Florence Price, “Song of Hope”

May 7, 2023
Benaroya Hall, Seattle

Harmonia Orchestra & Chorus
William White, conductor
Kimberly E. Jones, soprano
Sarah Mattox, mezzo-soprano
Michael Preacely, baritone

After attending segregated schools in Little Rock, where her father was a dentist and her mother a music teacher, Florence Smith began studying at Boston’s New England Conservatory in 1903, receiving diplomas in both piano and organ after just three years. Returning to Arkansas, she taught music and gave recitals, marrying an attorney, Thomas Price, and starting a family.

During the summers of 1926 and 1927, she studied composition at Chicago Musical College, subsequently moving her family (as part of the Great Migration to escape the Jim Crow south) to Chicago, where she began composing in earnest. The choral-orchestral work heard this evening dates from 1930, around the time her husband abandoned the family. Song of Hope never received a performance during her lifetime, but the next year she wrote a symphony in E minor that would be premiered by the Chicago Symphony at the 1933 World’s Fair — the first performance by a major American orchestra of a symphony by a Black woman.

Song of Hope is Price’s earliest known orchestral work, using lyrics she wrote herself:

I dare look up. The heaven’s blue is mine!
Held in contempt and hated, still, Lord, I am Thine.
Tho’ torn asunder, poisoned arrows reach my soul.
Because Thou livest do I know that Thou shalt make me whole.

I dare look up through flames that, mounting high,
Consume my flesh. In faith I see Thee. Thou art nigh.
I would not that my anguish to Thy throne ascend,
For pain and sin and sorrow doth Thy mercy, Lord, transcend.

I dare look up! Thy promise made to me —
A humble creature, groping, will yet make me free.
Thy mighty plan, beyond my simple ken, assures
Thy love, surpassing human hope, protects me; still endures!

which reflect her personal faith in the face of adversity during the breakup of her marriage and the ongoing challenges of the Great Depression.

Price never heard this work performed during her lifetime and it may never have been heard at all had not a 2009 renovation of what was once Price’s summer home turned up a treasure trove of manuscripts, including Song of Hope (which received its first public hearing just over a year ago).

— Jeff Eldridge