Amy Beach (5 September 1867 – 27 December 1944) was the first American woman to compose a symphony. In 1896, the Boston Symphony Orchestra played her Symphony in E minor, Op. 32 known as “Gaelic Symphony”.
Beach was born in Henniker, but grew up in Boston. She displayed immense talent even as a one year old child. She could hum 40 tunes accurately and in the key that she first heard them (Block, 1998, 4).
When she was six years old, Beach began learning the piano with her mother. She began public recitals of famous works alongside her own compositions. As Block (1998, vii) points out, the “earliest evidence of public interest in Amy Marcy Cheney was an article written when she was seven, reporting a private recital that included two unnamed works, one by Chopin and one by her”. At the age of 16, Beach debuted in October 1883 in a concert at Boston’s Music Hall, which was a raging success.
Beach was 18 when she married Henry Harris Aubrey Beach who was 43 years old at the time. Following the wishes of her husband, Beach shifted her focus from performing to composing. He believed that a husband should support his wife and demanded that she donate any money she received from performing to charity and requested that she limit her performances. Nevertheless, he believed she had a true gift for composing and felt that it was more respectable since it was “done in private, not on a public stage” (Block, 1998, 47). Beach would receive feedback from her mother and her husband before her compositions were played for the public.
At the age of 21, Beach astounded critics with the cadenza she composed as part of her performance of Beethoven’s third piano concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Block notes that even though Beach’s husband and parents resisted her studying composition with a teacher, she nevertheless taught herself about composition and orchestration.
Block (1998, 48) references Beach’s comments about the shift form performance to composition: “Though I had not deliberately chosen, the work had chosen me. I continued to play at concerts, but my home life kept me in the neighborhood of Boston. My compositions gave me a larger field. From Boston, I could reach out to the world.”
After the death of her husband in 1910, Beach travelled to Europe in order to rest and recuperate. In 1912, she began performing concerts again.
Unfortunately, heart issues led to the conclusion of Beach’s performing life. In June 1941 she stated, “I have taken no formal farewell from public performances, nor do I intend to do so. But I face the fact that I shall never again be strong enough for it.” (in Block, 1998, 291)
She died of heart disease on 27 December 1944.
Block, A. F. (1998). Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian: The Life and Work of an American Composer. Oxford University Press.
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