The nineteenth-century American, Amy Marcy Beach (or Mrs. H. H. A. Beach as she was also known, in deference to her husband), was the first female classical composer of any importance in the United States. One of her most popular compositions, Symphony in E minor "Gaelic", was the first large orchestral work by a woman to be performed by a major American orchestra.

Beach was associated with a group of musicians and composers who lived and worked in the Boston area known as the Second New England School or New England Classicists. (The First New England School refers to the "Yankee Tunesmiths" of the 1770s that included, most notably, William Billings.) Although one of the first classical musicians fully trained in the United States, Beach made no attempt to depart from the European tradition of composition. Stylistically her work is close to Brahms, Liszt, Schumann, and Chopin. The late nineteenth-century Romantic artistic ideals (the representation of nature, technical virtuosity showcasing the individuality of the performer, and programmatic elements) are very much in evidence in Beach's solo piano work Four Sketches, Op. 15. The piano writing is impressive owing much to the fact that Beach was an accomplished concert pianist having made her debut with the Boston Symphony at the age of sixteen. Each of the four movements is episodic in form, has a very picturesque title, and is descriptive. In Autumn depicts swirling leaves in cascading chromatic (half-step movement) roulades; Phantoms is a Chopinesque piece in waltz-time; Dreaming, Lisztian in style, is passionate and sentimental; finally, Fireflies is a delightful display of technique. This is the work of a pioneer who was able to create a thoroughly individual voice in spite of the social and cultural limitations imposed upon her gender at the time.

© Mona DeQuis, All Music Guide