A. Kori Hill, Ph.D. 2022

Advisor: Mark Katz

Dissertation Title: Make the Familiar New: New Negro Modernism in the Concertos of Florence B. Price

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Dissertation Abstract:

My dissertation is a study of the three completed concertos of Florence B. Price. Through my new analytic concept, Black classical formalism, I center the African American music idioms at work within the Concerto in One Movement for piano and orchestra (1934), Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major (1939), and Violin Concerto No. 2 (1952). My reasons are three-fold: 1) to illustrate how these pieces reflect core tenets of New Negro modernism; 2) to foreground Price’s application of African American folk idioms in the concerto genre; and 3) to incorporate the two violin concertos more thoroughly into Price studies. My development of Black classical formalism stems from a need for an analytic that centers the western classical and African American idioms that undergird the music of Price and her fellow New Negro modernist composers. In doing so, I situate Price’s concertos within one of the major artistic movements of her time and show how she and her contemporaries wielded New Negro modernist ideology and artistic goals to create a new school of Black art music.

Dr. Hill is currently a freelance writer and scholar for publications including I Care If You Listen.