Amy Beach

Biography

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers of her era to succeed without the benefit of European training, and was known as one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.