Amy Beach

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Amy Beach was a very famous and influential composer and pianist from New Hampshire, United States. She fought long and hard to get to where she got in her lifetime. Back in the late 1800’s, it was hard for women to get noticed because they believe that their role in society was to stay at home and take care of the family. Amy Beach defeated all the odds of a female gender role in her lifetime. She became a role model for young girls wanting to become a composer or becoming anything they wanted to be, as long as they fought for it. She has made an enormous impact on music in America. The following paper will discuss Beach’s life, her struggles, her musical training, how her music was shaped by the society she lived in and famous compositions …show more content…

She played a concert in 1883 at the Music Hall in Boston at the age of 16. According to the article, “Synesthesia and Feminism: a Case Study on Amy Beach (1867-1944), author Jeremy Logan (2015) talks about Amy’s success as a young composer and states “Amy Marcy Cheney debuted as a professional concert pianist in Boston on 21 October 1883, playing Ignaz Moscheles’ G minor Concerto and Chopins Rondo in E. Adolf Neuendorff (1843-1897) conducted her debut performance” (p. 131). She shocked the crowd with her talent and was praised highly for being talented with the piano. Then her career grew from there. She then joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra. According to the book New Historical Anthology of Music by Women, author James R. Briscoe (2004) discusses Amy’s performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and says “In 1885, a momentous year for her, Amy Cheney played for the first time with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, began a lifetime association with the music publisher, Author P. Schmidt” (p. 198). She performed Chopin’s F minor Concerto at the first concert she conducted with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She continued to play with them for several shows until she married Henry Harris Aubrey Beach in 1885. He did not particularly like Amy performing concerts and asked her to stop performing concerts. He only allowed her to perform for charity events. He didn’t believe that Amy had to keep …show more content…

At this time she was known for her performing with the Kneisel Quartet and performing her own Quintet for piano and strings, in F-sharp minor and her Gaelic Symphony. Before the Gaelic Symphony, she was known for her piece the Grand Mass in E-flat major, which consisted of an orchestra and voices. She has also written chamber music that included a piano trio and a piano quintet. She also wrote piano concertos. Also, she wrote one opera that consisted of one act called the Cabildo, that wasn’t performed until after she passed away. Overall, Beach had a variety of music compositions throughout her whole career. Also, she was a part of a group called the Second New England School of Composers, and she was the only female composer in the group. Furthermore, throughout the rest of her career, she either performed with the Boston Symphony again as a Piano soloist or the Boston Symphony started performing her own

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