Florence Price: His Dream

Also available as Digital Device Download (not printable): GSP61094DGT

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For piano (edited by John Michael Cooper)

His Dream is undated but appears, on the basis of the handwriting and paper-type, to have been composed in the very late 1920s or very early 1930s. If this date is correct, then this would place it around the time that the law practice of Price's first husband, Thomas Jewell Price (1881 or 1884-1942) fell apart, and that Thomas's employment difficulties in their new home of Chicago made him increasingly moody and abusive, both verbally and physically, toward his wife; the two would separate on 10 March 1930 and their divorce would become final on 19 January 1931. That dating would also fit with the work's various titles: it began as “His Dreams or Thoughts,” and Price then added “or Back Home” before considering “The End of a Work Day.” Finally, she deleted most of these ideas and left only “His Dream” — although it cannot be determined whether she drafted these changes around the time of the work's composition or afterwards (potentially much later). At any rate, all titles would fit with the relaxed, songlike, and vaguely nostalgic tone of the outer sections (mm. 1-16, 26-45) as well as the darker, more impetuous nature of the middle section in B minor.

— John Michael Cooper