Author Description

Product Description Amy Beach was celebrated during her lifetime as the foremost female composer of the United States, and her writing was frequently inspired by the folk music of America and Britain. Originally for piano, her Scottish Legend evokes Scotland in its wistful melody, adorned by Scotch snaps andconveying a folk-like atmosphere, but spiced up with a few late-Romantic harmonies. Contrasts between major and minor are also used to telling effect in this gently attractive piece, sympathetically arranged for the organ by Robert Gower. About the Author Amy Beach made her debut as a pianist in 1885 with the Boston Symphony, but on her marriage later that year she retired from the concert platform and concentrated on composition-though she re-emerged to introduce her Piano Concerto in 1900, again with the Boston Symphony. Other works of this period include a large-scale Mass (1890), a 'Gaelic' Symphony (1896), a Violin Sonata (1896), and a Piano Quintet (1907). She was widowed in 1910 and resumed her performing career in Europe, where the fine quality and traditional correctness of her music caused astonishment-whether more for her sex or her nationality it is hard to say. In 1914 she returned to the USA, where she produced, among other works, a String Quartet (1929), the opera Cabildo (Athens, GA, 1932), and a Piano Trio (1938). She published her music under her married name of Mrs H. H. A. Beach. In the 1980s there was a revival of her work by feminist historians and performers.