After completing her education, Beath settled in Brisbane and took positions as an accompanist and later teacher at Queensland Conservatorium and was Head of Music at St. Margaret's Girls' School, Brisbane. She is an Examiner with the Australian Music Examinations Board.[5] Beath received a Southeast Asian Fellowship from the Australia Council in 1974 to conduct research in Bali and Java.[6] She is married to author/illustrator, David Cox.
She represented women composers of Australia at the 3rd International Congress on Women in Music, held in Mexico City in 1984.[3] She has also been an executive member of the International League of Women Composers.[2]
The State Library of Queensland has in its collection a digital story and oral history of Betty Beath. In this extensive interview she speaks with Laurel Dingle about her life as a music composer, performer and teacher, from her earliest memories to the present day. (1950-2014).[7]
Her most performed music is perhaps the piano solo piece "Merindu Bali" (Bali Yearning), written for the Indonesian pianist Ananda Sukarlan and dedicated to the memory of the victims of Bali bombings of October 12, 2002. The piece uses the Balinese gamelan pentatonic scale and championed worldwide by Ananda Sukarlan, and now it has been taken by other pianists.
Works
Beath sometimes incorporates world music themes into her compositions, including music from Bali and Java.[8] Selected works include:
Orchestral
Asmaradana (1994), for Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. First performance Taman Ismail Marzuki, Jakarta,18/6/1994.
Journeys - an indonesian triptych (1994), Commissioned by the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra.
