Meet the composers: Price, Dvorak, Gershwin

Florence Price

As an American composer in the early 20th century, Florence Price had the double disadvantage of being both African-American and a woman. Either of those distinctions made it very difficult to succeed as a composer in America in the 1930s. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887 to a mixed-race family, Price was a talented pianist from a young age. She enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music at 14, where she studied composition, graduating n 1907. She spent years composing and teaching piano. In 2009, over 50 years after her death, a number of her works were found in an abandoned house. Though the Chicago Symphony performed her Symphony in E Minor in 1932 giving it national fame, she is only now beginning to receive the recognition that she deserves. Price’s many orchestral, vocal and instrumental compositions draw inspiration from a blend of jazz, spirituals, African-American church music and European art music.

Antonin Dvorak

At the time when composer Antonin Dvorak was born, Bohemia and Moravia were part of the Austrian Empire. Dvorak, an excellent violin student, never actually studied music composition; his music was heavily influenced by his heritage, but he rarely used any actual folk melodies in his music. His Slavonic Dances met with immediate success and secured his reputation as a composer. When he traveled to America, his goal was to discover "American Music" and engage in it. Shortly after his arrival in America in 1892, Dvořák wrote a series of newspaper articles reflecting on the state of American music. He thought African-American and Native American music should be used as a foundation for the growth of American music, so that Americans could find their own national style of music. Dvořák's Slavonic Dances are among his most popular compositions, in addition to his symphonies, chamber music and many solo works.

George Gershwin at the piano

American composer George Gershwin is considered by many to be one of the most significant and well-known American composers of all time. A pianist born in New York City, he wrote primarily for Broadway musical theatre, and also wrote orchestral and piano compositions in which combined techniques and forms of classical music with those of popular music and jazz. Gershwin wrote many popular songs with his brother, Ira.

Rhapsody in Blue was written in just five weeks when he was just 26; Gershwin didn't even have time to finish the piano solo part, so it was mostly improvised at the opening performance! Gershwin's most famous music aside from Rhapsody in Blue (1924) includes An American in Paris (1928), the jazz standard "I Got Rhythm" (1930), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which introduced the lasting hit "Summertime" .