We continue this week with another work by a female composer of the late 1800's/early 1900's, this time looking at an exceptionally early work by Amy Marcy Beach. Mrs. Beach showed talent at an early age, both as a performer and composer, but had little in the way of formal studies. Despite the limited training she was able to receive, she received her first publication in 1883 (at the age of 16!) with the song "The Rainy Day".

Mrs. Beach (identified as Amy Marcy Cheney in the publication, which was well before her marriage to Henry Harris Aubrey Beach) chose to set text by Longfellow for this short work. She chose a poem with a subject of sadness, but a twinge of hope:

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary,
The vine still clings to the mould'ring wall,
But at ev'ry gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary,
It rains, and the wind is never weary,
My thoughts still cling to the mould'ring past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining,
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining,
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.


Mrs. Beach opens the song in a solid F minor, which stays throughout the song, even with it's more hopeful text in the third verse. The piano introduces the melodic idea in a short four bar introduction before the voice enters on the first verse. The melody slowly rises through the first two lines of text to a high point on the third line, before descending back to an F at "dark and dreary" for the first two verses. The same melodic structure is used for both of these verses, before we come to the drama of the third verse.

In the third, more hopeful stanza, Mrs. Beach changes the melody dramatically, with a slow ascension in the first two lines, before we hit a much higher point on a high F for the word "shining." Again we descend to "dark and dreary," this time dropping all the way to a middle C, however Beach gives us some hope with an ascending fourth to end on the F.

The only commercial recording we've found is one by Katherine Kelton and Catherine Bringerud as part of a collection of songs by Amy Beach.