Price: Memory Mist

Description

Memory Mist typifies Price's gift for combining succinctness with musical pith: it is only fifty-two bars long and lasts just over three minutes, but the wealth of imagination and emotional range in that short expanse of music is remarkable. The tranquil lyricism, blues-influenced harmonies, and rich but delicate dissonances of the A section in E-flat Major (mm. 1-24 and 41-52) contrast with the greater urgency and sparser call-and-response textures of the B section in the parallel Minor. The rhythmic language of the two sections likewise contrasts. Yet despite these contrasts there are also connections: the chromatic descents woven into the harmonic fabric in mm. 11-15 anticipate the chromatically descending line from D-flat to G-flat in mm. 25-29, and the responding chords in the right hand in mm. 33-36 subtly recall the main theme of the surrounding A sections. It is tempting to imagine that these wispy recollections and anticipations account for the otherwise somewhat cryptic title Memory Mist , but the phrase may alternatively derive from the fact that when Price wrote the piece she was sixty-two, in a season of life where memory, for many, is enfolded in mist. in any event the composition is compact and deliciously evocative — a musical distillation of engagingly cryptic title and traditional form combined with blues-influenced harmony and African-American-influenced texture.

— John Michael Cooper