Sympathy, by Florence Price

By Sarah van der Ploeg

As we pause today to reflect on the legacy and ever-timely challenge presented by the life and words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I am reminded of his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and his holy impatience with the slowness of progress towards racial equity in the United States.  I wonder what letters he would be writing to us today.  And I am struck by how relevant Florence Price’s undated song, “Sympathy,” feels in that context, and still to us today perhaps a century after she wrote it.

​Price’s setting of this poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) is a masterful one, showcasing her technical abilities as a composer and her unique musical voice while expressing the emotional weight of his words in an honest, unforced, and powerful way.

Florence Price (1887-1953)

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

The three sections of the song echo the three stanzas of the poem, beginning with lyrical lines that reflect the “sun … bright on the upland slopes” and the “wind stir[ring] soft through the springing grass” before chromatic descending lines that underscore the bittersweet images of the world beyond the cage.  More intense dynamics, rhythms, and pianism mark the second stanza, as Price knows “why the caged bird beats its wing / Till its blood is red on the cruel bars.”  The music crescendos before a resigned return to the first theme at the start of the third stanza, again acknowledging “why the caged bird sings, ah me, / When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore.”  Finally, at the end, the piece reaches its climax as it lays out the meaning behind the bird’s - and Price’s - song:

It is not a carol of joy or glee,
    But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings– 
I know why the caged bird sings!

It was an honor and privilege to lend my voice to Price’s music and Dunbar’s words in this 2018 concert with pianist Mark Bilyeu.  May we hear their plea ring in our ears, and may we work towards a world where this plea is less timely.

Author

Soprano Sarah van der Ploeg has been a member of Fourth Coast Ensemble since 2017. A lover of many musical styles, she came to classical singing from origins in musical theater and viola by way of arts policy, and still believes all of those pieces make a more perfect whole. Sarah particularly loves art song’s ability to tell a huge story in a compact, intimate, exciting package.