Amy Beach, “A Canadian Boat Song”

Amy Beach, “A Canadian Boat Song”

by Hannah Salamon | March 30, 2021

As a Canadian, I always find it a joy to find, explore, and perform works about Canada, often which are often written by Canadian composers, but sometimes are not. It is interesting to find a work that is written by a non-Canadian composer that exemplifies aspects of our country, and we find this in “A Canadian Boat Song” by the American composer Amy Beach. She wrote it in 1890 as one of three vocal and piano works in the song cycle, Songs of the Sea, Op. 10. “A Canadian Boat Song” is a setting of a poem by the Irish poet, Thomas Moore, about two people singing in the evening while travelling by canoe on the St. Lawrence River. It has three verses and is composed in a modified strophic form.

There are many methods with which we can analyze this piece, but the one that I find provides a fresh and less-common perspective is the concept of Conceptual Integration Networks (CINs), created by rhetorician Mark Turner and linguist Gilles Fauconnier. Lawrence M. Zbikowski describes and utilizes this method in his essay, “The Blossoms of ‘Trockne Blumen’: Music and Text in the Early Nineteenth Century”. As Zbikowski details, “each CIN consists of at least four circumscribed and transitory domains called mental spaces. Mental spaces temporarily recruit structure from more generic conceptual domains in response to immediate circumstances, and are constantly modified as our thought unfolds.” (310) “A Canadian Boat Song” can be thought of in four mental spaces: a generic space, a text space, a music space, and a blended space, all of which contribute to the overall story conveyed through this work. This is illustrated in the CIN below and I will elaborate on it further through examples from the score.

Generic Space

The overarching theme throughout this piece is two people that appear to be a couple singing about their journey while riding in a canoe on the St. Lawrence River. From the words in the first verse of the poem, “row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,” it does not appear that they are canoeing themselves but are free to sing as they enjoy the scenery around them. There is a lot of interplay between both voices in the setting of the text with great variety between the baritone and soprano singing at the same time, and other times, one starts first, followed by the other. This helps to convey the carefree nature of the canoe ride.

Text Space

Each of the three verses describe a part of their journey, but surprisingly at the end, there are no details of them arriving at their destination. Instead, we are left with the final line: “the rapids are near and the daylight’s past.” When they are singing about the rapids nearing, a clear sense of an arrival and climatic point is conveyed in the music with ascending lines in the vocal and piano lines and abrupt rests that follow. Immediately after, the text about the daylight being past is sung twice, with very quiet dynamics, which provides a contrast from what came before and gives a sense of ebbing away.

Music Space

The flowing piano accompaniment figuration that is established in the two-measure introduction at the beginning is kept throughout with a few variations. Sixteenth notes form the majority of the texture in the accompaniment, helping to depict the water theme, with both the gentle waves and the stormier rapids on the St. Lawrence River. The time signature is in 6/8, with two large beats felt per measure which give the feeling of rowing. As well, because the tempo is marked Andante quasi Allegretto, this aids in the listener imagining the rowing as they listen to the singers.

The feeling of rowing is also depicted in the music when the singers sing the second line of verse 1: “our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.” Here the baritone and soprano sing in complete synchronization with each other.

The piece is mainly in D flat major, a key that is both suited to peaceful and majestic pieces that often express deep emotions. A modulation to E Major, which is related through an enharmonic third relation, occurs for part of the third verse.

Blended Space

As highlighted earlier through the Conceptual Integration Network (CIN), this piece can be thought of in four mental spaces, culminating with the last one, the blended space, which is a result of the other three spaces, generic, text, and music, coming together. All of these domains work together and are inseparable in the overall understanding of this piece. There are many ways that it can be analyzed, each bringing something unique to our quest to understand what Amy Beach wanted to convey through her setting of this poem to music. The blended space that we perceive in “A Canadian Boat Song” is a captivating story about two people singing as they ride a canoe on the St. Lawrence River to their destination, which is unknown to us. Due to the relevance of the subject matter and the captivating text setting that Amy Beach used, this piece is just as relevant now as it was when she composed it. I look forward to sharing more about Beach’s song cycles through my final project for this course, and I hope to be able to perform some of them as well.