Florence Beatrice Price - Five Folksongs in Counterpoint

45th Parallel Universe presented mousai REMIX string quartet in this performance on February 15, 2019, at The Old Church, Portland OR. Their program was titled "Sons of the Soil", and was presented in honor of Black History Month.

Performers:
Emily Cole, violin
Shin-young Kwon, violin
Jennifer Arnold, viola
Marilyn de Oliviera, cello

Marian Anderson's performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday in 1939 is considered one of the most significant concerts in American history. Featured on that concert was a setting of the spiritual "My Soul's Been Anchored by the Lord" by Florence Price, an Arkansas-born composer gaining traction in Chicago's musical community for her symphonies, chamber works, and concerti. Price's song settings stand out amongst her output for their harmonic inventiveness and expressive urgency, and several of them (including "My Soul's been Anchored") were quite popular during her lifetime, thanks in part to Anderson's support. Unfortunately much of Price's instrumental work fell into obscurity after her death in 1953, but over the last several years there has been a revival of interest, with recordings, performances, and archival work.

"Five Folksongs in Counterpoint" (1951) showcase both Price's affinity for song-setting as well as her capabilities for dramatic instrumental writing. Never content merely to harmonize beneath a melody, Price instead uses the folk theme as a jumping-off point; at times she splices it into bits and buries it in the texture, at others forcefully states it with all parts in unison. She makes virtuosic demands on the players and pushes the parts out of the confines of the string quartet; at the conclusion of "Calvary," she asks the players for "rapturous ponticello" (playing with the bow on the bridge to produce a distorted and whistling tone), a direction more likely to be found in an eerie moment of a symphonic tone poem than in an exalted hymn setting. The "Folksongs" stand as a comprehensive distillation of Price's immense compositional gifts in multiple idioms, while being rooted in the culture and spirituality so essential to her life.