Florence Price: Waltzing on a Sunbeam

For piano (edited by John Michael Cooper).

Waltzing on a Sunbeam is apparently the latest compositional product of Florence B. Price's lifelong love of waltzes. (The earliest is the Valsette mignon, composed in 1926.) The autograph is undated, but the handwriting clearly places it in the company of other works that are dated and were written between 1949 and 1952. It is also atypical in other ways — it is the only of Price's waltzes to dispense with both introduction and coda, and the one whose harmonic language is most advanced: chord progressions such as that in mm. 88-91, which ensconces a section in D major within a framing section in E-flat major (a bold harmonic move in itself) are rare in Price's waltzes as in others'. But these products of Price's unflaggingly original musical imagination cohabitate with the delicate compound melody in mm. 10 and 60, the playful exchanges between the hands in mm. 66-69, and the sparkling grace of the upper-register writing in mm. 106-109 to bring a remarkable stylistic elegance and richness to Waltzing on a Sunbeam.

— John Michael Cooper