Amy Beach

Today we celebrate the birthday of composer Amy Marcy Cheney Beach, born on this day in 1867. She grew up in New England, then settled in Boston. She was the first significant woman composer in this country, but began her career as a concert pianist in 1883. Only two years later she married Dr. H.H.A. Beach (24 years older than she), and agreed to limit her public performances to one per year, for charity. She turned to composition (a more ladylike pastime, in the doctor's opinion) and became very successful before long, publishing her works under the name of Mrs. H.H.A. Beach.

Her larger works include a symphony, the chamber opera Cabildo, the Mass in E Flat, and several extended choral works. She also wrote many art songs and chamber music pieces, as well as a number of anthems (six of them are available at the Sibley Music Library site). For many years she lived in New England in the summer, and New York City in the winter, where she became an unofficial composer-in-residence at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Park Avenue.

A comprehensive biography, Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian by Adrienne Fried Block was published in 1998. Having sung some of her music, I was interested to read it, and discovered that she wrote one hymn tune, called NORWOOD, which was published in one hymnal, Worship in Song (1943 or 1941 - references differ). The tune was used for the hymn O God of love, O King of peace by Henry Williams Baker. But I also discovered a footnote that referred to two "sketches" she sold to the editor of that hymnal some years earlier. A little detective work uncovered The Hymnal for Boys and Girls, published in 1935, which contains two more childen's hymns with tunes attributed to Beach: PETERBOROUGH and ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S (naturally). This was somewhat exciting, because the biographer had apparently not uncovered these tunes (they were not listed with Beach's other work) I suppose "sketches" is a bit vague, but I'd guess that she at least supplied the tunes, if not the full arrangements. I also had several pieces of service music by Beach published in an Episcopal collection from the early 1940s which were not listed in the biography either. By now I'd guess that they've aleady been uncovered by the biographer for a maybe-someday revised edition.

Unfortunately, all three hymn tunes are still under copyright and not available for us to hear. Worship and Song, in fact, is quite difficult to locate. I couldn't turn up any performances of her choral music online either (though some is available on CD). Someone should definitely put up their rendition of Peace I leave with you (a short but effective anthem). But here's a piano piece, Scottish Legend, from YouTube, which also includes some opening remarks about Beach.



Also, you can watch operatic tenor Jussi Bjoerling perform one of Beach's art songs, Ah, Love, but a day. I think this is from one of the Voice of Firestone programs from the 1950s. It seems a little over-the-top by modern standards, but it may actually be closer to the performance practice of Amy Beach's time.