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Rae Linda Brown, Ph.D. (1953 – 2017) completed a biography of composer Florence B. Price, The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price, 1887-1953 (forthcoming University of Illinois Press) and had been involved in editing many of Price’s scores for performance and recording, including on the Koch and Cambria labels. Ensembles that have performed Brown’s editions include the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the American Symphony Orchestra, the Women’s Philharmonic (San Francisco), the Chicago String Ensemble, the Orchestra of the Plymouth Music Series (Minneapolis), the Savannah Symphony, the Albany (Georgia) Symphony, the Springfield (Missouri) Symphony, and the Camellia Symphony (Sacramento). Her published editions of Price’s music include the Sonata in E Minor for piano (G. Schirmer, 1997), the Symphony in E Minor and the Symphony No. 3 in C Minor in Music in the United States of America (A-R Editions, 2008), and selected art songs (Classical Vocal Reprints, 2009, 2011).
Professor Brown lectured nationwide on American and African American music. Her articles have appeared in American Music, Black Music Research Journal, Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays (1990), and the New Grove Dictionary of Music. She was the music editor of the five-volume Encyclopedia of African American History and Culture (Macmillan, 1996).
Brown served as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Pacific Lutheran University 2016 – 2017. From 2008 – June 2016 she served as Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education and held the faculty position of Professor of Music at Loyola Marymount University. Brown earned her B.S. in Music Education from the University of Connecticut, a M.A. in African American Studies, and a Ph.D. in musicology from Yale University. Prior to her position at Loyola Marymount, she held full-time faculty and administrative positions at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Michigan. In 2004-2005 she was a Fellow of the American Council on Education and served as a member of the President David Oxtoby’s leadership team at Pomona College.
Books
The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price (1887-1953). Urbana: University of Illinois Press (2020).
Florence B. Price, Symphonies No. 1 (1933) and No. 3 (1940). Edited by Rae Linda Brown. Critical apparatus by Wayne Shirley. Music in the United States of America, v. 16. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, Spring 2008.
Music, Printed and Manuscript, in the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters, Yale University (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1982), i-xxiii, 3-322.
Book Articles
“Florence B. Price’s ‘Negro Symphony’” in Temples for Tomorrow: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 84-99. Ed. Genevieve Fabre and Michel Feith.
"William Grant Still, Florence B. Price, and William Dawson: Echoes of the Harlem Renaissance," in Black Music and the Harlem Renaissance (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. Reprinted by the University of Tennessee Press, 1993), pp. 71-86. Book was the winner of the Sonneck Society for American Music's 1991 Irving Lowens Award.
Published Articles
“Florence Beatrice Price (1887-1953)” in Women Composers: Music Through the Ages (Composers Born in the 19th Century), (G.K. Hall/Thorndike Press, 2001), pp. 748-756. Includes a discussion and my critical edition of two art songs, “The Heart of a Woman” and “The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face.”
“Five Musical Works by Florence B. Price.” A critical essay in The International Dictionary of Black Composers. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., ed. (Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999). 5000-word commissioned essay.
Preface, "Florence Beatrice Price." Music of Florence Beatrice Price, vol. 1: Suite for Organ. Calvert Johnson, ed. (Fayetteville, AR: ClarNan Editions, 1993). Reprinted in Music of Florence B. Price, vol. 2: Short Organ Works. Calvert Johnson, ed. (Fayetteville, AR: ClarNan Editions, 1995). Also reprinted in Music of Florence B. Price, v. 3: Variations on a Folksong. Calvert Johnson, ed. (Fayetteville, AR: ClarNan Editions, 1996).
"Florence B. Price: A Trail-Blazing Composer," in The Maud Powell Signature: Women in Music, vol. 1, no. 1 (Summer 1995): 14+. 1000-word commissioned essay.
"Florence B. Price and American Musical Nationalism: The Symphony in E Minor." 1000-word commissioned essay in Dialogues and Extensions - Common Ground: Jazz, African American and Jewish American Composers, 1930-1955 for the American Symphony Orchestra (New York), April 1994. Leon Botstein, Music Director.
"The Women's Symphony Orchestra of Chicago and Florence B. Price's Concerto in One Movement," American Music v. 11, no.2 (Summer 1993), pp. 185-205.
"Margaret Bonds and Florence B. Price: The Chicago Years," Black Music Research Bulletin v. 12, no. 2 (Fall 1990), pp. 11-14.
“An Interview with Dr. Valter Poole: Conductor of the Michigan W.P.A. Symphony, 1938-1942”, May 1983. Published by the Archive of the Oral History Program of the Institute on the Federal Theater Project and New Deal Culture (George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, 1984), 1-33.
Encyclopedia and Dictionary Articles
“Florence Beatrice Price,” in grovemusic.com/The New Grove Dictionary of Music. London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001.
5 articles authored for the Encyclopedia of African-American History and Culture. 5 vols. Jack Salzman and Cornel West, eds. (New York: Macmillan Press, December 1996).
"Florence B. Price." The New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers. Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel, Eds. London: Macmillan Press, 1994.
"Kemper Harreld." Dictionary of American Negro Biography. Second Edition. Michael R. Winston, ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993).
11 entries co-authored for Encyclopedia of African-American History and Culture. 5 vols. Jack Salzman and Cornel West, eds. (New York: Macmillan Press, 1996).
2 articles written for The New Grove Dictionary of Music in the United States v. 2 (London: MacMillan Publishers, revised 1997; 1986).
Music Editions (Florence B. Price)
Symphony in E Minor in Music in the United States of America, v. 16. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2008. Performed and Recorded by the Black Music Repertory Ensemble Orchestra (Chicago). Leslie Dunner, Conductor. Distributed by the Center for Black Music Research, 2011. Performed by the Atlanta Symphony, January 1998 (broadcast nationwide, NPR) and 2012/13. Numerous additional performances include the Women’s Philharmonic (San Francisco), Orchestra of the Plymouth Music Series, Minneapolis, the Albany (GA) Symphony Orchestra, the Kalamazoo (MI) Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta, and the Camellia Symphony Orchestra, Sacramento, CA).
“Juba Dance,” from Symphony in E Minor. Performance by Basel (Switzerland) Festival Orchestra (March 2015 and March 2016); National Women’s Music Festival Orchestra, Nan Washburn, conductor (March 2016); San Diego Symphony Orchestra (February 2016); North Carolina Symphony Orchestra performances for 60 family/children’s concerts throughout 2016-2017.
“Finale,” Symphony in E Minor. Performed by the Richmond (VA) Symphony Orchestra, May 2015.
Symphony in C Minor in Music in the United States of America, v. 16. Performed and Recorded by the Women’s Philharmonic (San Francisco). Apo Hsu, Artistic Director. New York: Koch International, 2001. Other performances include the Kalamazoo Symphony and the Lansing Symphony Orchestra.
“Florence B. Price: Five Art Songs.” Fayetteville, AR: Classical Vocal Reprints, 2011.
“The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face.” Fayetteville, AR: Classical Vocal Reprints, 2011. Also in Women Composers: Music Through the Ages – Composers Born in the 19th Century. Series ed. Sylvia Glickman and Martha Furman Schleifer, vol 7, pp. 760-763. Waterville, ME: Thorndike Press/G.K. Hall, 1999. Recorded by Louise Toppin, soprano. Ah, Love But a Day. Albany Records, 2000.
“Hold Fast to Dreams.” Recorded by Louise Toppin, soprano. Ah, Love But a Day. Albany Records, 2000.
“I’m Goin’ To Lay Down My Heavy Load.” Fayetteville, AR: Classical Vocal Reprints, 2011.
“Sympathy.” Recorded by Louise Toppin, soprano. Ah, Love But a Day. Albany Records, 2000.
“The Heart of a Woman.” Fayetteville, AR: Classical Vocal Reprints, 2011. Also in Women Composers: Music Through the Ages – Composers Born in the 19th Century. Series ed. Sylvia Glickman and Martha Furman Schleifer, vol 7, pp. 757-759. Waterville, ME: Thorndike Press/G.K. Hall, 1999.
Folksongs in Counterpoint (for string quartet). Unpublished. Performed at the Witherspoon Presbyterian Church String Quartet, Princeton, NJ.
"My Dream" (art song). (New York: Hildegard Publishing, 1995). Recorded by the Damas Group/Videmus, Watch and Pray: Art Songs and Spirituals by African American Women Composers (New York: Koch International, 1993).
Piano Sonata in E Minor. (New York: G. Schirmer Music, 1997). Recorded by Althea Waites, Black Diamonds: Piano Music by African American Composers (Los Angeles: Cambria Records, 1993).
CD Liner Notes
The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price (1887-1953). Urbana: University of Illinois Press (2020).
Florence B. Price, Symphonies No. 1 (1933) and No. 3 (1940). Edited by Rae Linda Brown. Critical apparatus by Wayne Shirley. Music in the United States of America, v. 16. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, Spring 2008.
Music, Printed and Manuscript, in the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters, Yale University (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1982), i-xxiii, 3-322.