Amy Marcy
Beach
Amy Marcy Cheney was born in Henniker, New Hampshire on September 5, 1867. She began composing music at age four and performing publicly at age seven. Because her parents could not afford to send her abroad, she received further musical training in Boston. At the age of thirteen, she accompanied her piano teacher, to the home of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Shortly thereafter, Miss Cheney put the words of Longfellow's poem, "The Rainy Day," to music. It was her first published song. In 1883, at age sixteen, she made her professional debut as a pianist. Afterwards, she became a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
In 1885, the eighteen year-old pianist married Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach. She changed her professional name to Mrs. H. H. A. Beach and, at the request of her husband, she shifted emphasis from performance to composition. Beach devoted the majority of her time and efforts to writing music. Most of Mrs. Beach's compositions were published. Many were performed by leading artists and ensembles. In 1892, the Boston Handel and Hayden Society premiered her first major work, the Grand Mass, Opus 5. The subsequent acclaim her work received established her as a composer and led to her first commissions. The 1896 Boston Symphony performance of her Gaelic Symphony in E Minor, Op. 32 which helped confirmed Mrs. Beach as one of the country's leading composers. Throughout her life, Beach wrote more than 150 numbered works ranging from chamber and orchestral works to church music and songs. Following Dr. Beach's death in 1910, Mrs. Beach went on a three-year tour of Europe. She resumed her career as a performer and changed her professional name to Amy Beach. For the next thirty years she continued to compose and perform. She died of heart failure on December 27, 1944 at the age of 77.