meet Amy Beach (1867–1944), known in her time as Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, born Amy Cheney, "Beach" being her husband's name, as American custom often still dictates.
She was the first successful American woman composer of art music, and the first, in 1896, to have a symphony premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Amy lived and worked in a world where critics—like one in Berlin—wrote of what they saw as 'a weakness, for which the feminine character furnishes ground and excuse.' Thankfully, she kept composing anyway.
She wrote "A Hermit Thrush at Eve" (comprising her Op. 92 together with "A Hermit Thrush at Morn") during her 1921 residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. The work was directly inspired by the song of the hermit thrush, a bird native to the New England forests. Beach, possessing perfect pitch, meticulously transcribed the bird's melodies as she heard them outside her studio, noting them in their original keys but an octave lower. Quite noteworthy, especially if one considers the harmony that results from this interaction between the human and the natural.
Her legacy is long overdue for a proper listen.
• A Hermit Thrush at Eve, Op. 92 No. 1
open.spotify.com/album/4TOqDXBeAf6IvXws3chkYW?si=R…
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Alberto Nones
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