Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Most of her compositions and performances were under the name Mrs. H. H. A. Beach.
Amy Beach was a child prodigy, she began formal piano lessons with her mother at the age of six, and a year later started giving public recitals.
Beach made her professional debut in Boston in 1883, playing Chopin Rondo in E-flat and Moscheles’s G minor Concerto; shortly after she appeared as a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Following her marriage in 1885 to Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach – a Boston surgeon 24 years older than she – she agreed to limit performances to two public recitals a year, with profits donated to charity. Following her husband's wishes, she devoted herself to composition. Her first major success was the Mass in E-flat major, which was performed in 1892 by the Handel and Haydn Society.