Amy Beach

BORN: September 5,

1867, Henniker, New Hampshire

DIED: December 21, 1944, New York, New York

BIOGRAPHY

Amy Marcy Cheney began formal piano lessons at the age of six and soon gave public recitals of the works by Beethoven and Chopin. She also performed her own pieces. In 1875, her family moved near Boston, and she was advised to enroll in a European conservatory—but she declined and studied piano privately, even translating essays on orchestration from French for herself. She performed as a pianist with notable orchestras including the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Handel and Haydn Society.

In 1885, at the age of 18, she married Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a Boston surgeon who was 24 years older than her. She was not allowed to tutor; she limited her recitals to two per year (under the name “Mrs. H. H. A. Beach”) and wrote music. In 1896, her “Gaelic Symphony” was premiered by the Boston Symphony. It was the first complete symphony composed and published by an American woman. Later in life she changed her name to Amy Beach, toured Europe, and went on to write and give speeches about music and performing.

FUN FACTS

• By age one, she could sing forty songs. By age three, she had learned how to read.

• She was one of the first American composers to succeed without European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era.

• Later in life, she founded “Beach Clubs” to encourage music education for children and served as the first president of the Society of American Women Composers.