Amy Beach: The First Great Woman Composer of America

This month we celebrate the birthday of America's first great woman composer, Amy Beach.

Amy Beach was born on September 5, 1867 in Henniker, New Hampshire. Her mother was her first piano teacher. Amy was a child prodigy who composed her first song when she was only four years old. She was very sound sensitive and heard music in colors. To Amy, the key of G was red, E flat was pink, A flat was blue, the color green was the key of A and E Major was yellow.

Amy made her debut at the age of sixteen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She was a prolific composer during her twenty-five year marriage to Dr. H. H. A. Beach. After his death she went to Europe for four years. During this time Amy performed the concerto she had written in concerts with major orchestras all over Europe. Upon her return to America she became the most famous composer-pianist of her time. Amy spent many summers composing at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. She was a close friend of Edward MacDowell's widow, Marian.

The concert with the Boston Pops

Recently, on a beautiful summer evening at Boston's famous Hatch Shell, the Boston Pops paid tribute to Amy Beach. Her name was added to the granite wall on "The Shell". The unveiling took place on July 9th, 2000. Now Amy Beach's name is carved into the granite facade along with the names of 86 other composers such as Bach, Handel, Chopin, Debussy, MacDowell and Beethoven. Amy Beach is the only woman composer on the granite wall!

The crowd of hundreds at the Boston Pops Concert. An Amy Beach fan is signing the proposal to have a postage stamp honoring Amy Beach. One hundred persons signed the petition for Gail Smith, advocate.

This author is continuing to obtain signatures from fans of Amy Beach who would like to have a postage stamp made in her honor. The process to have a famous person on a postage stamp takes years to achieve. It is long overdue in the case of Amy Beach. Elvis is on a stamp; so are Lucy Stone, the first Massachusetts woman to receive a college degree, and Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D. the first woman to graduate in medicine. There was a special postal series of composers issued in 1940 which included Stephen Foster, Edward MacDowell and Ethelbert Nevin.

Keith Lockhart, the talented conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, conducted the Boston Pops in an impressive classical concert. The music of Amy Beach was featured after the intermission and her lovely music filled the air. The words of Amy Beach still ring out true today..."The monuments of a nation mark the progress of its civilization, but its intelligence and education are qualified by its music."

Adrienne Fried Block, author of the biography of Amy Beach (second from left) with others around Beach's name on the granite wall.

  This month's free music is Mrs. Beach's Minuet in F (Op. 36, No. 1)
Download the music (PDF format, 15.2 K).
Download Acrobat Reader.



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