Beyer’s Final Years, 1940–44

This chapter looks at Beyer's final years. The summer of 1940 was busy for Beyer. She taught piano at a number of schools and private homes around the greater New York area, and the families for whom she taught were central to her social life. She also spent much of July house-sitting for the family of her gifted ten-year-old piano student Roland Leitner, with whom she was particularly close and to whom she dedicated one of her last works, the Sonatina in C, in 1943. The chapter then examines Beyer's illness, which became acute in 1941. According to Bertha Reynolds, Beyer received a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in June of that year, and Reynolds later believed that to be the cause of her death. However, according to Beyer's death certificate, she had received a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as early as 1938.