Female Representation in Music: Amy Beach’s New York Philharmonic Premiere
I remember when I first learned about classical music and the “all-star” composers that shaped music theory and music as a whole into what we know it as today. Growing up, my elementary school general music teacher would spend every class teaching us about a different composer. We would spend an hour each week listening to their most famous pieces and learned about their backgrounds and rise to fame. The classroom itself was, of course, entirely decked out in posters and pictures of these famous composers; every corner of the room was decked out in pictures of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Brahms, and more. Of course, seeing all these pictures and learning about the few composers that I did, I developed a distinct image in my head of the genre, the very same image that also comes to mind for many other people when classical music is mentioned: one of old, white men in stuffy-looking tuxedos, waving around conducting batons. This was reinforced throughout middle school and high school when we discussed different pieces we were singing in choir. We only discussed the composer of the pieces we sang when it was one of these aforementioned famous men; whenever we sung pieces by lesser known composers, such as women or people of color, we rarely discussed who had written the piece and their significance, and instead focused on the emotional and musical aspects of the piece without paying much mind to the composer of the work.
With this image influencing my perception of classical music, it became a genre I never really gravitated toward. The fact that there appeared to be no women like me who were prominent in the genre only lessened my interest in it as I grew older and began to focus on music as a potential career path. It wasn’t until I came to college, where I met colleagues and professors who were female classical musicians, that I learned that female composers even existed during the time periods in which these primary male composers in the field were thriving.
Through discussions with friends in the trombone studio of my school, and a visit to one of our many orchestra concerts where one of the ensembles was playing one of her symphonies, I learned about Amy Beach. Amy Beach was an American female composer in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Unlike some female composers at the time who were married to famous composers or musicians, she did not piggyback off of the fame of her husband, but instead made a name for herself on her own as a prominent female composer.
Amy Beach was the first female composer to premiere a piece with the New York Philharmonic, then called the Symphony Society of New York. Under the name Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, Beach’s Scena and Aria from “Mary Stuart” was performed on December 2, 1892, according to a program found in the New York Philharmonic digital archives. In the concert program from the premiere, it was detailed how Beach peaked the interest of the Symphony Society of New York after her first incredibly successful premiere with the Boston Handel and Haydn Society. As an aria, the piece featured an orchestra and vocalist, and detailed a scene from the opera Mary Stuart, which Beach used as inspiration for her reiteration of the scene.
This premiere, like many of Beach’s other accomplishments, was incredibly important. Not only is it an excellent example of female representation in the genre amongst a sea of male classical composers, but it also represents a stepping off point for female composers finding a place for their music among top ensembles. The New York Philharmonic, now regarded as one of the top symphony orchestras in the United States, might not have been the same today if it had not first chosen to premiere Beach’s composition. They demonstrated an example that was followed by many other orchestras across the country and around the world, widening a gap that was previously almost entirely closed to any group other than men.
There is still a huge issue with discrimination and lack of representation of female composers and composers who are people of color in the classical and professional music space. Though this has largely evolved into a divided and unfortunately politicized topic among musicians today, it gives me hope that one day little girls in their elementary school music classes might learn about Amy Beach and her music. Knowing that there was someone like them making beautiful music that has continued to be played for more than a century, this might inspire them to want to write music too, and though it may be small, and there is still much work to be done on all fronts for equity, it is little wins like this that I hope might begin to add up for a better future.
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