Beach: Songs

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Cat No: 8559191

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Release Date: 01 June 2004

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 636943919125

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: BEACH

Description
Amy Beach (1867-1944): SongsBorn Amy Marcy Cheney in Henniker, New Hampshire, Beach wasone of America's most prolific and successful composers. She was also one ofthe first women whose musical compositions were as highly regarded as thoseproduced by men. While she composed works in almost every genre, she was bestknown during her lifetime for her well-crafted songs and short piano pieces,many of which were an important part of the standard recital repertoire of thetime. After beginning a concert career as a pianist at the age of sixteen, shetemporarily ended her performing aspirations at eighteen when she married theBoston surgeon Dr Henry Harris Aubrey Beach (1843-1910). Her married years wereher most prolific period of compositional activity.Following the deaths of her husband and mother in 1910 and1911, Beach sailed to Europe, where she expanded her reputation as a performerand composer. She gave concertsthroughout Germany, performing many of her instrumental works and introducingsome of her songs to German audiences.Beach returned to the United States in 1914, making New YorkCity her home. She spent each concert season performing and promoting her worksthroughout North America. Beginning in 1921, she did most of her composing inthe summer as a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, an artists' retreat inPeterborough, New Hampshire. Her active membership at Saint Bartholomew'sEpiscopal Church in New York City inspired her to compose sacred music.Highly intelligent, Beach incorporated her varied interestsand experiences into her compositions. Largely self-taught in composition, shewas the first American woman musician to receive all of her training in theUnited States and to write in the larger forms. Her work has always beenevaluated by critics on the basis of its merit and her intellect, while hertalent for composition has consistently been acknowledged. She is atransitional figure between the composers of the Second New England School,which includes Horatio Parker and Edward MacDowell, and later American songcomposers such as Charles Ives. In contrast to other American composers of thetime, Beach achieved recognition in both the United States and abroad.Beach's 117 art songs show skillful craftsmanship andprofound understanding of text. She composed in a late-Romantic idiomthroughout her life, often patterning her songs after works by Europeancomposers. She also experimented with musical styles as diverse as Scottishfolk-songs and African-American spirituals. Her songs are of a very hightechnical and musical merit, intended to be sung by trained musicians. Many ofthem were dedicated to prominent singers, who performed them and used them inteaching. She believed that a good song is an inspired, creative, musicalresponse to a text, which incorporates both intellect and emotion. The poetrythat she set to music reflected the dominant artistic current of the time, inwhich art was seen as an expression of the highest idealism. Her eclectic tastein
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