台東師院學報，民 89，11 期（下）， 171~200 頁 JOURAL OF NATIONAL TAITUNG TEACHERS COLLEGE， Vol.11-2,pp.171~ 200(2000) The Formal Organization of Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto in C-sharp Minor, Op.45 Yang,Ching-Lanã Abstract The purpose of this study is to reintroduce Amy Beach’s piano concerto to the music public and to show Beach’s contribution to American Romantic music. Furthermore, it is hoped that this study will stimulate research and performing interests in Amy Beach’s works. The study begins with a review of the related literature followed by a biographical look at Amy Beach. Critical response to the piano concerto is included. After the compositional background, the formal organization of Amy Beach’s piano concerto, which is the main focus of this study, is followed. Although the forms that Amy Beach chooses for this piano concerto are basically traditional, it is her ways of developing the thematic materials, and that connection between movements make her piano concerto very individual and representative. Keywords: Amy Beach, Piano concerto, Form. ã本校音樂教育學系副教授 -171- 台東師院學報第十一期（下） 民 89 年 12 月 The Formal Organization of Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto in C-sharp Minor, Op.45 Yang Ching-Lan INTRODUCTION Amy Beach (1867-1944) was a remarkable woman in the history of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American music. She was the first American woman to successfully compose large scale forms and to achieve recognition both in America and Europe. Her Mass in E-Flat was performed by the Boston Handel and Haydn Society in 1892; her Gaelic Symphony in E-Minor was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896. This was followed in 1899 by a piano concerto in C-Sharp minor, which was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1900 with the composer as soloist. The Piano Concerto in C-Sharp minor was dedicated to Teresa Carreño, a well-known Venezuelan pianist and close friend of Amy Beach. It is a long work in four movements with a brilliant and difficult piano part. From 1900 to 1915, Amy Beach’s concerto was frequently performed by major orchestras including Boston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Los Angeles in the United States and Berlin, Leipzig and Hamburg in Europe. After a performance by the Boston Symphony under Karl Muck in 1917, the concerto virtually disappeared from the concert stage until it was reintroduced by Mary Louise Boehm almost six decades later. The two-piano version of this concerto, as arranged by the composer, was published in 1900. While the full score and parts, which remain in manuscript, are in the Edwin Fleisher Collection in Philadelphia, only a musical organization is allowed to remove this material. Many of Beach’s works were frequently performed and published during her lifetime. However, it was Amy Beach’s Gaelic Symphony and her Piano Concerto that quickly established her international reputation. Although this piano concerto is virtually unknown today, it was favorably received by audiences and became an important vehicle for Mrs. Beach as both composer and performer. Her chamber music and many of her solo piano works have been brought to the concert stage and chosen as research topics in the past few years. The piano concerto, -172- Yang , Ching-Lan The Formal Organization of Amy Beach's Piano Concerto in C-sharp Minor, Op.45 after it was reintroduced by pianist Mary Louise Boehm in 1976, is still neglected by both performers and writers. Only one recording of this work, which was made by Mary Louise Boehm with the Westphalian Symphony Orchestra, can be found. The most recent published sources that provide more detailed information on Amy Beach’s life and works are Energy and Individuality in the Art of Anna Huntington, Sculptor, and Amy Beach, Composer 1 by Myrna Eden, Amy Beach and her Chamber Music Biography, Documents, Style2 by Jeanell Brown, and The Remarkable Mrs. Beach, American Composer3 by Walter S. Jenkins. Myrna Eden expounds upon the lives and works of Anna Huntington and Amy Beach and how they relate to the “cultivated tradition.” Through an analysis of some of Amy Beach’s works, Eden shows that Amy Beach contributed a remarkable individuality and unique energy to the cultivated tradition. Published in 1994, Jeanell Brown’s book is based on her doctoral dissertation, which was written in 1993 at the University of Maryland, College Park. Having included information from Amy Beach’s personal and business correspondence and scrapbooks, Brown presents a reliable biography of Amy Beach. Through examples from her piano music and chamber music, Brown summarizes the trademarks of Amy Beach’s writing style as well as the characteristics of her melody, harmony, rhythm, texture and form. Brown also discusses how the styles of Brahms, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and MacDowell influenced that of Amy Beach. The main focus of Brown’s work is a detailed analysis of Amy Beach’s chamber works. Walter S. Jenkin’s book, edited by John H. Baron, was published after Jenkins death in 1994. An acquaintance of Amy Beach, Jenkins was entrusted by Mrs. Lillian Buxbaum, Amy Beach’s principal heir, with Beach’s diaries, letters, newspaper clippings, and other miscellaneous documents. An analysis by Amy Beach of her Gaelic Symphony is included. One omission is to be noted in this dissertation. 1Myrna G. Eden, Energy and Individuality in the Art of Anna Huntington, Sculptor and Amy Beach, Composer. Metuchen N. J. And London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1987. 2Jeanell Brown, Amy Beach and her Chamber Music Biography, Documents, Style. Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press Inc., 1994. 3Walter S. Jenkins, The Remarkable Mrs. Beach, American Composer. Michigan: Harmonie Park Press, 1994. -173- 台東師院學報第十一期（下） 民 89 年 12 月 When Merrill discusses the cyclic form in Amy Beach’s works, he states that the Symphony, Op. 32, and the Quintet, Op. 67, are the only two instrumental works having a theme that recurs in a later movement. As will be seen in the current study on Amy Beach’s piano concerto, the tragic theme at the beginning of the third movement recurs in the last movement (mm.128-132). Therefore, this piano concerto uses cyclic form as well. Numerous articles including personal interviews, performance reviews, and reports of events about Amy Beach were written during her lifetime. However, none of the sources has a detailed discussion of her Piano Concerto. Only three articles written since Beach’s death in 1944 deal specifically with her Piano Concerto. One is “Where Was Amy Beach All These Years? An Interview with Mary Louise Boehm”by Dean Elder (Clavier, 1976). As mentioned in the introduction, Mrs. Boehm reintroduced Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto in 1976. In Elder’s article, Mrs. Boehm briefly comments on each movement of this concerto, discussing musical style and pianistic characteristics. The second article is “‘Veritable Autobiography’? Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 45” by Adrienne Fried Block (Musical Quarterly, 1994). In her essay, Block uncovers Amy Beach’s quotation of her own songs in her Piano Concerto, and discusses how the text, music, dedication and date of composition suggest extramusical meanings which could be related to Amy Beach’s life. Another article entitled “Critical Perception and the Woman Composer: The Early Reception of Piano Concertos by Clara Wieck Schumann and Amy Beach” by Claudia Macdonald (Current Musicology, 1993) was originally presented in a shorter form at the Feminist Theory and Music Conference in Minneapolis. In her research, Macdonald cites various critical reviews of Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto from the earliest performance to the latest. These reviews show us how opinions change given different times and circumstances. In addition, an outline and a basic analysis of the first movement of Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto are included. The three remaining movements are first analyzed in this paper. The Elder, Block, and Macdonald articles are all based on the two-piano version which was published during Amy Beach’s lifetime. This version later went out of print, until its republication in 1995 by -174- Yang , Ching-Lan The Formal Organization of Amy Beach's Piano Concerto in C-sharp Minor, Op.45 Hildegard Publishing Company. 4 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Amy Marcy Cheney was born in Henniker, New Hampshire on September 5, 1867, the only child of Charles Abbott Cheney and Clara Imogene Marcy, both descendants of colonial settlers. Charles Cheney, a Bates College graduate, operated a paper-importing business, which was inherited from his grandfather. Clara Cheney was a fine pianist and singer and recognized her daughter’s gifts very early. Gifted with remarkable memory and absolute pitch, Amy Beach constantly surprised her family and friends when she was a child. In a letter from Clara Cheney to her cousin Anna, Clara recalled that when Amy Beach was nearly two, she could improvise a perfectly correct alto to any soprano air Clara might sing. At the age of four, Amy could play from memory, after one hearing, every four-part hymn tune which she heard in church. And she always played them in the same key in which they were written5. She revealed talent for musical composition at the age of four. Her earliest compositions were several waltzes for piano.6 In 1871, the Cheney family moved to Chelsea, a suburb of Boston. At the age of six, Amy began piano lessons with her mother and made her first public appearance as a pianist at seven,7 She continued to compose throughout her youth. Two of her songs, The Rainy Day (1883) and With Violets (1885), were published under her maiden name. With Violets, her Op.