AMY BEACH

CHILDHOOD

• Capable of improvising counter melody at age two.
• At age three she taught herself to read.
• At age four she composed three waltzes.

CHILDHOOD PART 2

• She could sing 40 songs accurately by age one!
• She was self taught in music.
• Her neighborhood played instruments together.

ADULTHOOD

• She wrote 150 songs
• She was best known for playing the piano.
• Her father did not want her to be a concert pianist. But still supported her.

ADULTHOOD PG.2

• Without a piano at her grandfather’s farm she composed the pieces mentally and played them when she returned home.

GAELIC SYMPHONY

• https://youtu.be/a90JHU2saSU
• Gaelic was made in Boston, October 30 1896
• First symphony composed and published by a female American composer.
• The piece debuted in Boston on Friday, to “public and journalistic acclaim.”

BY THE STILL WATERS OP.14

• https://youtu.be/AWVSVTpfxuc

DREAMING OP.15

• https://youtu.be/6DbvoXvRf4k

EXTRAS

• Amy began formal piano lessons with her mother at age six, and soon gave public recitals of works by Chopin, Beethoven, and Handel.

EXTRAS PG.2

• In 1875, the Cheney family moved to Chelsea, a suburb just across the Mystic River from Boston.

EXTRAS PG.3

• In 1881-82, the fourteen year old also studied harmony and counterpoint with Junius W. Hill.

EXTRAS PG.4

• She taught herself counterpoint, harmony, fugue, even translating Gevaert’s and Berlioz’s French treatises on orchestration, considered most composers’ bibles, into English herself

WEBSITES

• Wikipedia
• Biography.com