Ethiopia’s Shadow in America
By Todd E. Sullivan
In the wake of racial hostilities in Little Rock, AR, many members of the Black community joined the Great Migration to northern cities. Thomas and Florence Price followed the path to Chicago, relocating permanently in 1928 with their two daughters, Florence Louise and Edith Cassandra. Chicago offered familiar surroundings to Florence, who had spent the summers of 1926 and 1927 furthering her music education at the Chicago Musical College Summer Master School, with a primary emphasis on composition. After settling in the city, she received a scholarship in 1929 to study orchestration at the American Conservatory of Music and pursued courses in liberal arts and languages at Chicago Teachers College and the University of Chicago.
Price developed into a prolific composer of piano teaching pieces for children, and she also amassed a substantial catalog of popular song and spiritual arrangements. A highly accomplished keyboard player, she quickly earned respect as one of the most accomplished silent-film organists on “The Stroll,” a zone of nightclubs, cabarets, dance halls, theaters, and cafés on State Street between 26th and 39th Streets. He husband, by contrast, struggled to establish himself in Chicago as a lawyer, enduring frequent periods of unemployment. An angry streak escalated into verbal and physical abuse. Florence filed for divorce, which the judge granted on January 19, 1931.
Florence Price, portrait by G. Nelidoff
Price’s personal turmoil coincided with an extraordinary creative outpouring, including initial sketches for a Symphony in E minor. Incentive to complete this orchestral score emerged one year later when The Crisis (February 1932), the magazine of the NAACP, announced the Fifth Annual Rodman Wanamaker Contest in Musical Composition for Composers of the Negro Race. At stake were $1,000 in cash prizes for compositions in three categories: songs with words, piano, and orchestra. Price entered her Symphony No. 1 in E minor and Ethiopia’s Shadow in America in the orchestral category and the Sonata in E minor and Fantasie nègre No. 4 in B minor in the piano category. Astoundingly, her four entries received top honors and shared Honorable Mention in both orchestral and piano categories, earning cash awards totaling $750. Her former student, Margaret Bonds—at the time a student at Northwestern University—won the song category and a $250 award with “Sea Ghost.”
News of Price’s virtual sweep of the Wanamaker awards spread nationally and attracted attention a short distance north in the Chicago Loop, where Frederick Stock, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, took note of her triumphs. The opening of the Century of Progress International Exposition, alternatively known as the Chicago World’s Fair, was just eight months away, and the CSO was scheduled to perform at the Auditorium Theatre within the first few weeks in June 1933. Stock programmed two back-to-back performances of orchestral music written almost exclusively by American composers. The first concert featured music by Henry Handley, Deems Taylor, and George Gershwin, who appeared as soloist in his Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue. The CSO and Stock offered a more diverse program highlighting Black artists the following evening. The world premiere of Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor occupied center position both on the program and in music history—never before had a major American orchestra performed a composition by a Black woman.
The abandoned house in St. Anne, IL, where Florence Price papers were found (photo: Tim Nutt/UAMS Library Historical Research Center)
While the Symphony No. 1 enjoyed its moment in the spotlight, the other orchestral score from that period, Ethiopia’s Shadow in America, followed a different course. Price apparently packed away the score, which was never performed during her lifetime, and it remained hidden for decades. In 2009, Vicki and Darrell Gatwood discovered musical manuscripts, personal documents, and books in an abandoned house in St. Anne, IL, 72 miles south of Chicago, that they had recently purchased. The building lay in a state of decay: saplings grown wild around the perimeter, windows broken, a hole in the roof from a fallen tree limb, and its contents strewn across the floors. The name “Florence Price” appeared frequently and, after an online search, the Gatwoods realized that their new property had once been the composer’s summer cottage. Ethiopia’s Shadow in America emerged from the miraculously rediscovered cache of primary documents. The University of Arkansas Symphony Orchestra under Robert Mueller gave the first performance of the Andante from Ethiopia’s Shadow in America on January 31, 2015, at the Florence Price Music Festival. Its presentation at the Ravinia Festival on July 28 led by Mei-Ann Chen is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first performance of the music.
Florence Price and her eldest daughter, Florence Louise Price Robinson, tending the garden at their St. Anne, IL, home (photo: University of Arkansas, Soecial Collections Division)
Ethiopia’s Shadow in America (1932) offers a rare example of descriptive music in Price’s compositional catalog, a three-movement orchestral work tracing the experience of an African slave: “The Arrival of the Negro in America when first brought here as a slave,” “His Resignation and Faith,” and “His Adaptation – A fusion of his native and acquired impulses.” The solo clarinet’s melancholic tune gives way to orchestral writing that is both majestic and ominous. The strings, accompanied by woodblock and snare drum played with wire brushes, introduce a livelier Allegretto melody. The syncopated double-bass pattern, which switches rapidly between pizzicato and arco, contains a rhythmic motive that appears in all three movements. The hymn-like Andante initially assigns the melody to solo violin. Its folk-like tune travels effortlessly to the cello, horn, clarinet, and oboe as Price continually varies the orchestral coloration. The finale begins with a vibrant orchestra dance—a hand-clapping, knee-slapping juba dance in all but name—before recalling the first movement’s ominous orchestral music.