Amy Beach (1867–1944) – A Gifted Learner

People around her knew that, even from a young age, Amy Beach was special. She taught herself to read at age three (that alone is enough foreshadowing to signal the success and talent of a future autodidact), began composing at four and piano studies with her mother shortly thereafter, and by seven was playing Chopin, Beethoven and her own pieces in recital. She married at 18, and although she had a promising start as a concert pianist, her husband demanded she stop performing in public. So Beach got to composing — teaching herself all there was to be taught, religiously analyzing scores from older composers and studying Berlioz’s Treatise on Instrumentation … and translating it into English. After her husband died in 1910, Beach traveled across the Atlantic, where she had a successful run of concerts in Germany. Upon her return to the U.S. on the eve of World War I, she was made a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and used her status to encourage young composers, especially women.