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Chamber music
Of the over 300 works by Amy Beach which were published during her lifetime and included almost every genre, the largest category is her art songs and vocal chamber music. Beyond these, she wrote many chamber works and transcriptions for piano, including Variations on Balkan Themes, Beach's "longest and most important solo" piano work, which was composed in 1904, in response to revolts in the Balkans against the then ruling Ottoman Empire. Twelve are instrumental chamber works. One notable aspect of Beach's musicianship was her role as a virtuoso pianist, in which she regularly performed both her own compositions and those of others. She toured extensively in Germany, New England, and all the way to the Pacific Coast, where she brought European-American concert music to the western states. Among two of Beach's most frequently performed instrumental works are the Sonata in A Minor for Piano and Violin, Op. 34 and the Quintet in F# minor, Op. 67, as both were programmed extensively in the United States and Germany. Another noteworthy work which illustrates Beach's skill and adherence to tradition as a composer is her String Quartet, Op. 89.

Sonata in A Minor for Piano and Violin, Op. 34.
In January 1897 Beach played, with Franz Kneisel, in the premiere of her Sonata for Piano and Violin, Op. 34, which she had composed in the spring of 1896. Franz Kneisel was a leading violinist in Boston and beyond, having been hired at about age 20 by Wilhelm Gericke, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as concertmaster of the orchestra. Soon after arriving in Boston, he formed the Kneisel String Quartet with three other string players of the Boston Symphony. (The Quartet lasted until 1917. Meanwhile, Kneisel moved to New York in 1905.) In 1894 Beach had joined the quartet in performing Robert Schumann's Pano Quintet in E-flat, Op. 44. The Sonata is written in four movements, which are interconnected musically by using the first movement's opening theme as a germinating source to be developed on in the following three. They are thoroughly crafted to follow conventions of the form while implementing each musical element in a precise and well-constructed way.

The premiere was quickly followed by several other recital performances of the piece in various New York cities, where critical reception was mixed; some reviewers described the piece as immature and lacking in substance, although they acknowledged her skillful use of contrapuntal movement and affective principal themes. The third movement, Largo con dolore, was the most controversial among critics, with some praising its beauty and passionately evocative nature, while others derided its length as being too far extended and monotonous. Audiences, however, were captivated and spellbound by the slow movement; at one performance it was reported that they broke out into enthusiastic applause in between the third and fourth movements out of an abundance of emotion. In Europe, the piece was generally well-received. Composer and pianist Teresa Carreño performed the piece with violinist Carl Halir in Berlin, October 1899 and wrote to Beach:"I assure you that I never had a greater pleasure in my life than the one I had in working out your beautiful sonata and having the good luck to bring it before the German public...(I)t really met with a decided success and this is said to the credit of the public."Reviewers in Berlin were fairly positive in their response to the Sonata, hailing its technical development and brilliant use of the violin and piano as individual parts. Where criticized, they noted that it was perhaps too virtuosic for chamber music, while another reviewer for the Berlin Volkszeitung characterized Beach's compositional style as being too derivative of Schumann and Brahms -- yet allowed Beach's gender as a caveat for this supposed shortcoming. He wrote:"In style, she is not individual; her dependence upon Schumann and Brahms is unmistakable, which is a weakness, for which the feminine character furnishes ground and excuse. The sonata is sonorous and graceful in both violin and piano parts, though the latter in the last movement somewhat oversteps the allotted bounds of chamber music."

Quintet in F# Minor for Piano and Strings, Op. 67.
In 1900, with the Kneisel Quartet, Beach performed the Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34. Beach wrote her own three-movement Quintet for Piano and Strings in F-sharp minor, Op. 67, in 1905. The quintet came to be frequently performed during Beach's lifetime, both in concert and over the radio. These performances were often given by established string quartets accompanied by the pianist-composer, including numerous times during an extended tour with the Kneisel Quartet in 1916-17. This was the 33rd and last season for the quartet. Beach performed her quintet with them in Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Among all of Beach's chamber works, this work has been described as one of the most distinctly representative of a Brahmsian influence in her music, from the jagged chromatic melody and contrasting lyrical passages, irregularly phrase lengths, its key changes and lush texture, to its strict adherence to the sonata-allegro form. The primary theme throughout all three works, in fact, is borrowed from the last movement of the Brahms quintet, albeit adapted and reworked in a variety of ways. All three movements feature frequent distinct developments in meter, tempo, and key signature. The entire work carries an affective character of lamentation throughout, demonstrated not only by the overall emotive qualities of the work itself but also its use of the Phrygian tetrachord cadence frequently associated with mourning, which in this work outlines the notes F#-E-D-C#.

Generally speaking, the work was received quite well by audiences and reviewers as belonging to an important compositional tradition. Critics noted its aesthetically flexible imagination while adhering to traditional expectations, bringing a variety of expressive moods and tone colors to a work of substantial form. They also commented on the modernity and skill the work displayed in that it achieved a highly expressive nature and orchestral texture while maintaining the intimate, technically developed character of the chamber ensemble voicing. This work added to her reputation as a composer of serious high art music, although still deemed slightly beneath the works of similar male composers by some reviewers.

String Quartet, Op. 89
Beach's String Quartet is a single movement and deemed as one of her more mature works. It was originally labeled as Op. 79, but over the course of a decade, the work evolved, and Beach finally re-designated the piece as Op. 89 in 1929. The significance Beach bestowed this piece is unique given that it did not feature a piano part which she would perform, as she did with many of her other works. Because of the timing of the piece's composition, there is some evidence that Beach may have been inspired to write the work as part of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's chamber music competition in 1922. Numerous painstaking attempts demonstrate both Beach's devotion to the composition of this piece and her unfamiliarity with writing in this genre. The final work, completed in Rome, consists of a single movement divided into three sections, and thematically speaking, follows an arch form (A B C B1 A1). The piece uses three different Eskimo or Inuit melodies throughout the work: "Summer Song", "Playing at Ball", and Itataujang's Song", taken from Franz Boas' book on the Alaskan Inuit tribes . Beach integrates these borrowed tunes within a framework of Austro-Germanic extended quasi-tonality and dissonance, first through more straightforward statements of the melodies and then as assimilated into a horizontal harmonic structure. Elements of the melodies are abstracted and developed into contrapuntal lines which propel the work forward in the absence of clear tonal direction. The texture and harmony is fairly stark in places, lacking the lush Romanticism of her earlier works and representing more Modernist inclinations of a developing composer.

The piece was premiered at the American Academy in April of 1929, but Beach reported little on whether or not this performance was satisfactory. Nonetheless, it was followed by a number of private performances and small recitals in New York, Cincinnati, and Massachusetts. A 1937 performance arranged by Roy Harris was particularly disappointing, as the performers were ill-prepared and sight-read the work poorly. No performance of the quartet was fully satisfactory to Beach, and the work did not gain the recognition that she seemed to hope it would gather.

Because the quartet was so different from many of Beach's previous works, and given that Beach was unable to perform it herself, there is little known concerning both audience and critic response to the piece. Composer and biographer Burnet Corwin Tuthill offered praise of it, saying that while it was unusual for Beach and lacked the emotionalism usually prevalent in her music, it demonstrated remarkable technical sophistication and skill in its handling of both string writing and engagement with thematic material that was not European in origin. In fact, Beach's use of Inuit and Native American tunes became a marked feature in several of her other works, which she used as a means of bringing stylistic modernity to her sound through the appropriation and recontextualization of these melodies.