Cullen’s Album of Recently-Discovered Price

Pianist Josh Tatsuo Cullen (photograph by Jiyang Chen, courtesy of Classical Music Communications)

Readers interested in the music of Florence Price probably know by now of the discovery in 2009 of a “mother lode” of previously unknown manuscripts of her music. These turned up in an abandoned dilapidated house in St. Anne, Illinois, which had been Price’s summer home. At the beginning of this month, Blue Griffin Records released an album entitled Scenes in Tin Can Alley: Piano Music of Florence Price. This consists of performances by pianist Josh Tatsuo Cullen of selections from those recently-discovered manuscripts.

Sadly, the most reliable source is the MP3 download of the twenty tracks on this album, which is available through an Amazon.com Web page. The bad news is that the accompanying booklet, consisting of an essay by Cullen, which provides background material for each of the compositions, is not included in the Amazon download. However, after a bit of poking around, I managed to find a Dropbox Web page, which seems to have been created by Cullen, from which the PDF version of the booklet can be downloaded. Those that do not currently have a Dropbox account will be able to sign up for one at no charge. Since much of my work depends on using Dropbox, I can attest to its reliability; and I have never had to deal with any forms of disagreeable interference.

The album itself is basically a collection of miniatures. The longest track is less than six and one-half minutes in duration. The shortest is less than 40 seconds. With the exception of a set of five preludes composed between 1926 and 1932, all of the tracks have programmatic titles. That said, it is likely that many (most?) listeners were have little background knowledge associated with the four-movement suite entitled Thumbnail Sketches of a Day in the Life of a Washerwoman. (I only knew about such a life from cartoons I saw as a kid.) Easier to grasp will probably be the final suite of three Miniature Portraits of Uncle Ned, reflecting on the protagonist first as a teenager, then early in his maturity, and finally in old age. As Cullen observes, “Uncle Ned” was a stock character in minstrel shows.

In listening to the individual tracks, I felt that I sometimes encountered tropes from the Great American Songbook. Other tropes could be attributed to Erik Satie. However, he was probably influenced by the popular music of his own time early in the twentieth century! Perhaps this music was hidden away in a trunk because Price had decided to try her hand at “pop” content without compromising her reputation as a composer of “serious”music.