Amy Beach's Song, "The Year's at the Spring" (1899)
Level of Education of Students Involved
Undergraduate
Faculty Sponsor
Dr. Katharina Uhde
College
Arts and Sciences
Discipline(s)
Music Theory, Music History
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Symposium Date
Spring 4-27-2023
Abstract
My research discusses American composer's Amy Beach’s “The year’s at the spring”, No. 1 from her Three Browning Songs, Op. 44. Anecdotal documentation claims that the first piece was composed in part on the train to Boston and that Amy Beach was inspired by the rhythmic noise of the train wheels. But the text of the song portrays an optimistic awakening of nature in the morning and a sense of trust in God ("God’s in His heaven– All’s right with the world!"). Overall, Amy Beach looked to European Western Art music with regard to style, genre choice, and text-music relationship. How does this song navigate between specific Western European influences -- such as by song composers Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann -- and the tension between the text's evocation of nature/trust in God and the composer's own words regarding "what inspired" this song? In providing a close reading, I determine that in addition to all of these present influences we find in this song the composer-musician herself: a brilliant pianist whose virtuosity and pianism influenced the accompaniments of the song.
Recommended Citation
Tyderek, Georgina, "Amy Beach's Song, "The Year's at the Spring" (1899)" (2023). Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). 1145.
https://scholar.valpo.edu/cus/1145
Biographical Information about Author(s)
Georgina Tyderek is a senior Music Education student and will be graduating in May 2023. Georgina's primary instrument is voice, and her interest in research comes from her love of studying music. One of Georgina's passions as a musician is studying female composers, so when the opportunity came to choose a research topic- Georgina knew immediately that it would be based off of a female composer.
In the past year, Georgina has studied Amy Beach's "Three Browning Songs" with poetry by Robert Browning as a performer. Now, she is studying this work from a research point of view and not only finding out how this work was developed, but how it fits in with Amy Beach's romantic style in early modern music.