Price: First Romance

Description

For piano (edited by John Michael Cooper)

Although this manuscript for First Romance is undated and severely water damaged, the heavy, boxy script contrasts with the fine, gracefully slanted script in Price's manuscripts from the 1930s and early 1940s, suggesting that it dates from the last years of her creative life — ca. 1949-52. Stylistically the work is related to Price's two Songs without Words and to that genre as a whole: it is cast in a clear ternary form, and throughout it features a single, songlike melodic line, trading this line off between the soprano and baritone or bass registers. To that artfully understated simplicity the work owes its tender expression, a tone that is at once charming and poignant.

— John Michael Cooper