The Edward Hatch Memorial Shell on the Charles River Esplanade is one of Boston's best-known landmarks. But why was Amy Beach, one of Boston's most successful and celebrated composers, not included in the 86 composers' names chosen to decorate the Shell?

Dr. Liane Curtis, Musicologist, has investigated the choice of the original names (dating from its construction in 1940). Further, she and the Boston Women's Heritage Trail proposed to the MDC that Beach's name be added to the Shell, an initiative that drew support from Pops conductor Keith Lockhart, and other musicians and scholars, both locally and nationally.

Curtis's lively presentation will introduce Beach and her stunning musical achievements, as well as the history of the Shell. The MDC has added Beach's name to the Shell, and the Pops, led by Maestro Lockhart, celebrated the addition by performing some of Beach's music in their Hatch Shell concert on Saturday evening, July 8.

Liane Curtis, Ph.D., Musicology, is Resident Scholar in Women's Studies at Brandeis University.

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach

Contemporary music lovers are becoming aware that in late nineteenth-century America a group of composers appeared on the scene writing music equal to that of their European contemporaries, such as Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Chopin, and that the composer many music critics regard as the most outstanding of that group was a woman, Amy Beach (1867-1944).

The first nationally and internationally acclaimed American woman composer, Beach created music for orchestra, various chamber ensembles, chorus, piano and song. During her lifetime, which spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, her music was performed by America's leading symphonies, instrumentalists and singers. Her seventy-fifth birthday was celebrated in Washington, D. C., with two nights of concerts at the Phillips Gallery and performances throughout the city.

Beach began composing in the late Romantic style as tempered by Impressionism. In the 1920s she departed this idiom and moved toward expressionism and then modernism. An examination of the cantata, Canticle of the Sun, reveals that Beach embraced the harmonic and melodic practices of composers in the twentieth century which challenged the tonal system of their predecessors.

For almost fifty years after Beach's death her music, and that of her New England contemporaries, disappeared from the concert stage. First, leading American musicologists began to discover this treasure filed away in the Library of Congress, the New England Conservatory of Music, and other collections. Music of such sterling quality and joyous beauty immediately attracted a number of performers, and a long overdue renaissance of these American gems is taking place.

Liane Curtis, Ph.D. Musicology, is Resident Scholar in Women's Studies at Brandeis. She researches issues of women in music, and advocates for their full inclusion in concert programming and music curriculum. She is writing a book on the Anglo-American composer Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979).

Dr. Curtis has taught at institutions including Harvard, Bowdoin, and The Ohio State University, and has published in journals including The Musical Quarterly, The Musical Times, The National Women's Studies Association Journal, and American Music. Also a music critic, she writes regularly for Bay Windows, and has published in the San Francisco Examiner

Amy Beach written information courtesy of Capital Hill Choral Society

Amy Beach Photo courtesy of:

• International Alliance of Women in Music
• http://music.acu.edu/www/iawm/historical/beach.html

Edward Hatch Memorial Shell photo courtest of Metropolitan District Commission- Commonwealth of Massachusetts.