Obscure Music Monday: Price's Travel's End

Florence Beatrice Price (April 9, 1887 - June 3, 1953) was an African-American pianist and composer, and the first African-American woman to have a piece played by a major symphony orchestra. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price's first piano teacher was her mother, a music educator, and Price's first recital was at the age of 4. After high school (where she graduated top of her class), she studied piano and organ at the New England Conservatory, and pretended to be Mexican, due to the stigma that African-Americans faced during that era. She also studied composition and counterpoint with George Chadwick and Frederick Converse, and graduated in 1906 with honors.  

Price moved back back to the South for a while, but later sought to escape Jim Crow conditions, and headed to Chicago. There she entered in to a new phase in her composition career, and also met (and moved in with) another African-American composer, Margaret Bonds. Through Bonds she met Langston Hughes and Marian Anderson, both of whom helped in moving her career forward. While in Chicago, Price's Symphony in E minor won a Wanamaker Foundation Award, and it was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; it was the first work by an African-American woman ever played by a major orchestra.

In addition to symphonic repertoire, Price wrote chamber works, concertos, choral pieces, and many art songs, including Travel's End, a poem by Mary Folwell Hoisington. In this sweet work, the vocalist is an exhausted traveller, and wants to find a good night's rest like they did when they were a young child. The words are as such:

Oh, bed in my mother’s house,
With sheets as white as May,
With blankets wove of carded-wool,
And scented with new morn hay.

With the poke of a feather down,
From her snow-white plumey geese,
Oh, bed of mine in my mother’s house,
With sleep that was dreaming peace.

Oh, far how I walked forlorn!
Oh, bed that my mother made!
I would that your sheet might be my shroud,
And I in earth be laid.

The piano part to this short piece isn't terribly difficult, but it's incredibly effective. A three-note motif is found throughout, adding movement and mood to the many chords that lay underneath the singer's line. The peaceful, calm atmosphere of this wonderful work is almost lullaby-like.

We can't find a recording of this, sadly, but we hope that changes soon!