Gaelic Symphony

Gaelic Symphony, symphony by American composer Amy Beach, premiered October 30, 1896, in Boston. It was the first symphony by an American woman composer to gain public attention, written at a time when American composers of either gender were a relative rarity on the international scene.

The Gaelic Symphony was Beach’s response to Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák’s call for American composers to explore their musical roots. Known for his own nationalist style, Dvořák had traveled to the U.S. in 1892 to lead the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. He suggested that a distinctly American sound might include Native American and African American elements. Beach, who lived in Boston—which had a large Irish immigrant population—instead turned to Irish melodies, attracted by what she described as “their simple, rugged, and unpretentious beauty.”

The first movement of the symphony begins with much energy, borrowing a melody from “Dark Is the Night,” one of Beach’s own art songs. The lively second movement has a graceful theme that reappears in varied form in the movement’s middle section. For the third movement, Beach sets two melancholy Irish themes in counterpoint, so that they are heard simultaneously. In the final movement, she returns to the melody of the first movement, though here given even more dramatic expression.