A Reminiscence of Beethoven in Some Music of Florence Price

In the 2007 book Black Women and Music: More than the Blues, edited by Eileen M. Hayes and Linda F. Williams (University of Illinois Press), Teresa L. Reed contributed a chapter called “Black Women and Art Music.” On page 191, while Reed is discussing the life and music of Florence Price (1887–1953), she writes "[t]he first movement of [Price's] piano Sonata in E Minor, for example, is a conservative rendering of sonata-allegro form. Its introductory bars are even mildly reminiscent of the opening measures to Beethoven's Pathetíque [sic] Sonata [in C Minor]."

Although both opening movements begin with a slow introduction (10 measures in Beethoven's movement, 12 measures in Price's movement) and the opening measures of these introductions enjoy a little mutual resemblance, the beginning of the two movements' Allegro sections are more alike and are probably the measures to which Reed refers.

I have provided the first seventeen measures of both below, with some color-coded annotations that point out similarities beyond the most obvious (tempo, cut time, etc.). I modified the Breitkopf und Härtel edition of Beethoven's movement so that the number of measures in each system is the same as in the Price, to allow for easier comparison. Most annotations, perhaps all, are self-explanatory. One that is perhaps not is the area shaded in blue toward the end of each of the first two systems. This highlights when the second system departs from an exact repetition of the first by staying on a half-note harmony for twice the duration. This extension pushes the predominant (PD) --> dominant (D) progression later in time by a half measure, altering the metrical position in which the music arrives on the dominant, which sets up two contrasting phrase-ending experiences.

I will leave it to the reader to decide how mild the reminiscence is.