Composer of the Month

February

Florence Price

Florence Beatrice Price
(born Florence Beatrice Smith) born April 9, 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas,– and died June 3, 1953 in Chicago Illinois)
She is considered the first important African American woman composer. She was the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra.
She was one of three children. Her father was a dentist and her mother was a piano teacher, and gave Florence her first few years of piano lessons.
She had her first piano performance at the age of four and went on to have her first composition published at the age of 11.
By the time she was 14, Florence had graduated from Capitol Hill High School and was Valedictorian of her graduating class!
When she was 16 she enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She had 2 majors - Organ performance and piano teaching and graduated in 1906.
Ms. Price taught in Arkansas briefly before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1910, where she became the head of Clark Atlanta University's music department.
In 1912, she married Thomas J. Price, a lawyer, and moved back to Little Rock, Arkansas, and later to Chicago.
Financial struggles led to a divorce in 1931, and Florence became a single mother to her two daughters. To make ends meet, she worked as an organist for silent film screenings and composed songs for radio ads under a pen name.
In 1932, Price submitted compositions for Wanamaker Foundation Awards. She won first prize with her Symphony in E minor, and third for her Piano Sonata, earning her a $500 prize.
The world famous Chicago Symphony Orchestra (made up of all white men), premiered her Symphony in E minor at the Chicago World’s fair on June 15, 1933, making Price’s piece the first composition by an African-American woman to be played by a major orchestra!
Price made considerable use of characteristic African American melodies and rhythms in many of her works.
Price was inducted into the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers in 1940 for her work as a composer.
She composed over 300 works by the time she retired from composing in 1949

On June 3, 1953, Price died from a stroke in Chicago, Illinois.

January

Amy Beach

Amy Beach born 1867 - 1944

Amy Beach was born in 1867 in Henniker, New Hampshire, and died in New York city.
She was raised in Boston, Massachusetts after her family’s paper mill burned down.
She was born with perfect pitch
Her parents recognized that she was a child prodigy - like Mozart and Clara Wieck Schumann
She composed her first musical pieces at 4 years old - a set of waltzes for piano, and gave her first public piano performance at age 7
She made her professional debut at age 16 when she performed piano with the Boston Symphony orchestra
She married Mr. Henry H. Beach when she was 18. He was a surgeon and 25 years older than her!
It was still considered improper for women to have careers and perform music publicly at this time, so her husband requested that she stop performing publicly, but he was very supportive of her composing!
After getting married she followed her husband’s wishes and only gave one recital each year, and focused mainly on composing, which she did under the professional name Mrs. H.H.A. Beach
Amy Beach was the first American woman composer to write a Symphony.
Her “Gaelic” Symphony was the first Symphony composed by an American Woman, and was considered the greatest American symphony until around WWI
In 1892 the New York Philharmonic and Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society both performed works by a woman composer for the first time in their history. Both works were by Amy Beach.
After her husband died in 1910 Beach resumed her performing career, playing her Piano Concerto and hearing her “Gaelic” Symphony performed.
Eventually she settled in New York, where she wrote the opera Cabildo in 1932.
Beach was a naturally gifted melodist and a believer in a universal style of composition, which made free use of European traditions.
She was one of the first composers (male or female) to receive all her training in the United States.
Her compositions were popular across the US and around the world, her song “Ecstasy” sold so many copies she was able to purchase 8 acres of of land on Cape Cod!

November/December

Clara Wieck Schumann

Clara Wieck was born on September 13, 1819 in Leipzig, Germany and died on May 20, 1896.
She became known as Clara Schumann after she married the famous composer Robert Schumann.
Clara was a piano prodigy and virtuoso, and was one of the three very best pianists in the world at the time (the other two were Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin). Clara could play piano before she could talk.
Clara became a professional concert pianist and had a 61 year career. She gave her first piano performance when she was 9 years old, and was one of the first professional pianists to play completely from memory.
- It is because of her that pianists memorize their recital music today.
Clara also composed piano music and would perform one of her own compositions at every performance she gave before she married Robert.
Clara and Robert had 8 children, and after becoming a mother Clara simply didn’t have time to compose anymore.
Today she is mostly known for her piano playing even though she was also a very gifted composer.
Robert Schumann was a brilliant composer, but due to a hand injury he was unable to perform his own music, so Robert would compose and Clara would perform his music.
Sometimes they would compose together, their most famous co-composed music are their songs within their “Year of Lieder” which they wrote the first year after they were married, and before their first child was born.
The Schumanns were also life-long friends with Johannes Brahms (remember him from the lullaby we learned last year?). Mr. Brahms famously helped to raise the Schumann babies after Robert Schumann had to go to a mental hospital, and continued to help Clara after Robert died.
The last thing that Clara performed was Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn.

Listen: Nocturne in F major

October

Fanny Mendelssohn

Fanny Mendelssohn was born on November 14, 1805 in Hamburg, Germany and died on May 14, 1847 in Berlin, Germany.
Fanny and her brother Felix were both musical child prodigies (which means they were musical geniuses), and her brother became a very famous composer.
The Mendelssons were a pretty rich family, but they were Jewish, and many people in the town of Hamburg didn’t like Jewish people. So their family moved to Berlin and changed their last name to Bartholdy, which was a Catholic name, so that they wouldn’t be bullied by people any more.
Over the course of her life Fanny composed almost 500 pieces of music, and specialized in “miniature” music, which means she wrote mostly short songs.
Even though she was a musical genius and a gifted composer and musician, her parents forbade her from pursuing a career, so she could only do music as a hobby.
Fanny married a poet named Wilhelm Hensel when she was 24 years old, and the two supported each other’s art. Wilhelm encouraged Fanny to publish her compositions and Fanny set many of Wilhelm’s peoms to music. They had a son named Sebastian Ludwig Felix Hensel - who they named after Fanny’s 3 favorite composers. (Can you guess who those composers were?)
When she was young she sometimes published her music under her brother Felix’s name because people wouldn’t publish music by women. She was finally able to start publishing music towards the end of her life, but most of her music was published after she died.
Because she couldn’t pursue music publicly (because she was a lady and it wasn’t considered proper) she would instead host private music concerts in her home every other week. She would often have up to 200 people in the audience, and her guests were often very famous musicians and artists as well. She had only two rules for her music concerts - you could only attend with an invitation, and there was no press allowed!
Fanny Mendelssohn was very good friends with Clara Schumann who was the only woman in the world who was a professional musician at that time. (more on Clara later).
Fanny Mendelssohn died of a stroke when she was 41 years old.

Listen: Farewell to Rome

September

St. Hildegard Von Bingen

Hildegard was born in Bemersheim, Germny in 1098 and died near Bingen, Germany in 1179.
“Von” means “From” in German, so Hildegard von Bingen means Hildegard from the town of Bingen.
Hildegard was the 10th child born in her noble family, so she was destined to become a nun (all 10th children devoted their lives to the church when she was alive).
She became a nun when she was 15, and became Mother Superior when she was 38.
She is now considered one of the greatest women from the Middle Ages, although she was very humble and would call herself a “poor little woman”.
Hildegard received visions from God which she was careful to record. She was considered a prophetess and a visionary.
Many members of the church, including several Popes, went to her for advice in personal and religious matters. She wrote about botany, history, religion, drama and poetry, as well as being an artist and composer.
She set at least 77 of her poems to music, and also set texts from the Bible to music, making her the first known female composer in history!
Hildegard composed music called Gregorian Chant
- the video game Halo uses Gregorian Chant in it’s opening sequence.
- Gregorian Chant is a form of Musical Prayer which is performed acapella - that means with voices only, no instruments.
Hildegard’s music was very important because she wrote her music to be performed by women only, and she was the first person in history to ever compose music for women to perform!