Read more
Zusatztext Block's patient reconstruction of the complex mediations that shaped Beach's career is a refreshing change from the one dimensional revisionism of some recent biographies ... painstaking reconstruction of a career suspended awkwardly between genius and conventional restraint. Informationen zum Autor Adrienne Fried Block has long been active as a speaker and writer on women and music. Women in American Music: A Bibliography of Music and Literature (1979), which she co-edited and compiled, remains a standard reference for the topic. She holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from City University of New York, in which she has taught and where she is currently Co-Director of the Project for the Study of Women in Music. Klappentext Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (1867-1944), the most widely performed composer of her generation, was the first American woman to succeed as a creator of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, given its premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first work of its kind by anAmerican woman to be performed by an American orchestra. Almost all of her more than 300 works were published soon after they were composed and performed, and today her music is finding new advocates and audiences for its energy, intensity, and sheer beauty. Yet, until now, no full-length criticalbiography of Beach's life or comprehensive critical overview of her music existed. This biography admirably fills that gap, fully examining the connections between Beach's life and work in light of social currents and dominant ideologies. Born into a musical family in Victorian times, Amy Beach started composing as a child of four and was equally gifted as a pianist. Her talent was recognized early by Boston's leading musicians, who gave her unqualified support. Although Beach believed that the life of a professional musician wasthe only life for her, her parents had raised her for marriage and a career of amateur music-making. Her response to this parental (and later spousal) opposition was to find creative ways of reaching her goal without direct confrontation. Discouraged from a full-scale concert career, she insteadfound her metier in composition. Success as a composer of art songs came early for Beach: indeed, her songs outsold those of her contemporaries. Nevertheless, she was determined to separate her work from the genteel parlor music women were writing in her day by creatinglarge-scale works--a Mass, a symphony, and chamber music--thatchallenged the accepted notion that women were incapable of creating high art. She won the respect of colleagues and the allegiance of audiences. Many who praised her work, however, considered her an exception Zusammenfassung This is a comprehensive biography of perhaps the first important American woman composer, Amy Marcy Beach. She enjoyed an international reputation in the early 20th century, especially for her symphonies. In recent years there has been a great revival of interest in her work, and many of her compositions have been performed and recorded. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1: A Prodigy's New England Upbringing 2: The Cheneys and the Marcys 3: A Prodigy Despite Her Mother 4: The Making of a Composer: I 5: Two Ways of Looking at a Marriage 6: The Making of a Composer: II 7: Becoming Mistress of Her Craft 8: Reaching Out to the World 9: "One of the Boys" 10: Amy Beach's Boston 11: The Composer at the Keyboard: Beach Plays Beach 12: "A Veritable Autobiography"?: The Piano Concerto 13: The Composer's Workshop 14: Choral Music 15: The Chambered Nautilus 16: Europe and a New Life 17: "Lion of the Hour" 18: My Old New Hampshire House 19: At the MacDowell Colony: "Solitude in Silence" 20: Caring 21: A Fascinating New York Life 22: Beach the Modernist? 23: Reckonings 24: Harvest Time Postlude: The Legacy Appendix: Catalog of Works
