I got a message the other day from a cellist who was working on a catalog of music written by African American composers that included some cello music by John Elwood Price. I never got the chance to meet John Price. He left my university town before I arrived, but I did hear a performance of an impressive piece for solo cello that he wrote for a friend who has since retired from the music department.
The person who contacted me was interested in the piece, and he was interested in getting in contact with the cellist who premiered it. I remember that my cellist friend had a T-shirt made from the first page of the score. It was quite a shirt. It was quite a score.
I tried to find some published music by John Price online, and was unsuccessful, but I was able to find entries for twelve pieces written by John Price in the Worldcat. Most of them them are manuscripts or holographs of manuscripts.
The manuscript of the unpublished "Damnation of Doctor Faustus" for tenor, choir, and orchestra is in the Indiana University library, and there are copies of the manuscript for his Scherzo I for clarinet and orchestra in the Unversity of Illinois Library and the Indiana University Library. The manuscript of the solo cello piece I heard, Impulse and Deviation, is in the U of I and I.U. libraries as well as in the New York Public Library.
There is a copy of Price's "Blues and Circle Dance" for solo viola in the Brigham Young collection of viola music, and there are manuscripts and holographs of pieces for solo double bass, a quartet for violin, viola, horn, and bassoon, and some piano pieces in the New York Public Library, U of I, and I.U.
I wonder where manuscripts of Price's other pieces could be?
I found a reference to the 1992 premiere of Price's Tuba Concerto, but could not find a way to locate the music.
Musicologists take note. It is not enough to document the existence of music by African American composers. It is your responsibility to evaluate it and get it into circulation so that it can be played and studied. That is the only way that music written by composers who are no longer alive can have a chance at becoming part of the fabric of musical life.
There are editions to be made, and there are performances to arrange. And I recommend the IMSLP as a way for getting the music into the hands of musicians quickly.
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2 comments:
Hello, Ms. Elaine Fine!
My name is Sydney Queen and I'm currently an undergraduate student doing a research paper on this exact topic. The piece I was first looking for but could not find was "Chime Tones" by Noel Da Costa. This post is the only thing I have found in weeks of looking for anyone talking about this phenomenon of music of BIPOC composers being anthologized, but not being accessible. I am not sure connected you have kept to this in the years since posting, but if you have discovered or recall any other BIPOC composers or pieces by BIPOC composers where manuscripts have been lost, it would greatly help forward my research. As of now, all I'm doing is reading anthologies and searching for every piece. I would also appreciate any researching tips or recommendations. Thank you so much!
The only one I know about is Price, but if you keep up the search you are bound to find more. Not having a paper trail is a problem, though. Maybe ask some “old timers” is some big music departments with large libraries. I really don’t know where to begin. All I know about John Price is what I have been told about by his friends (and he was, from what I understand, a great friend and a great human being as well as an excellent composer.
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