Strophic Modification in Songs by Amy Beach

Learn to employ as much variety in form as possible. Above all things, avoid becoming stereotyped in expressions of melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic ideas.Amy Beach(1)[1] In addition to her numerous chamber works and her famous larger works, such as the Gaelic Symphony (1897) and the Mass (1890), American composer and pianist Amy Beach (1867-1944) composed well over one hundred art songs, which have received scant analytic attention in mainstream music-theoretic discourse.(2) Stylistically, most of her published songs draw upon rich chromaticism that recalls the style of late Romantic German Lieder. Furthermore, many of Beach's songs exhibit high levels of emotion, long vocal melodies, and artistic accompaniments. For these reasons, Adrienne Fried Block argues, "Beach's songs deserve a permanent place in the vocal repertory" (1998, 158). I would argue that they also deserve a permanent place in the music-analytical repertory.[2] The formal designs of Beach's songs are particularly compelling, often featuring hybrid structures that fuse principles of modified strophic form with other formal schemes. Jeanell Wise Brown observes the difficulty of categorizing the forms of Beach's music, especially her songs written before 1899, due to "the multiplicity of melodic ideas. . . and lack of well-defined sections" (1994, 161-62). In addition, Sharon Llewellyn argues, "The strophic and modified strophic often push the envelope of form as Beach increasingly varies the original melody with each return" (2008, 209). In fact, out of 111 published songs by Beach that I have examined, just two use simple strophic designs, three resemble rounded binary, and only one is a straightforward ABA[variant prime] structure.(3) More common are hybrid designs that rely on some degree of strophic or sectional modification. The purpose of this article is to explore formal deviations in Beach's art songs and seek new ways to understand form in this genre. To this end, I offer a model for interpreting song form that situates songs based on the nature of recurring material, from strophic (maximal recurring material) to through-composed (minimal recurring material). The model is most useful for understanding song forms that lie in between standard formal categories rather than those that lie squarely within one.[3] The interpretive model and the analyses that follow are motivated by the following questions: How can analysts deal with the grey areas between an extensively modified strophic form and a through-composed design, or between strophic and other formal designs? In what ways might listeners understand formal modifications in Beach's songs? To what degree must musical material be altered before listeners are likely to hear it as something new rather than a varied restatement? Finally, how do Beach's formal modifications interrelate with the song texts?[4] After describing the analytical model, I will explore these questions in five representative songs from Beach's output published over a span of 25 years, with forms that range from relatively straightforward strophic modifications to more complex ones. "Within Thy Heart" (op. 29, no. 1) and "Forgotten" (op. 41, no. 3) demonstrate additions to and replacements of strophic material. The focal analysis of "Ah, Love, but a Day!" (op. 44, no. 2) highlights complex principles of strophic modification. Finally, analyses of "Sweetheart, Sigh No More" (op. 14, no. 3) and "Wind o' the Westland" (op. 77, no. 2) briefly explore blurred boundaries and quasi-parallel constructions within sectional formal designs.A Model for Interpreting Song Form[5] Classifying hybrid forms can be complicated. This is not a new issue in song analysis. Edward Kravitt writes, "[The late romantics] tended to vary strophes freely with respect to length and contour, so lavishly, at times, that the underlying strophic design is disguised" (1996, 202). He argues further that composers of the nineteenth century "imparted new meaning to repetition; for them it is continuous progression rather than a return to the beginning simply to recommence. …