CHAPTER 8 | THE SECOND NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL 187
tunes” and fancied that the work was set in an American farmhouse. A lively
pentatonic melody resembles the refrain of Foster’s “Camptown Races,” and a
slower section uses a Cuban habanera rhythm in the accompaniment.
But to say that Chadwick created an American symphonic style implies that
other concert hall composers followed his lead, which none actually did. The
faith in edifi cation that ruled the concert hall, together with the notion that
artistically serious music ought to be grave and dignifi ed, were not, in the long
run, in accord with Chadwick’s personal approach. Could the standard Old World
forms accommodate a more playful American mode of orchestral expression?
Or did such music risk trivializing Americans’ quest to fi nd an honored place
among the world’s musical nations? In the thinking of most of Chadwick’s
contemporaries, the answers were no and yes, respectively.
Eventually, though, the American style Chadwick helped to invent found its
niche. The leaders of the Holly wood fi lm industry probably had little idea who
George W. Chadwick was when fi lms were outfi tted with orchestral scores—fi rst
w ith live orchestras accompany ing silent fi lms, then, beginning in the late 1920s,
with recorded soundtracks (see chapter 15). But they chose a musical style close
to that of Chadwick’s Symphonic Sketches and his Second Symphony: rooted in
German Romanticism, tuneful in his Yankee manner, colorfully written for the
instruments, and easily accessible to a general audience.AMY BEACH AND AMERICAN MUSICAL DEMOCRACY
Amy Marcy Cheney was born in 1867 in West Henniker, New Hampshire. It
did not take long for her mother, an accomplished pianist, to discover Amy’s
talent for music. Before she was two, the child was improvising harmony to
Mrs. Cheney’s lullaby. But she was determined not to push her daughter into
music nor to exploit the child’s talent in public. When she fi nally began giving
Amy piano lessons at six, progress was swift, and before long the young girl was
studying with a respected piano teacher in Boston. In 1883, at sixteen, she made
her public debut, and two years later played a Chopin concerto with the Boston
Symphony Orchestra. In the same year, 1885, she married Dr. Henry H. A. Beach,
a forty-two-year-old widower, physician, and amateur musician. And for the
next twenty-fi ve years she lived an active, well-rounded musical life centered in
Boston.
Beach had been writing music since she was four, and in her early teens she had
taken a year’s worth of lessons in harmony and counterpoint from a local teacher.
As a woman in the nineteenth century, she found avenues for more formal study
closed to her, so she acquired scores and books and taught herself to compose. After
her marriage, she concentrated more on composition, though she still sometimes
played in public. Beach composed well into her seventies, writing many songs and
keyboard works, choral pieces, some chamber music, a piano concerto, a sym-
phony, and even an opera. In 1895 her mother, always Beach’s main musical adviser,
moved in with the childless couple after Amy’s father died, taking over household
chores and leaving Beach free to compose.
Beach’s settled life in Boston ended when her husband died in 1910, followed
by her mother early the next year. In the fall of 1911, at age forty-four, she seized an
independence she had never enjoyed before: she sailed for Europe, hired a manager,
and began to play more often in public. After World War I forced her return to the172028_08_183-204_r3_ko.indd 187 23/01/13 10:24 AM