Saturday March 30, 2024
(Happy Birthday Vincent van Gogh, Tracy Chapman, Norah Jones, Francisco de Goya, John Astin, Warren Beatty, Eric Clapton)
*******************
THIS WEEK: “A Quiet Resolution” The Story of Amy
But, First The News!
- Thank you Ken, Theresa, and Smudge for your comments about the Picasso video (all great thoughts to ponder) and about my Art on last week’s blog entry. The feedback is MUCH appreciated ALWAYS.
And thanks, all, for the e-mails and DM’s. Please keep them coming!
• My Cape Cod talk titled “Drawn To Music, The Art of Synesthesia” is confirmed for Saturday April 13, 3 pm (with a 2 pm reception) at the South Harwich Meeting House. This will be their very first Visual Art program and pianist/composer/former Berklee colleague Wayne Naus and I are honored to be there. It’s an intimate, perfect, 200 seat setting for what we do and we are very much looking forward to it. More details will be posted here soon: https://www.southharwichmeetinghouse.com
• Lots of travels, commissions, and gigs are filling up the Spring and Summer. I’m grateful for it all and will keep you up to date here.
***********************************************************
A Quiet Resolution
As Women’s History Month winds down I bring you..Amy. THE Amy.
This piece is my (very large) portrait of her.
Portrait of Amy Beach (3ft x 6ft, pen, brush, ink, and oils on paper)
The P Word
The word “talent” is meant as a compliment (and appreciated) but it actually makes me cringe a little.
The Oxford Dictionary defines talent as “natural aptitude or skill.” But, in my opinion, the true “talent” or “gift” of any great Artist, natured or nurtured, is the discipline needed to keep going.
I’ve been fortunate to work with amazing musicians and artists my whole life and they all have this in common, without exception: perseverance.
“The Devil Made Me Do It”
It’s that rare ability to focus and to move forward without excuses (no time, no money, no support, blah, blah…) or blame (it’s my parents’/spouse’s/kid’s/boss’s/body’s/dog’s fault…).
Any excuse is a bunch of crap. Period.
The true gift is the discipline and perseverance to carry out a destiny, risks and all, no matter the abilities (or lack of) we are born with.
Where’s My Seat Warmer?
The Civil War just ended, slavery was now against the law, the President was assassinated just two years before and the United States was trying to pull its act together and be, well…united.
For better and worse, it was a time of HUGE change in the US. It was also coming into what we now refer to as “The Guilded Age.” And for some people, especially those with money, there was a lot of excitement about the future.
Changes were coming at lightning speed. Technological advances were as mind blowing as today. Like…electricity. Miraculous.
Just this year 1867, the first telephone cable in the world, a whopping 3 miles long, was installed between Boston and Somerville MA. It sounded insane to anyone living in 1867 but, someday soon, they could talk to someone in another state without going there. Magic.
Cities were growing fast, thanks to the steel and railroad industries, and the US economy became one of the strongest in world. It was the final years of the American Indian Wars and the country was settling far west toward California.
Within a lifetime, indoor plumbing would mean not having to bundle up during a snowstorm to get to the outhouse. A wonderful concept.
Aaaand…Amy
There was a lot happening. And, in a small town about 2 ½ hours north of Boston, Amy was happening.
The year was 1867 and the place was Henniker, New Hampshire.
In the female-repressed world of the early 20th century, THIS baby girl would eventually become world famous as America’s first female published composer.
Whatever Happened To “Googoo Gaga”?
Amy Marcy Cheney was recognized as a child prodigy very early on.
By age one, she was able to accurately sing forty songs and, by age two, she was able to improvise 2 or 3 melodies on the piano at the same time.
She taught herself to read music at age 3 and the following year, at age 4, she spent the summer at her grandfather’s house and composed three waltzes for piano. Without the aid of a piano. I don’t know about you but, at that age, I was obsessed with my Pinocchio Colorforms.
Amy’s mother, Clara, was an amateur singer and piano player, and her father, Charles, owned a successful paper mill, supplying paper goods all over New England. But they had their hands full with Amy. She was completely consumed with music.
I Like Chocolate Chip
Amy would even make demands about the type of music that was played at home, and be enraged if it didn’t meet her standards. And this, not the lack of her favorite cookie, was Amy’s reason for a proper temper tantrum.
But Amy’s parents did appreciate her natural abilities. They were pretty hard to ignore. As a smart young kid, Amy was home schooled by her mother but only performed within the limits of what was expected academically of a young girl back then.
“Sure, Dad.”
In the meantime Mom, thankfully, thought all of this piano and composing stuff was pretty novel so she started giving Amy piano lessons when she turned six. Amy would perform her first public recitals one year later, playing works by Handel, Beethoven, and Chopin, as well as some of her own songs.
As a few years went by, Amy’s parents had a hard time keeping up with her musical abilities and actually tried to prevent her from playing “too much piano”.
“Giving into a child’s demands damages parental authority,” they proclaimed.
But young Amy pressed on (nagged on?) and became a music teacher at age 15 while receiving one year of music theory lessons at Wellesley College.
Well beyond the novelty status of “child prodigy” at this point, Amy made her concert debut at age 18 at The Boston Music Hall, the original home of the Boston Symphony, receiving rave reviews and an offer to tour.
Of course, the ‘rents believed this was not the proper life for a young lady and wouldn’t allow her to tour. They had other plans for Amy’s life.
Enter Hank
Later that year she was married to a widower with high social status; a Boston surgeon and a Harvard University lecturer, Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach (of course, if you have great social status, you have to have more than one middle name).
Dr. Beach was also an amateur singer and he had followed Amy’s career from the time she was a child. She was now 18 years old and he was 42. Go figure.
The newlyweds moved to 28 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay, near the public gardens.
Hank Rules
Dr. Beach immediately threw down some restrictions. He insisted that his new bride stop working as a piano teacher (it was bad for his public image) and that Amy restrict her piano concerts to only two performances a year.
Also, if Amy wanted to continue her lifelong interest in music composition, she had to learn it on her own. Dr. Beach felt that her having a teacher would be ahem… “inappropriate”.
Scholars And Shrinks
Music scholars have different theories on these points. One is that Dr. Beach believed Amy’s performances would distract from her focus on composing and that formal music theory study might “inhibit her originality. “
The other side of the story is that Dr. Beach was a bit controlling and somewhat..insecure. He wanted to keep Amy in her proper place as his wife. The good old days, indeed.
A third condition from Dr. Beach might support the latter: He also required Amy to perform under the name of “Mrs. H.H.A. Beach”.
As a side note, some concert halls took this last stipulation even one step further. Often, music programs would drop the “Mrs.” from her name to disguise her gender.
The Boys’ Club
The lack of formal music studies would actually result in her making lemonade from her husband’s lemons…so to speak. She would eventually become the very first successful American composer, male or female, without a European classical education.
Despite the parent/husband restrictions and roadblocks, Mrs. H.H.A. Beach quickly gained recognition for her original compositions.
A huge break came at age 25 when her “Mass in Eb Major” was performed by Boston’s prestigious Handel and Haydn Society orchestra in their first concert featuring a female composer.
Still a young woman, Mrs. Beach had broken the “boys club” cement ceiling of classical composers. You know, the Wagners, the Puccinis…the Big Dogs.
Another First
An even bigger break came in 1896 with her “Gaelic Symphony.”
Written when she was 29 years old, it was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and later by the New York Philharmonic.
This work goes down in history as the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. You can hear it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-o2eciYbpg
More Scholars And Shrinks
It’s suggested by some music scholars that some of Amy’s music reflects her constant struggles with her husband and her mother about her career and lack of independence. But she claimed that her marriage to Dr. Beach was a happy one.
There was no mention of Mom.
Becoming Amy
Mom and Dr. Beach both died in the same year, 1910. Amy was now 43 years old and a successful American composer and pianist. She moved to Germany to be alone and to mourn.
One year later she changed her name to simply Amy Beach and started touring, playing her own compositions and became popular across Europe.
At the start of World War I in 1914, Amy returned to the US to compose and perform, including a concert at the White House for Theodore and Edith Roosevelt.
By this point, her published songs were hugely successful, this song, “Ecstacy”, was one of her biggest sellers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phrSHGGWc1s
I know, it’s no Cardi B :) but the sale from just this one song had earned Beach enough money to purchase a cottage in Centerville, Massachusetts, where she spent her summers writing.
She also spent time at the MacDowell Colony, a renowned 400-acre Arts organization and retreat located in Peterborough, New Hampshire (I’ve been there and it’s incredible).
Beach Clubs, Not Boys’ Clubs
Amy Beach moved to New York at age 58 using her fame to create an organization called "Beach Clubs" to help teach and educate children in music and further the careers of young musicians.
She continued traveling nationally and abroad and was also in demand as a public speaker and performer at colleges and concert halls. She played her last recital with the Tollefson Chamber Group at the Neighborhood Music Group in Brooklyn, New York.
Amy Beach died in New York City in 1944 at the age 77. She is buried with her husband in Forest Hills Cemetery in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. If you’re ever in the area, pay her a visit.
The Lesson From Amy?
Perseverance. That’s the true Talent.
Thanks for reading, see you next time!
Lennie
**********
Instagram.com/Lennie.Peterson.Art
Facebook.com/Lennie.Peterson
YouTube.com/@Planet-Lennie
YouTube.com/LenniePetersonFineArt