Choral Artists of Sarasota sing about Lincoln and peace in Florence Price cantata

Florence Price was one of the most important female American composers of the 20th century, holding a number of firsts in her career, but it has taken a long time for her work to become more widely performed and recognized.

After her death at age 66 in 1953, her work fell into obscurity until 2009, when a treasure trove of hundreds of her compositions was discovered inside a dilapidated house in Illinois, which she had used as a summer home.

This season alone, the Sarasota Orchestra performed a Price string quartet at a January chamber concert and is scheduled to play her Piano Concerto in One Movement at the March “Rhapsody in Blue @ 100” program.

And her choral cantata “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight” is getting a long-delayed Florida premiere in a concert by Choral Artists of Sarasota.

“All this incredible music had laid dormant for 50 years,” said Choral Artists Artistic Director Joseph Holt. He describes Price as “the pre-eminent African-American woman composer of the 20th century” and possibly the pre-eminent female American composer of the period.

The cantata was set to a 1914 poem by Vachel Lindsay, but no one is quite sure when Price actually wrote it. “There was no date on the score, so it had to have been written after the poem was published and before she died. It could be more than 100 years old.”

Lindsay’s poem was written “as a commentary on the state of the world in 1914 as we were entering World War I,” Holt said. “Lindsay is invoking the spirit of Lincoln as a historical figure who is very much troubled by these times and is roaming the streets of Springfield and lamenting the fact that we can’t find peace in the world.”

Price’s score is “very romantic in scope. It’s a bit of a rhapsody. It’s through-composed from beginning to end, with soloists taking parts, the chorus taking parts and a bit of an orchestral overture,” Holt said. “It’s very listenable, very understandable” because much of the chorus is singing the same thing at the same time.

Price was the first Black woman to be considered a symphonic composer and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra.

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Holt has paired the cantata with Joseph Haydn’s “Mass in a Time of Anguish,” better known as the Lord Nelson Mass because Nelson attended the premiere.

The pieces were written at least 150 years apart, but “they both have something very much in common,” Holt said. “They both comment on the futility of war. You don’t think of a mass as a commentary on war, but Haydn wrote it while Napoleon was conquering Europe.”

Holt will lead the choral ensemble, a 40-piece chamber orchestra and soloists during the program.

‘Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight’

Choral Artists of Sarasota. Joseph Holt artistic director. 7 p.m. March 10, Church of the Palms, 3224 Bee Ridge Rd., Sarasota. Tickets are $40, $5 for students. 941-387-4900; choralartistssarasota.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Choral Artists of Sarasota sing about peace in Florida premiere