Beach Gaelic Symphony

 Day 117

Beach Gaelic Symphony

Nashville Symphony Orchestra

Kenneth Schermerhorn

I haven’s heard any of Amy Beach’s work before. She was a largely self-taught American composer, born in 1867 and living through to 1944.  It is said that this was the first symphony by an American woman to be performed and published. Its subtitle the Gaelic Symphony led me to expect something rather fey and whimsical but in fact this a strong, forceful work with some impressive orchestral writing. It is written in a fairly traditional late 19th century romantic idiom - I detected some signs of César Franck and Brahms but the main influence is clearly Dvořák - a reminder of the enormous impact his music had in the USA. At one point the orchestral writing even suggested Bruckner, although I suspect that Beach can have had only minimal exposure to his work.

There are some folk elements in the melodies and to me there were the less successful parts of the work. Beach doesn’t quite have the gift to make simple melodies memorable - hers to seem to start well and then rather get nowhere. But overall it was a good piece and I am glad to have made its acquaintance. I played a symphony by Florence Price last year and there are some distinct similarities in idiom though the Price was very old fashioned by the time that it was written in 1933.