Chicago, the 'city we love to call home!': intersectionality, narrativity, and locale in the music of Florence Beatrice Price and Theodora Sturkow Ryder

Ege, Samantha (2021) Chicago, the 'city we love to call home!': intersectionality, narrativity, and locale in the music of Florence Beatrice Price and Theodora Sturkow Ryder. American Music, 39 (1), 1-40.

Record type: Article

Abstract

Florence Beatrice Price (1887–1953) and Theodora Sturkow Ryder (1876–1958) were prominent composers in interwar Chicago.1 Both wrote works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, solo instruments, and voice that transformed Chicago's concert culture and brought both women national renown. They belonged to wider networks of female practitioners and were affiliated with both local and national music clubs.2 However, the color line delimited their careers: Price largely operated in Chicago's Black classical music scene, while Sturkow Ryder belonged to the white mainstream. Today Sturkow Ryder's compositions are less well known and out of print; there are, as yet, no readily available commercial recordings. Conversely, advances in Price scholarship have brought landmark works into publication and recorded media.3 As Price scholarship continues to grow, I seek to explore her broader milieu and further detail the historical portrait of women composers in interwar Chicago. I thus present a comparative study of Price and Sturkow Ryder, two women whose craft as composers absorbed and reflected the world around them.

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