Music Literature

The Music Division's collections include scholarship on Amy Beach and related subjects. This page describes the materials available for use both on-site in the Performing Arts Reading Room and elsewhere.

Books about Beach are usually classified under ML, Music Literature, in the Library of Congress Classification Schedule. Find them by searching the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Music Literature
Writings by Beach

The Music Division's holdings include scholarly research on Beach, her music, and the world in which she lived. The following texts offer a representative sample of some of the seminal and more recent scholarly publications on her. The following titles offer a representative sample and link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Music and the Skillful Listener by Denise Von Glahn
Call Number: ML390 .V66 2013
ISBN: 9780253006622
Published/Created: 2013-04-09
For Denise Von Glahn, listening is that special quality afforded women who have been fettered for generations by the maxim "be seen and not heard." In Music and the Skillful Listener, Von Glahn explores the relationship between listening and musical composition focusing on nine American women composers inspired by the sounds of the natural world: Amy Beach, Marion Bauer, Louise Talma, Pauline Oliveros, Joan Tower, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Victoria Bond, Libby Larsen, and Emily Doolittle. Von Glahn situates "nature composing" among the larger tradition of nature writing and argues that, like their literary sisters, works of these women express deeply held spiritual and aesthetic beliefs about nature. Drawing on a wealth of archival and original source material, Von Glahn skillfully employs literary and gender studies, ecocriticism and ecomusicology, and the larger world of contemporary musicological thought to tell the stories of nine women composers who seek to understand nature through music.
Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian by Adrienne Fried Block
Call Number: ML410.B36 B56 1998
ISBN: 0195074084
Published/Created: 1998-12-17
"Block's fastidious research, together with her sympathetic mastery of the issues involved in writing a life, have yielded a lively portrait of this important musician and intriguing personality. The book is especially rich in its exploration of Beach's origins in family, community, and region, and in its ability to put her life experience into the context of America's changing cultural life."--Ruth A. Solie, Smith College
Amy Beach and Her Chamber Music by Jeanell W. Brown; E. Eugene Helm (Preface by)
Call Number: ML410.B36 B76 1994
ISBN: 0810828847
Published/Created: 1994-06-01
Follows the life of Amy Beach, a prominent composer and concert pianist. Each score and manuscript is reviewed theoretically and historically.
The Remarkable Mrs. Beach, American Composer by Walter S. Jenkins; John H. Baron (Editor)
Call Number: ML410.B36 J46 1994
ISBN: 0899900690
Published/Created: 1994-11-01
This account by Walter Jenkins, a composer in his own right, is based on archival research, a review of her correspondence, and on personal interviews with Mrs. Beach while both were in residence at the MacDowell Colony.

Beach wrote for journals, newspapers, and other publications throughout her career. The following articles, listed in chronological order, are a representative sample of Beach's publications. Find these publications by using the databases on-site to which the Library subscribes. See the "Databases and External Resources" page in this guide for more information on how to access them.

The Etude magazine, which published many of the following articles on this list, provides free access to its archive. Search by title in their database to locate the articles by Amy Beach that they published.

The Etude magazine archive External

Here is the list of publications by Amy Beach:

“Cristofori redivivus,” Music, 16/May (1899), 1–5.
“Bird Songs.” The Designer (May 1911): 7.
“Why I Chose my Profession: the Autobiography of a Woman Composer." Mother’s Magazine, 11/Feb (1914), 7–8.
“The Outlook for the Young American Composer,” The Etude, 33 (1915), 13–14.
“Music’s Ten Commandments as given for Young Composers,” Los Angeles Examiner (28 June 1915).
“Common Sense in Pianoforte Touch and Technic,” The Etude, 34 (1916), 701–702.
“To the Girl who Wants to Compose,” The Etude, 35 (1918), 695.
“Work out your own Salvation,” The Etude, 36 (1918), 11–12.
“Emotion Versus Intellect in Music,” Studies in Musical Education, History, and Aesthetics, 26 (1932), 17–19.
“The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of a Vision,” Studies in Musical Education, History, and Aesthetics, 27 (1933), 45–48.
“A Plea for Mercy,” Studies in Musical Education, History, and Aesthetics, 30 (1936), 163–165.
“Mrs. H. H. A. Beach Asks MacDowell Colony Aid.” Letter printed in The Musical Courier (April 1941).
“The Mission of the Present Day Composer,” Triangle of Mu Phi Epsilon, 36/Feb (1942), 71–72.
“How Music is Made,” Keyboard, 4 (1942), 11, 38.
“The ‘How’ of Creative Composition,” The Etude, 61 (1943), 151, 206, 208–209.
“The World Cries out for Harmony,” The Etude, 67 (1944), 11.
“Los Angeles “Fairyland” Marks an Epoch in American Music,” in H. Parker: “Fairyland” Scrapbook, US-NH.
“Music After Marriage and Motherhood.” Etude (Undated).

In addition, the following book includes an article by Amy Beach. The title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

The Music Lover's Calendar
Call Number: ML21 .M85
Published/Created: 1905
Includes Amy Beach's significant article on her own music and views, "The Uplift of Music"

Amy Beach: A Guide to Primary and Secondary Resources at the Library of Congress

Performing Arts: Ask a Librarian

Music Literature