A symphony in E minor of 1896 built on Irish and Scottish folk tunes, the first symphony published by an American woman (1896)
'Gaelic' Symphony, Op. 32 — premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on 30 October 1896
Music
Amy Beach
1867–1944 · American
Late Romantic — the Second New England School
Amy Beach was the first American woman to write and publish a symphony, and the most successful American woman composer of her generation. Largely self-taught in composition, she built her technique by translating Berlioz and Gevaert's treatises on orchestration for herself. A child prodigy as a pianist, she agreed on marriage to limit her public performances, and turned the restriction into a composing career.
How to spot them
- ▸Lush late-Romantic writing in the German manner, but with folk tunes — Gaelic, Inuit, Balkan and birdsong — woven into the themes
- ▸She published as 'Mrs. H. H. A. Beach', her husband's name, for most of her career
- ▸Questions circle two firsts: the first symphony by an American woman, and membership of the Boston-based Second New England School alongside Chadwick, Parker and Foote
- ▸She had absolute pitch, associated keys with colours, and notated birdsong from life at her New Hampshire summer home
Key works — listen
An 1892 setting of the Latin Mass in E-flat, the first work by a woman ever performed by the Handel and Haydn Society (1892)
Mass in E-flat major, Op. 5
A four-movement piano concerto in C-sharp minor of 1899, whose themes are drawn from her own songs (1899)
Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor, Op. 45 — she was the soloist at the premiere with the Boston Symphony in April 1900
A quintet for piano and strings in F-sharp minor, quoting a motif from Brahms's own piano quintet (1907)
Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor, Op. 67
Her only opera, a one-act chamber piece set in the old Spanish prison of New Orleans and first staged after her death (1932)
Cabildo, Op. 149 — premiered posthumously at the University of Georgia in 1945
A string quartet of 1929 built entirely on three Inuit melodies she found in a published ethnographic collection (1929)
String Quartet in One Movement, Op. 89
The first of three Robert Browning settings, whose opening line declares the season and finds all right with the world (1900)
The Year's at the Spring, from Three Browning Songs, Op. 44 — her most popular song, on lines from Pippa Passes
Quick-fire facts
- •She was born Amy Marcy Cheney in Henniker, New Hampshire, on 5 September 1867
- •She could sing forty tunes accurately at the age of one and had absolute pitch, associating keys with particular colours
- •She made her Boston debut as a pianist at sixteen and played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at eighteen
- •Her only formal composition training was a single year of harmony and counterpoint; she taught herself orchestration by translating Berlioz and Gevaert
- •She married Dr Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a Boston surgeon twenty-four years her senior, in 1885, and thereafter published as 'Mrs. H. H. A. Beach'
- •Her 'Gaelic' Symphony of 1896 was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman
- •She was the only woman among the Second New England School, or 'Boston Six', with Chadwick, Paine, Parker, Foote and MacDowell
- •After her husband's death in 1910 she toured Europe for four years as a pianist, playing her own works in Germany
- •She was a founder and first president of the Society of American Women Composers in 1925
- •She died in New York on 27 December 1944
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Adrienne Fried Block — Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian: The Life and Work of an American Composer
- Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press) — Beach, Amy Marcy
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Amy Beach