Florence B. Price, Piano Sonata in E minor (1932) (2024)

Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music, 1900–1960

Laurel Parsons (ed.), Brenda Ravenscroft (ed.)

Published:

2022

Online ISBN:

9780190237011

Print ISBN:

9780190236984

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Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music, 1900–1960

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Horace J. Maxile

Horace J. Maxile

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Pages

137–163

  • Published:

    August 2022

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Maxile, Horace J., 'Florence B. Price, Piano Sonata in E minor (1932)', in Laurel Parsons, and Brenda Ravenscroft (eds), Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music, 1900–1960 (New York, 2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 18 Aug. 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190236984.003.0006, accessed 13 Oct. 2024.

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Abstract

The first movement of Florence Price’s Piano Sonata in E minor (1932) highlights a strong sense of conventional form while exploring the possibilities of thematic material based on Black musical emblems. The melodies feature syncopations, modal inflections, and pentatonic collections. These features, among others, signify a distinctive vernacular presence, and yet her penchant for neo-Romanticism, replete with intriguing chromatic excursions, denotes an undeniable western European influence. This essay investigates the interactions of Price’s use of Black folk elements within the prevailingly learned style of the sonata’s first movement. Because of the cultural potency and historical bearing of Black vernacular emblems, ideas and approaches to musical signification and meaning are particularly viable in this analytical reading. Thus, her use of such emblems not only offers effective surface-level subtleties, but also poses veritable signifiers that affect the formal and expressive trajectories of the work.

Keywords: Florence Price, musical signification, Black composers, African American composers, sonata form

Subject

Musicology and Music History Music Theory and Analysis

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Horace J. Maxile, Jr., “Culture and Craft in Florence Price’s Piano Sonata in E minor (First Movement).” In: Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music, 1900–1960. Edited by: Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190236984.003.0006

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