Amy Beach (1867 - 1944) was the first American woman composer to make a name for herself in music.
Amy Marcy Cheney was born to a distinguished New England family. She was a child prodigy who started composing when she was four and who gave her first recitals when she was seven. When she was fourteen, Amy received her only official composition training, by studying harmony and counterpoint for a year. Apart from that, she received no other lessons and was self-taught, mainly by studying classical pieces as Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.
In 1883 she made her professional debut in Boston. After her marriage in 1885 to Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach - a Boston surgeon 24 years her senior - she agreed to limit her performances to one public recital a year and devoted herself to composing.
After her husband died in 1910, she toured Europe as a pianist and played her own compositions at the concerts. She was determined to make a reputation both as a pianist and as a composer. Amy Beach's major compositions include the Mass in E major (1892), the Gaelic Symphony (1893), a violin sonata, a piano concerto, the Variations on Balkan Themes, a piano quintet, various choral works and chamber music compositions, piano music, and an opera, but she was best known for her songs. She composed mainly in a romantic idiom, which is often compared to that of Brahms. Relative to the success she enjoyed in life, Amy Beach's music has been little performed since her death.
Beach wrote her three-movement Quintet for Piano and Strings in F-sharp minor, Op. 67, in 1905. The quintet was frequently performed during Beach's lifetime, both in concert and over the radio. These performances were often given by established string quartets with Beach on the piano. Among all of Beach's chamber works, the quintet is closest to Brahms, from the jagged chromatic melody and contrasting lyrical passages, irregularly phrase lengths and key changes, to its lush texture. The primary theme used in all three movements, in fact, is borrowed from the last movement of the Brahms' piano quintet, albeit adapted and reworked in a variety of ways. The entire work is like an extended lamentation, also in its use of the Phrygian tetrachord cadence frequently associated with mourning. This work added to Beach's reputation as a composer of serious high art music, although it was still deemed slightly beneath the works of similar male composers by some (male) reviewers. Nonsense - just listen for yourself!
Women Composers Index