Les rêves de Columbine, Op. 65 (The Dreams of Columbina)

Composer: BEACH, Amy Marcy Cheney
  • Amy Beach composed Les rêves de Columbine: Suite française pour le Pianoforte (The Dreams of Columbina: French Suite for the Pianoforte) in 1906.1 It was first published in 1907.2
  • This suite’s third movement, Valse amoreuse, is based on Beach’s art song “Le Secret,” Op. 14, No. 2.3
  • Amy Beach performed the premiere of this work on April 17, 1907, at a morning recital devoted to Beach’s songs and piano music at the Hotel Tuileries in Boston.4 
  • Beach’s biographer Adrienne Fried Block suggests that Beach may have had ballet in mind when composing this work; several of the movements suggest dance forms.5

Movements 

  1. La fée de la fontaine (The Fairy in the Fountain)  
  2. Le prince gracieux (The Gracious Prince)  
  3. Valse amoureuse (Waltz Lovers)  
  4. Sous les étoiles (Under the Stars)  
  5. Danse d’Arlequin (Arlequin’s Dance)6

Sources

  1. Adrienne Fried Block, Amy Beach: Passionate Victorian: The Life and Work of an American Composer 1867-1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 127.
  2. Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, Les rêves de Columbine: Suite française pour le PianoforteAm (Boston: Arthur P. Schmidt, 1907).
  3. Ibid.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Beach, Les rêves de Columbine: Suite française pour le Pianoforte

Cut IDs

42689