Beach, Amy - The Rainy Day (fm)

A custom streaming practice/rehearsal piano track for The Rainy Day,
by Amy Beach.

"The Rainy Day" was the very first art song written by American composer Amy Beach - A gorgeous and melancholic setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous poetry. Beach was a trailblazer in American classical music and would go on to put her stamp on large symphonic writing, but this tune was the beginning, written when she was 13. Firmly in late Romantic sensibilities, the piano mirrors the bleak imagery of a cold and dreary storm before ultimately shifting toward a message of lingering hope.

🎹 Thoughts From the Bench: Okay this is very important lore that many vocalists might not know - the opening melody is a direct quote of the opening to the 3rd movement of Beethoven's Pathetique sonata (Pathetique in c minor whereas this is f minor, but it's a direct transposition). Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was a brilliant pianist (and concertized as a successful performer of both her own works and others'), and would of course know many of the same Great Piano Works™ that are still part of our canon today. It's fun to think about a 13 year old pianist beginning to compose and using a melody, maybe in the Beethoven sonata they were working on at the time, as a jumping off point to write a song.