The Prince and the Mermaid

• The Prince and the Mermaid is a suite of incidental music Still composed for a children’s play by Carol Stone.¹
  • This 1942 copyright entry for The Prince and the Mermaid lists the author as Carol Stone McMahon, that is, the same Carol Stone who appeared on Broadway and in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.
• Still wrote the music in Los Angeles² in 1965.³
• Still originally composed the suite for piano; he later adapted a version for string quartet, and one for small instrumental ensemble.⁴
• The work premiered (in its small ensemble version) on March 4, 1966, in a performance of the play at San Fernando Valley State College.⁵

Movements

1. Song of the Sea 
2. Waltz 
3. Minuet 
4. Scherzo⁶

1. Judith Anne Still, Michael J. Dabrishus, and Carolyn L. Quin, William Grant Still: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 161-2. 
2. Ibid.
3. Gayle Murchison and Catherine Parsons Smith, “Still, William Grant,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed May 13, 2022, https://oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000026776.
4. Still, Dabrishus, and Quin, William Grant Still: A Bio-Bibliography, 161.
5. Ibid., 162.
6. Ibid.