Amy Beach - America's first female composer
Amy Beach, First Lady of American Classical Song
I first came across Amy Beach’s song “Take, o take those lips away” from Three Shakespeare Songs when I was a bachelor’s student at Westminster Choir College. Amy Beach was the sole female composer of art song that was included in my song repertoire for far too long. Other women composers would not cross my academic and musical path until my graduate study years.
Who was Amy Beach?
Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (September 5, 1867 – December 27, 1944) is widely regarded as the first American female composer of serious classical music. Her music was performed by major orchestras in the United States and received a European tour during her lifetime.
I performed two of Amy Beach’s Three Shakespeare Songs are on my debut album: “O mistress mine” and “Fairy Lullaby”. I found them both to be light, playful, cheerful even, and altogether fitting for a debut that is full of hope for real change. These two songs have also proven to be popular with audiences when I’ve performed them in concert with my fellow collaborators.
Q&A: Get to know Amy Beach
Q: What vocal compositions and songs did Amy Beach compose?
A: Amy Beach composed over a hundred different songs, a short opera and several choral pieces, both sacred and secular.
Q: Where does Amy Beach fit into the History of Women’s Art Song?
A: She was a contemporary of Dvorak, Brahms, and Saint-Saens.
Q: Was Amy Beach involved in the politics of her time?
A: Amy Beach’s greatest early compositional success was her Gaelic Symphony, which, like many of her contemporaries’ works at the time, makes great use of ethnic folk melodies throughout. She wrote that the symphony had the Irish people’s suffering and struggles as its program: “their laments, romance and dreams.” One might imagine that Amy Beach would take an interest in a symphony composed today that captures the sufferings of many displaced immigrants around the world.
Q: Was Amy Beach affected by women’s equality struggles?
A: Amy Beach was forced to take on the duties of a wife when she was just 18, and while her husband reportedly encouraged her to work on her compositions, he would not allow her to take composition lessons. Amy Beach said of her situation and that of fellow female composers: “Music is the superlative expression of life experience, and woman by the very nature of her position is denied many of the experiences that color the life of man.”
Q: How does she relate to other women’s issues?
A: Amy Beach encouraged other women to compose music.
Q: Was Amy Beach considered to be a female entrepreneur?
A: Amy Beach recognized the limitations of her time, but chose to pursue art professionally despite her critics. She was a member of the Boston composers’ group, the first school of art music in the United States and she was one of the first American composers whose music was well known in Europe.
Amy Beach resources & recommended recordings
Learn more about this fascinating American female composer at AmyBeach.org and listen to Songs of Amy Beach by Patrick Mason, baritone and Joanne Polk, piano.