In the autumn months of 1962, Percival Price penned Four Pieces without Expression for the electric carillon keyboard at the Kirk-in-the-Hills (Presbyterian) Church in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. It was during Philip Steinhaus' tenure as Music Director that the Kirk commissioned four 'occasional' pieces, playable from the organ-side console in the sanctuary. The pieces would, inherently understood by the composer, be "without expression" by being removed from the manual clavier associated with the traditional carillon.

The first of the pieces, with sounds of Sunday morning change-ringing, offers a prelude for the arrival of churchgoers. The second reflects the somber tones of a memorial with tolling bells. The dance rhythm of the third rings out a joyous carillon postlude. The fourth evokes strains of the traditional hymn tune Vigiles et Sancti (Lasst uns erfreuen).

The manuscripts of the original presentation are exemplary of some of Professor Price's finest callgraphy. In semesters subsequent to the compostion of the Pieces without Expression, various movements were assigned to tower 'apprentices' as transcription assignments; students chose transposition keys in conference with the composer, and there were occasional editorial suggestions, not necessarily consistent from one pupil to another.

Pieces without Expression numbers 1, 2, and 3, as presented herein, are offered in two versions: reproduction of the original manuscript; and in a contemporary computer typeset edition with transpositions to facilitate manual performance. They are each of them telling in their variety and eloquence, and all the more so from an expressive tower clavier.

—Ennis Fruhauf, September 2000