Romancefor bassoon and pianoby Amy (Mrs. H.H.A.) Beach (1867-1944) - American composer and pianist ABOUT THE MUSIC Amy Beach and dedicatee Maud Powell premiered Romance for violin and piano at the Women’s Musical Congress, held in Chicago in 1893. This performance took place just three years prior to the first performance of her Symphony in E minor, Op. 32, “Gaelic,” the first symphony composed by an American woman to be premiered by a major United States orchestra. The Romance, though, is an homage to the highly technical and collaborative chamber music of the late Romantic era, blending dramatic dynamics and range with intricate technical complexity. This arrangement for bassoon and piano was created as part of a larger project to expand representation of women composers in repertoire for bassoon from earlier musical eras and style periods than the present day. Performing the violin part on bassoon requires multiple octave displacements, while retaining the contour and registral voicing of the original Romance. The four octave range of this work, along with the warmth of A Major, provide an opportunity for performers to develop and showcase the coexisting potentials for sweetness and power across all registers of the bassoon. ABOUT THE ARRANGER Dr. Cayla Bellamy is a performer, collaborator, and pedagogue dedicated to advancing the music field through redefining standard practices in the bassoon studio and chamber ensemble settings. Cayla is committed to increasing representation of historically excluded identities in both traditional and contemporary bassoon repertoire, which includes commissioning new works both individually and through consortia and also arranging repertoire from earlier eras of Western classical music. Cayla currently serves on faculty at Colorado State University, where she teaches applied bassoon, chamber music, and instrumental pedagogy, in addition to directing the New Music Ensemble and performing regularly with orchestras, operas, and ballets throughout northern Colorado. Learn more at www.caylabellamy.com.
