Classical Music: Revisiting Composer Amy Beach’s Mass

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Great Mass in E flat major

Saturday, April 27, 7:30 p.m.

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Spirit of the Pacific United Church

2195 West 45th Ave., Vancouver

vancouvercantatasingers.com

Vancouver Cantata Singers enjoy the paradoxical pleasure of presenting something old, an important composition written more than a century ago, that will be completely new to Vancouver’s many choral fans. Later this month, they will join members of the Allegra Chamber Orchestra to perform the Great Mass in E flat major by Amy Cheney Beach (1867-1944). This is certainly the first time the work has been done here in Vancouver and most likely the first time in Canada.

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Who was Amy Beach? As Mrs. HHA Beach, she was known as a composer and pianist in her day, those long-ago days when respectable women adopted their husbands’ surnames in public. She received a private education and had the beginnings of a budding career before marrying Boston surgeon Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach. He was 42 years old, while she was 18. Dr. Beach did not prohibit musical activity, but he restricted his girlfriend to no more than two public performances a year, otherwise dedicating herself to the roles of society matron and patron of the arts.

Amy Cheney Beach, as we call her now, was quite happy with her status in society, but she saw no reason to abandon music. In 1892, her Mass was premiered, to excellent reviews by the distinguished Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, and her reputation was secured for a time, at least on the American stage. In the early decades of the 20th century, her music, firmly created in the tradition of late romanticism, was seen as increasingly unfashionable, as was the work of another female composer duo, Cécile Chaminade (1857-944) and Ethel Smyth. (1858-944). 1944). To be fair, the music of the other Boston classicists (all men) did not fare much better, as new generations of composers wanted to distance themselves from the Romantic era.

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Given the growing interest in rediscovering and reevaluating music written by women in earlier eras, it’s time to dust off the Mass. An edition of the work has been published, and the Mass has the potential to join the rather short list of what is choral. people call “grandes cantos,” attractive works designed for choral societies, like a grand project with orchestra.

Cantata Singers’ musical director Paula Kremer, who has a broad view of the vocal repertoire, recently became interested in the Mass. One small problem: Mrs. Beech’s concept was not just serious, but large-scale, combining soloists, a large choir, and a full-size orchestra. Although Cantata Singers has special funding to stage the piece, it was obvious that a 30-voice ensemble would not work against full orchestral forces.

Upon learning that a movement of the Mass had been arranged for string quartet and choir, Kremer asked associate artistic director Dave Rosborough to reintroduce the orchestral parts for chamber orchestra, reinforcing a somewhat insubstantial organ part with materials originally intended for heavy metals. It is a pragmatic solution: the choral community will be able to hear a long-forgotten work with reduced but complementary forces.

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Kremer explains: “I have had the beach on my mind for quite some time and I am delighted that we can now present this fascinating work, full of charm, drama, exuberance and sensitivity. Has it all!” And he adds: “There are moments that seem to belong on the soundtrack of a Spielberg film or the overture of a tragic opera.”

In short, it is an ambitious, grandiose and serious work by a young composer. “There are moments of sublime spiritual depth, like the tenor soloist’s statement ‘Sanctus’ that appears out of nowhere after an English horn introduction; or the choice he made to set the amazement of ‘et incarnatus est’ only with solo soprano and organ,” says Kremer. “Add some harp cadenzas, a fugue, a robust Gloria that seems to travel to every possible key and some absolutely delightful orchestral writing with instrumentation and dialogue between parts – this is truly a great work.”

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