Florence Price for kids: her life, her music, and what to play first

Florence Price was an American composer who lived from 1887 to 1953. In 1933, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played her Symphony No. 1. She was the first Black woman to have a symphony played by a major American orchestra. She wrote more than 300 pieces, and many of them were lost for years. The best first piece for a child is the “Juba Dance” from her first symphony.

Quick facts

• Born: 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
• Died: 1953, in Chicago, Illinois, United States
• Era: Modern
• Played: piano and organ
• Known for: four symphonies, piano music, songs, and arrangements of spirituals

The life in short

Florence Smith grew up in Little Rock. Her mother was a music teacher and gave Florence her first lessons. Her father was a dentist. She played her first piano recital at four and had a piece published at eleven.

She finished high school at 14, at the top of her class. Then she went north to Boston to study at the New England Conservatory, one of the few music schools in the country that admitted Black students. She studied organ and piano teaching.

She came home to the South, taught music at colleges, married a lawyer named Thomas Price, and raised two daughters.

Life in Little Rock grew dangerous for Black families. In 1927, the Prices moved to Chicago. There Florence studied, taught, played the organ, and composed more than ever.

In 1932, she entered her Symphony in E minor in a national contest and won first prize. The conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra read the score and put it on a program the next year.

In 1939, the singer Marian Anderson gave a famous outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. She ended it with a spiritual arranged by Florence Price.

The music that was found

After Price died, much of her music went unplayed. In 2009, a couple fixing up an empty house south of Chicago found boxes of old papers. The house had been her summer home. Inside the boxes were dozens of her scores, including two violin concertos that had been thought lost.

Orchestras now play and record her music around the world.

What the music sounds like

Price wrote in the grand style of the Romantic symphony, and she filled it with the music she grew up with. Her tunes often use the scales and the feeling of spirituals.

Where an older symphony would have a minuet or a scherzo, she put a juba. The juba is a dance from the days of slavery, when drums were banned on many plantations. Dancers kept the beat by clapping, stomping, and patting their knees and chests.

Three pieces to play first

“Juba Dance,” from Symphony No. 1. A toe-tapping tune bounces through the orchestra. Listen for the slide whistle. The piece lasts about three and a half minutes.

“Adoration.” A slow, warm tune. Price wrote it for organ near the end of her life, and it is often played today on violin or cello with piano.

“Silk Hat and Walking Cane.” A strolling piano piece with a relaxed swing. It comes from a set of three dances she wrote in her last year.

Things to do together

Pat the juba. Play the “Juba Dance.” Keep the beat by patting your knees, then clapping, then stomping. Make up a pattern and repeat it.

Take a stroll. Play “Silk Hat and Walking Cane.” Walk around the room in your best clothes, real or pretend.

Lost and found. Talk about the boxes in the empty house. Ask your child what they would want someone to find of theirs in a hundred years.

Find her in time. Look for Price on the composer timeline. See which composers were alive in 1933, the year of her symphony.

Print and play

Print the Florence Price fact sheet. It has the story, three pieces, and room to write and draw.

Next, meet another American composer of the same years in Copland for kids. For all 24 composers by era, see classical composers for kids.