Amy Marcy Cheney Beach, née Cheney (September 5, 1867 – December 27, 1944)

Amy Beach was born in Henniker, New Hampshire. 

 Coming from a musical background she developed into one of the finest musicians of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for the concerts she gave in the United States and Germany. These featured much of her own music.

In 1885, she married Henry Harris Aubrey Beach who requested that she limit her public performances. She turned instead to composition. As a result she was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her Gaelic Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman

.

After her husband's death in 1910, Beach sailed for Europe to establish her reputation as a performer and composer. She received enthusiastic reviews for recitals in Germany as well as her symphony and concerto, which were performed in Leipzig and Berlin.

She returned to the U.S. in 1914, where she would perform concerts in the winter months and compose during the summer.


At her death in 1944 she left more than 300 published works. More have been published since.


She died in December 27 1944 in New York City.




For further information

A piano accompaniment of the song.

Robert Browning was born in Walworth in Camberwell, Surrey, (now a part of Southwark, in South London.) He was baptised on 14 June 1812, at Lock's Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth.

He was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues made him an elite among the Victorian poets of his era. He was noted for irony, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax.

Some of his notable works were ‘The Pied Piper of Hamlin’, ‘Men and Women’ and ‘The Ring and the Book’.

In 1845, Browning met the poet Elizabeth Barrett. They married in 1846. Elizabeth suffered from delicate health and so the Brownings moved to Italy where their only son, (Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning) was born.



Elizabeth died in 1861, and so Robert returned to England where he continued to lived until his own death in 1889.

He died at his son's home Ca’Rezzonico, in Venice on 12 December 1889. 



He is buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.

For further information

Three Browning Songs, op. 44, from 'Bells and Pomegranates' by Robert Browning.

No 1. The Year’s at the Spring
,

The year’s at the spring,

And day’s at the morn;

Morning’s at seven;

The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d;

The lark’s on the wing;

The snail’s on the thorn;

God’s in His heaven–

All’s right with the world!

You may purchase a recording of the song from Presto Music