a quiet building not far
from my home in New York and began to work.” And he completed it in two months.
Still employed blues, ragtime, jazz and spirituals and the third movement even employs a
banjo, the first time that instrument was used in a symphony.
Let’s hear this performance of Still’s Symphony No. 1 by the Fort Smith Symphony
Orchestra and conductor John Jeter.
(WILLIAM GRANT STILL’S SYMPHONY NO. 1, “AFRO-AMERICAN”)
ERIC: That was John Jeter conducting the Fort Smith Symphony in William Grant
Still’s Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American,” in a Naxos American Classics recording.
The other two composers on today’s program figure prominently in the community of
musicians and intellectuals that was known as the Black Chicago Renaissance.
William Dawson prided himself on his heritage and the way he expressed it in music.
“I’ve not tried to imitate Beethoven or Brahms, Franck or Ravel—but to be just myself, a
Negro,” he said in a 1932 interview. “To me, the finest compliment that could be paid my
symphony when it has its premiere is that it unmistakably is not the work of a white man.
I want the audience to say: ‘Only a Negro could have written that.’”
That premiere of the “Negro Folk Symphony” took place two years later, with Leopold
Stokowski conducting the New York Philharmonic, and critics and audiences hailed it as
a masterpiece. Even so and despite Stokowski’s advocacy, the music and its composer
faded into relative obscurity and although he continued writing and arranging music,
Dawson never composed another symphony. The piece has had a recent revival,
including the recording you’re about to hear. And local audiences got to hear it in January
2025 when the Arkansas Symphony performed it under the baton of guest conductor
Joseph Young.
Dawson gave each of its three movements a descriptive title: “The Bond of Africa,”
“Hope in the Night” and “Oh, Le’ Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star!” Like Still and
Price, he used spirituals as a baseline, explaining in his own program note, “The
composer has employed three themes taken from typical melodies over which he has
brooded since childhood, having learned them at his mother’s knee.”
Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra in William Dawson’s “Negro
Folk Symphony.”
(WILLIAM DAWSON’S “NEGRO FOLK SYMPHONY”)
ERIC: Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in William
Dawson’s “Negro Folk Symphony” on today’s edition of “Major and Minor
Masterpieces” on Little Rock Public Radio and Classical KLRE-FM, 90.5.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLIŃSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
---PROGRAM BREAK---
[EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
SARAH BUFORD, PRODUCER:
Hey listeners, welcome back to Major and Minor Masterpieces. I’m your producer, Sarah
Buford, and it’s time for our show’s little educational session, in which we break down
some of the terminology we use when describing classical music and its history.
Eric, the other day we were in the studio finishing a recording and you said to me “Domo
Arigato, Mr. Rubato.” And with some context clues, I was thinking it meant maybe
“thank you.” But to be honest, I hadn’t heard that song in a really long time. Ya know,
the one by Styx. And while I was halfway right, domo arigato does mean thank you in
Japanese, you surprised me by saying there is another meaning to this. You were making
once again, another musical pun. Alright, Mr. Roboto, do enlighten us. Let’s dive into the
layers!
ERIC: Well, I’m sorry to have caused you to scratch your head so vigorously, Sarah.
It was a play on the Styx song “Mr. Roboto,” and the reference was to “rubato,” short for
“tempo rubato.” Like so many musical terms, it comes from the Italian, and literally
means “stolen time.” It’s the direction for a player or the conductor to perform more
expressively, a little faster or a little slower than strict adherence to the beat would
indicate.
In practice it involves giving a little extra weight and time to a note, prolonging it
slightly, while “stealing” time by speeding up or taking time away from other notes.
SARAH: Well, “domo arigato” for this “timely” explanation, Eric. Let’s get back to
more Major and Minor Masterpieces.
[END OF EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLIŃSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
We’ve covered the life and legacy of Florence Price in previous shows, but here’s a brief
recap: She was born in Little Rock in 1887 and, as we noted, she and William Grant Still
attended the same elementary school. Price studied piano, organ and composition at the
New England Conservatory in Boston, then returned to the South, teaching at small Black
colleges in Arkansas — including North Little Rock’s Shorter College — and Georgia.
Foiled by racial prejudice in her hometown, she moved to Chicago in 1927.
Price wrote more than 300 pieces, 40 of them large-scale works, plus 100 or so songs,
chamber works and settings of spirituals for piano and voice. She had faded from the
musical scene long before her death in 1953, but in the summer of 2009, the new owners
of the run-down house she had lived in for many years in St. Anne, Illinois, discovered a
trove of unpublished and, in many cases, previously unknown scores in the house’s attic.
Many of them now reside at the Price archive at the University of Arkansas.
Her 1931 Symphony No. 1 in E minor won the $500 first prize in a 1932 musical
competition and was the first work by a Black woman to be performed by a major
American orchestra when the Chicago Symphony and conductor Frederick Stock
premiered it in 1933. It shares a key with Antonin Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony,
which she first encountered during her student days in Boston and which was also
influenced by African-American spirituals.
Let’s hear Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra perform Florence
Price’s Symphony No. 1.
(FLORENCE PRICE’S SYMPHONY NO. 1 IN E MINOR)
ERIC: Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in Florence Price’s
Symphony No. 1 in E minor in a recent Deutsche Grammophon recording.
And now for today’s lagniappe: the fourth and final movement, “Scherzo,” from Florence
Price’s Piano Quintet in A minor, one of the works that was discovered in that Illinois
attic in 2009. This Hyperion recording by pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the Takács
Quartet pairs it with the (much better known) Piano Quintet in A minor by Antonin
Dvořák.
(FLORENCE PRICE’S PIANO QUINTET IN A MINOR, FOURTH MOVEMENT:
“SCHERZO”)
ERIC: Pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the Takács Quartet performed the fourth
movement of the Piano Quintet by Florence Price on today’s edition of Major and Minor
Masterpieces.
And for lagniappe No. 2, we played you a piano version of Florence Price’s three
“Dances in the Canebrakes” on an earlier broadcast. Now let’s hear two of them —
“Tropical Noon” and “Silk Hat and Walking Cane” — as orchestrated by none other than
William Grant Still. John Jeter conducts the Malmö Opera Orchestra.
(FLORENCE PRICE’S “TROPICAL NOON” AND “SILK HAT AND WALKING
CANE” FROM “DANCES IN THE CANEBRAKES,” ORCHESTRATED BY
WILLIAM GRANT STILL)
ERIC: John Jeter conducted the Malmö Opera Orchestra in “Tropical Noon” and “Silk
Hat and Walking Cane” from “Dances in the Canebrakes” by Florence Price, as
orchestrated by William Grant Still.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLIŃSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
Thanks for tuning in this week. I’ve been your host, Eric Harrison, of the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette. Our producer is Sarah Buford with production assistance by Ryan
Gregory and Jonathan Seaborn. Our transition and credit music is by our friend Wojciech
Chiselinski. And thanks to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra
for the program notes.
Tune in again next week for Major and Minor Masterpieces on Little Rock Public Radio
and Classical KLRE-FM, 90.5.
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The recordings:
William Grant Still: Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American” (30); Fort Smith Symphony
Orchestra, John Jeter, Naxos American Classics 8559174
William Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony (35) Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-
Séguin, Deutsche Grammophon
Florence Price: Symphony No. 1 (41) Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin,
Deutsche Grammophon 00289 486 2029
Florence Price: Piano Quintet in A minor 4th movement, “Scherzo”; Takács Quartet,
Marc-André Hamelin, piano, Hyperion CDA 68443
Florence Price: “Tropical Noon” and “Silk Hat and Walking Cane” from “Dances in the
Canebrakes,”, Malmö Opera Orchestra, William Grant Still, John Jeter