Amy Beach’s Boston

Abstract Toward The End Of Her Life, Beach looked back gratefully to her early years in Boston, that “happy period” in a city that was “very musical indeed.” 1 It is hard to imagine another city-or indeed another time-that would have been as supportive of her as a woman and a musician. The special bonding that took place between patrons and artists, the high value that its Brahmin aristocracy placed on music as an art, and the support its individuals and musical institutions offered to its resident composers and performers resulted in a thriving community of musicians and helped create America’s first school of high art music. When George Whitefield Chadwick called Amy Beach “one of the boys,” he was welcoming her into that school. When the leading performing organizations in Boston-the Boston Symphony, the Handel and Haydn Society, and the Kneisel Quartet-presented her as a pianist and gave the premieres of her compositions, they were providing a woman a level of support that few, if any, other cities began to match.