Happy (Belated) Birthday. . .
Amy Beach
This rightly should have gone up Wednesday. In defense, it made the classroom wall in time.
Finally, a quote from Adrienne Fried Block's 1998 biography of Beach. Her revealing and insightful study offers interesting perspectives on Beach's irrepresible musicality, and the context in which she existed as a developing artist:
"Amy was still four when she composed her first piano pieces while spending the summer with her grandfather in West Henniker. "[W]hen I reached home I told my mother that I had `made' three waltzes. She did not believe it at first, as there was no piano within miles of the farm. I explained that I had written them in my head, and proved it by playing them on her piano." Clara Cheney's reaction to this new achievement was to restrain displays of her own enthusiasm as well as that of others. As friends and relatives soon learned about Amy's precocious abilities at the piano and in composition, her mother went to great lengths to keep Amy's accomplishments from turning her daughter's head. She made no fuss over these waltzes, nor would she allow others to do so in the child's presence."
-- Quote sourced from the above-linked New York Times on the Web article. Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian:
The Life and Work of an American Composer 1867-1944 is published by Oxford University Press.
[x-posted to women_composers]