Adoration (orch. Elaine Fine)

Program notes

About the Work

Adoration is a short, devotional miniature by Florence Price, the first Black American woman to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra. She wrote it in 1951, late in her life, as an organ piece: music conceived for worship, with the unhurried warmth of a hymn or a quiet prayer. Like much of Price’s catalogue, it slipped into obscurity after her death in 1953, only to be rediscovered in the great Price revival of the past two decades, after a trove of her manuscripts was found in 2009 in her abandoned former summer home in Illinois. Its gentle, song-like character has made it a magnet for arrangers, and it now exists in many arrangements. The orchestration heard tonight is by the American composer Elaine Fine, who has clothed Price’s intimate organ lines in glowing string-orchestra sound. At Schönbrunn it offers a moment of stillness and tenderness amid the gala’s brilliance.

What to Listen For

Listen for the lyrical, hymn-like main melody, sung by the strings with a singer’s phrasing and breath. Price’s harmonies are warm and unhurried, touched here and there by the inflections of the African-American spiritual and the salon Romanticism she grew up with. Notice how Fine’s orchestration keeps the texture transparent. This is music of devotion, not display, and its power lies in its quiet sincerity and the long, arching line that swells gently and then settles back into peace.