Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian: The Life and Work of an American Composer, 1867-1944
"A consistently interesting biography of America's first notable female composer....Fascinating."--The New York Times Book Review"[This is a] brilliant, engaging biography....Block is the ideal voice for Amy Beach, for she writes as Beach composed: lyrically, sensitively, powerfully, passionately, and convincingly."--Joanne Polk, Professor and Director of Chamber Music and Ensembles at the Manhattan School of Music (recorded the complete solo music of Amy Beach for Arabesque Recordings)"At last! A definitive study-in-the-round of composer Amy Beach....Confirming Beach's prodigious musical gifts, this biography, an informed and revelatory feminist study...appears fortuitously at a time when Beach's music, for long a victim of the anti-Romantic bias of American musical modernism, is coming to be recognized for its integrity and expressive range." --H. Wiley Hitchcock, Distinguished Professor of Music Emeritus, City University of New York."In her thoroughly researched and eminently readable study, Ms. Block presents Beach as not merely a victim of male chauvinism but also a many-sided historical figure: a dutiful daughter and wife who happened to be aflame with musical ideas and found ways to let people know it."--David Wright,TheNew York Times"With meticulous documentation, musicologist Block tells Beach's story....Block carefully details Beach's musical prowess, her keen ambition, the advantages of her Boston surroundings, and a wealth of sheer luck to make a convincing case for Beach the 'pathfinder and model'"--National Women'sAssociation Journal