24-25 Program Book - Flipbook - Page 53
Symphony in E minor, Op. 32 ("Gaelic”) (1894)
AMY MARCY CHENEY BEACH
(September 5, 1867-December 27, 1944)
Amy Beach was the first successful American female
composer of large-scale art music, and one of
the first American composers, male or female, to
succeed without the benefit of European training.
She published over 300 works during her lifetime,
including almost every genre. She was also a virtuoso
pianist and toured extensively in Germany and
America. She was born in Henniker, New Hampshire,
and was a child prodigy. In 1875, her family moved
to the Boston area so she could study piano and
composition. She made her piano debut in 1883
which led to several performing opportunities,
including a performance with the Boston Symphony
in 1885.
Amy was 18 years old when she married Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a Boston
surgeon and amateur singer twenty-four years her senior. She lived with cultural
restrictions similar to those experienced by other talented women such as Fanny
Mendelssohn. She agreed never to teach piano, to limit performances (with
profits donated to charity), and to devote herself more to composition than to
performance. Her self-guided education in composition was also necessitated by
her husband’s reluctance for his wife to study with a tutor. She did remember her
life as happy, however, and achieved success within these restrictions.
As a composer, Beach was influenced by Antonín Dvořák. When he visited America
1892-1895, Dvořák suggested that the roots of American music were represented
best in Native-American and African-American music. Beach disagreed, however,
suggesting that American composers “should be far more likely to be influenced by
old English, Scotch or Irish songs, inherited with our literature from our ancestors.”
These songs served as the primary inspiration for her “Gaelic” Symphony, the first
symphony composed and published by an American woman. It was premiered
October 30, 1896, by the Boston Symphony. The orchestral sound is clearly
influenced by the mainstream Romanticism of the previous generation in Europe,
but there is additional edge which lends excitement to the music as it develops.
The symphony begins with a chromatic rumble in the strings as if the sea is
turbulent and the wind is swirling. An energetic first theme based on the folksong
“Dark is the Night” adds to the drama and symbolism. A lush contrasting theme, an
Irish tune called “Conehobhar,” follows. The movement ebbs and flows between
the two themes with a variety of solos distributed to the winds and brass, ending
with an exciting build to a final section of fanfares and flourishes.
CLASSICAL SERIES GAELIC CELEBRATION 53
