AMY BEACH and THE “GAELIC” SYMPHONY (Part 3 of 9)

Posted on October 7, 2019

Dr. and Mrs. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham.

PYP performed Amy Beach‘s Gaelic Symphony on Saturday, November 9, 2019, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Click here to watch our performance.

Amy the composer, part 2

Perhaps because of the gender-based response she got from some reviewers for her Mass, even with only that one major work to... Read More ›

AMY BEACH and THE “GAELIC” SYMPHONY (Part 4 of 9)

Posted on October 6, 2019

Maud Powell, from the cover of the biography by Karen Shaffer, and Amy Beach, around 1914, courtesy Library of Congress; with a handwritten dedication to Maud Powell.

PYP performed Amy Beach‘s Gaelic Symphony on Saturday, November 9, 2019, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Click here to watch our performance.

Amy and her contemporaries part 1

As Beach’s rebuttal to Dvorak’s “ladies” comment attests, Amy Beach... Read More ›

AMY BEACH and THE “GAELIC” SYMPHONY (Part 5 of 9)

Posted on October 5, 2019

Florence Price, Mary V. Dodge

PYP performed Amy Beach‘s Gaelic Symphony on Saturday, November 9, 2019, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Click here to watch our performance.

Amy and her contemporaries part 2

Florence Price (her maiden name was Smith) was born twenty very significant years later, in a then-racially integrated community in Little Rock, Arkansas, the same one where William Grant Still grew... Read More ›

AMY BEACH and THE “GAELIC” SYMPHONY (Part 6 of 9)

Posted on October 4, 2019

Amy Beach, n.d., courtesy Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham.

PYP performed Amy Beach‘s Gaelic Symphony on Saturday, November 9, 2019, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Click here to watch our performance.

The “Gaelic” Part 1

Beach wrote her only symphony, considered by many to be the first great American symphony, at a turning point in American art music development.  One traditional reading... Read More ›

AMY BEACH and THE “GAELIC” SYMPHONY (Part 7 of 9)

Posted on October 3, 2019

PYP performed Amy Beach‘s Gaelic Symphony on Saturday, November 9, 2019, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Click here to watch our performance.

The “Gaelic” Part 2

Given that Beach’s next major work did indeed deploy old Irish folk songs, it’s easy to see why critics have assumed the “Gaelic” was written entirely in response to this debate.  The several aspects of form that the “Gaelic” has in... Read More ›

AMY BEACH and THE “GAELIC” SYMPHONY (Part 8 of 9)

Posted on October 2, 2019

Amy Beach and friends, around 1912, in Europe. Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham.

PYP performed Amy Beach‘s Gaelic Symphony on Saturday, November 9, 2019, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Click here to watch our performance.

Performance History of the “Gaelic”

The premiere performance – actually, even the *dress rehearsal* — of the “Gaelic” by the Boston Symphony, under Emil Paur, to whom Beach... Read More ›