“…sticky melodies…”
The Choral and Chamber Music of Johanna Magdalena Beyer
by Larry Polansky

With this double-CD set much of Johanna Magdalena Beyer’s music can be heard for the first time. Remarkably, all of this music was written between 1930 and 1943 by an important immigrant American artist whose works, until recently, have been little known, rarely heard, and not well understood.

Beyer was part of the New York City modernist group of composers that included Henry Cowell, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Charles Seeger, Carl Ruggles, and others. But only within the last few years has her music begun to be discussed alongside the music of these other composers. During her lifetime she heard only a few of her pieces (which number over forty). Of those works that did receive performances, it seems likely that most were performed a small number of times. After her death in 1944 from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), her manuscripts languished in the archives of the American Music Center and the New York Public Library for four decades before a number of composers and performers (including Charles Amirkhanian, John Kennedy, and myself) began to bring them to the attention of the contemporary music scene by publishing, performing, and writing about them.

For various reasons, this large body of historically important modernist work from the 1930s has been almost completely overlooked. Perhaps not so parenthetically, it also happens to have been written by a woman, and one who seemed to have little skill in promoting her own work. Regardless, this music needs no added “hook” to interest us: It is richly scored, unusual in its voice and its craft, and forward-looking. I continue to discover new beauty in this music even after twenty years of involvement with it. Beyer is part of the history of twentieth-century American experimental music, and deserves to be received as such. The nature of her role is, perhaps, yet to be fully understood: Our knowledge of her work is still sketchy at best. We owe a debt of gratitude to John McCaughey and the Astra Chamber Music Society for undertaking this fascinating project with such a deep sense of commitment, love for the work, and extraordinary skill. Sixty-four years after her death, we can finally hear a great deal of her work for the first time in these excellent recordings.

New World Records 80678-2
Astra Chamber Music Society, John McCaughey, Musical Director

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2 CDs $30

Suite for Clarinet I (1932)
1. I. Presto
2. II. Largo
3. III. Moderato
4. IV. Rallentando

Daniel Goode, clarinet

11:35
3:05
4:16
1:09
2:54

String Quartet No. 1 (1933–34)
5. I. Allegro
6. II. Lento
7. III. Moderato
8. IV. Presto

Miwako Abe, violin 1; Aaron Barnden, violin 2; Erkki Veltheim, viola; Rosanne Hunt, cello

String Quartet No. 2 (1936)
5. I. Allegretto
6. II. Largo
7. III. Moderato
8. IV. Allegro quasi Presto

Miwako Abe, violin 1; Aaron Barnden, violin 2; Erkki Veltheim, viola; Rosanne Hunt, cello

9. Total Eclipse
10. To Be
11. Universal—Local

Merlyn Quaife, soprano; Craig Hill, clarinet

12. Bees (date unknown)

Peter Dumsday, piano

Three Pieces for Choir (1937)

13. The Federal Music Project (1936)

The Astra Choir, John McCaughey, conductor

12. The Composers’ Forum Laboratory
The Astra Choir with Kim Bastin, piano; John McCaughey, conductor

14. Movement for Two Pianos (1936)

Peter Dumsday, piano 1; Kim Bastin, piano 2

4:00

Sonatina in C (1943)
14. I. Allegro brioso
15. II. Scherzo
16. III. Andante
17. IV. Sciolto

Peter Dumsday, piano