Alterity Syllabus Unit 2
Introduction
When people think of Western art-music composers, one of the first images that often comes to mind is that of the genius. The narrative of music being created by gifted and special individuals whose works seem to transcend life and history is usually associated with a very specific demographical profile: male, White, and European. Much of the music history written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries tended to center this imagined character as its protagonist, creating a hierarchy not only of the compositions that they produced but also of their standing as individuals. The reproduction of this hierarchy across histories and pedagogies of music contributed to make less visible and less audible the contribution of musicians who diverged from this norm. Indeed, individuals who differed from this profile were commonly relegated to a supporting role in the overall narrative. It is not a coincidence that many of the individuals marginalized in this kind of historiography are marked as Others based on their race and gender. For example, music-history textbooks still teach us that, in the past, women would sing and play the piano, thus bringing to life the compositions of the genius composers, and that the music of exotic and foreign communities (also known as non-Western) could be used as a source of inspiration for the “great men” in question. The problem with this narrative is that it produces and reiterates the erasure of other musical stories that—by not being written—are misrepresented and often forgotten.
One of these ignored stories that has been brought to life recently is that of the composer Florence B. Price. Born in 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price achieved great success as an African American woman composer in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. The success, however, is usually framed through her intersectional identity as a woman in a patriarchal society and as a Black musician in an age of segregation and racism. Although Price grew up amidst the Black elite of Arkansas, attended prestigious educational institutions such as the New England Conservatory, and had her work presented by some of the most important musical performers of her time, including the premiere of her First Symphony in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the narratives speaking to her success are frequently limited to tokenizing her achievements.
By focusing this unit on some of Price’s compositions, her career, and the web of stories woven by putting her at center stage, we invite students to think about music, alterity, and history. Rather than relativizing her accomplishments as a secondary character in music history, we focus the attention on her works and contribution in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. This perspective allows for a broader reflection on the role of alterity in providing meaning to music across time and on the potential histories enabled by a narrative not centered on the usual White male protagonist. The challenge of proposing a reading of history against the grain is not to reproduce the same logic that creates hierarchies and that identifies and labels Others who remain excluded. Rather than rewriting a linear music history centered on Florence B. Price, however, in the two modules that follow this introduction, , we think of her from the multiple perspectives that emerge from the different positions she occupied in the artistic networks of her period. Instead of presenting a singular life that can be objectified, we pursue the potentially diverse narratives that emerge by considering a multiplicity of ways to tell stories about musicians and their works.