Acknowledgments
Editing the Cambridge Companion to Amy Beach has been a joy and a privilege because of the dedication of the contributors. Each of them approached the task with enthusiasm for the subject and flexibility when challenges arose. They each brought unique perspectives and disciplinary orientations to their assigned topics, resulting in essays that are uniquely suited to the varied aspects of Beach’s long and fruitful career. I am also grateful to Kate Brett and her colleagues at Cambridge University Press for supporting this project and seeing it to completion in a professional manner.
All of us who value the music of Amy Beach are indebted to the research pioneers who make our work possible. Adrienne Fried Block’s numerous writings, especially her award-winning biography, Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian (1998), established the scholarly foundation on which this study rests. Barbara White and William Ross of the University of New Hampshire’s Milne Special Collections Library created a peerless collection of archival source materials for us to consult. The list of new recordings of Beach’s music grows each year, owing in equal part to dedicated performers and receptive record companies.
I am grateful to Elizabethtown College for several sources of funding. A faculty grant supported research visits to New Hampshire in 2021 and 2022 as well as numerous day trips to the Library of Congress. The college’s Summer Creative Arts and Research Program (SCARP) was crucial in completing the manuscript preparation in summer 2022. Amaris Wolfe, the SCARP recipient, was very helpful in a variety of tasks from database searching to proofreading. She demonstrated a special skill in preparing musical examples. My colleagues and students in the music department have afforded many opportunities to present my findings in seminars as well as to perform Beach’s works in campus concerts.
This book was written under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, and the research has made us grateful for the printed music and secondary literature available online or through interlibrary loan but also acutely aware that many important documents relating to Beach and her music are available only as archival sources. We are deeply indebted to Robin Rausch, Paul Sommerfeld, and their colleagues at the Library of Congress Music Division, along with Bill Ross at the Milne Special Collections Library at the University of New Hampshire, for fielding questions during the shutdown and for allowing us to visit their research collections as early as possible in the summer of 2021. We must also acknowledge that without the heroic work of health care workers in our communities and research scientists at pharmaceutical companies, we would not have been able to enjoy this window of availability.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge that the reason for my ongoing interest in and advocacy for Amy Beach has always been her compelling music. I thank Marmaduke Miles, whose recital of Beach’s solo piano works in the University of North Carolina’s Hill Hall ignited a flame that has burned ever since. I am grateful to my piano teachers, including Marvin Blickenstaff and Bradford Gowen, who coached me on Beach works that were previously unfamiliar to them but related to the Romantic piano literature they knew. I appreciate the willingness of my piano students, particularly Anthony Beer and Sarah Palatnik, to immerse themselves in Beach’s works and perform them publicly. I am grateful to David Sariti and Emily Derstine, who helped me internalize the Violin Sonata through their performances with me. Most importantly, I cannot express enough gratitude to my wife, soprano Teresa Bomberger, whose countless performances of Beach’s solo songs have given me insights into the beauties of this music that are only matched by her insightful critiques of my attempts to express those beauties in writing.
