Beach: Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23

The Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23, by Amy Beach (1867–1944) was composed in 1893 and given its first performance the same year by its dedicatee, the American violinist Maud Powell, with the composer at the piano. The Romance is a relatively early work by Beach, but by the time of its composition, she had already achieved notable success as a pianist, and was beginning to make her mark as a composer.

Introduction

Beach apparently thought of herself as “a pianist first and foremost,” but after her marriage to a Boston surgeon in 1885, she limited her performances to two a year (the profits going to charity), and devoted herself mainly to composition. It was only after her husband’s death, in 1910, that she resumed her concert career—a career that included well-received European recitals.

The stylistic profile of her music is best characterized as “late Romantic,” with notable affinities to the music of Johannes Brahms (1833–1897). The Romance is entirely characteristic of this style. As the title suggests, it is a short, lyrical composition in the tradition of standalone romances composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Antonín Dvořák. Its fluent, continuously unfolding melody radiates warmth and tenderness, but also builds towards climactic moments of soaring, expressive intensity.

History

The work was premiered at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago—a major cultural event, designed to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. The audience at the premiere demanded an immediate encore.

This performance came right on the cusp of Amy Beach’s wider recognition as a composer. A year previously (1892), her Mass in E-flat major had attracted favorable notice in the press, and three years later (1896), her “Gaelic” Symphony was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra “with exceptional success” (according to musicologist Nicolas Slominsky), although its early reception by the press was lukewarm (largely due to sexism). In due course, she was included in a cohort of six American composers who came to prominence in the late 19th century. They were soon labeled the “Boston Six,” and later came to be known as the “Second New England School.” Immediately after the premiere of the “Gaelic” Symphony, George Chadwick (1854–1931), a key member of the group, famously wrote to Beach that she would “have to be counted… one of the boys.” With the exception of Beach, who was largely self-taught, these composers had all undertaken studies in Europe, and did not—at least not in any very obvious way—seek a uniquely American musical voice.

Beach: Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23

Form

Compared to the Mass and the “Gaelic” Symphony, the Romance is a work of modest ambition, but it stands proudly as a perfectly executed, beautifully finessed miniature. Commentators have described the piece’s form as ternary (in three sections, A–B–A), but this description needs to be nuanced. There is an important distinction to be made between a “true” A–B–A form, which is characterized by contrasting components (as the descriptor A–B–A suggests), and one in which the middle section presents only an intensification of the A material. This Romance falls into the second category, and it is perhaps easiest to understand its form as a single impulse of departure and return—achieved, moreover, without resort to significant thematic contrast (somewhat in the manner of the Baroque era’s single-theme forms). There is indeed a moment of return, both harmonically and thematically, but this is subordinated to the continuous rise and fall of the work’s intensity. It is the unerring control of this intensity curve that establishes the Romance as a Romantic masterpiece.

Analysis

Although a single theme unfolds throughout the piece in a seemingly unbroken flow, it does so in distinct, incremental stages. In the piano introduction, the opening phrase of the theme is unveiled. Then, the home key of A-major firmly established, the violin presents the main theme in its complete form as an accompanied song which is then interwoven with expressive countermelodies in the piano. This entire opening paragraph is shaped by a beautifully crafted arc of melody whose high point is finally allowed to subside into the key of E major. The theme is then fragmented and taken in new directions to form an extended, multipart, harmonically mobile development section, complete with sequences of notes modulating between keys. In this section, the flow is interrupted by the only real moment of discontinuity in the work: an improvisatory passage (marked “agitato”) that takes us to yet another climactic peak, before ushering in the reprise. Here, the theme is given a new look. Partly it is a matter of texture, with a pulsating chordal accompaniment in the upper register of the piano. But when the melody is transferred to the piano (accompanied by violin trills), it also acquires a new rhythmic profile, and this generates the momentum that makes possible what Serge Rachmaninoff liked to call “le point”—that moment of maximum intensity towards which the music strives. Once more, the passion is stilled, yielding to the tranquility and composure of an extended coda.

Critical Thoughts

It is not so long ago that the claims of an avant-garde—a progressive music spearheading us into the future—were made on behalf of our entire culture; anything beyond the modernist citadel lacked the stamp of an authentic art. Today, we are not quite so anxious to dismiss as derivative works that hone to perfection an idiom well-established elsewhere. As a result, much of the opulent, late Romantic repertory—including music by Amy Beach—has been rehabilitated in recent years. The same goes for the imperative to create a distinctively national music, now that the aesthetic of Romantic nationalism has largely run its course. There is a place for the avant-garde nationalist Charles Ives. And there is a place for the Romantic Amy Beach.

A more insidious issue is the gender bias that led to the neglect of women composers—not just in the 19th century, but for much of the 20th (and beyond). It is noteworthy that for most of Beach’s life, her compositions went under the name “Mrs. H. H. A Beach.” It was a question of perceived social propriety, and while such constraints were by no means unique to Boston, they were perhaps especially germane to the so-called “Boston Brahmins” (as the writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. described the social and cultural elite of that city).

Legacy

Gender bias also has a bearing on the performance history of the Romance. Following its first performance, the piece was largely neglected, and it went out of print after Beach’s death, becoming a decided rarity in the concert halls of Europe and the US for almost the entire 20th century. In our own time, however, the Romance has been reclaimed, and is now a prominent component of the standard repertory. It has been transcribed for violin and orchestra, and also for instruments other than the violin. Moreover, while it is by no means without technical challenges, it is within the reach of good amateur performers, and regularly taught in music conservatories.

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Article by Jim Samson