3 Robert Browning Songs

Of the more than 120 art songs that Amy Beach composed over her lengthy career, the Three Robert Browning Songs of 1900 are among her most popular and enduring. Commissioned by the Boston Browning Society to celebrate the poet’s birthday, the set responds to three of the English poet’s innovative dramatic monologues. The first song, “The Year’s at the Spring”, captures the narrator’s excitement at the change of seasons and ends with the couplet: “God’s in His heaven — All’s right with the world!” Composed during a train journey, the song echoes the driving rhythm of the carriage wheels with continuous triplets in the piano accompaniment. “Ah, Love, but a Day” concerns a wife’s distress at her fading marriage, accentuated with soulful, yearning vocal phrases that build to an impassioned conclusion. Particularly notable is the shift from major to minor in the song’s second half. Most intricate is “I Send my Heart up to Thee!”. Beach imbues this celebration of tender love with churning tempos and pointed dynamic contrasts.