(Born September 5, 1867 in Henniker, New Hampshire; died December 27, 1944 in New York)

As a girl, Amy Beach could improvise vocal countermelodies and replicate four-part hymns at the piano; she gave her first public recital aged seven. Just as signing formed the center of Amy Beach's musical world, it was musical world, it was through songwriting that she won her initial fame as a composer, and it was songs for which she was best remembered for decades after she died. She composed songs prolifically throughout her career, creating 121 art songs. She often used them to test musical concepts that she would use in larger works.

Her songs show how committed she was to the texts she chose to set; they also show how thoroughly she had mastered the form. Her skillful craftsmanship and profound understanding and interpretation of the poetic material and her awareness of languages' natural inflections led her to create melodies that have been said to flow as effortlessly as the spoken word. It also has been posited that the relatively recent rediscovery of her songs has been aided by the expiration of copyrights.

She composed in a late-Romantic idiom throughout her life, often pattering her songs after works by European composers. She also experimented with musical styles as diverse as Scottish folk-songs and African-American spirituals. Her songs are of a very high technical and musical merit. Many of them were dedicated to prominent singers, who performed them and used them in teaching. She believed that a good song is an inspired, creative musical response to a text, which incorporates both intellect and emotion. The poetry that she set to music reflected the dominant artistic current of the time, in which art was seen as an expression of the highest idealism. Her eclectic taste in poetry is displayed also in the wide range of authors whose texts she set.

The pianist's role in the Beach's songs is as important as that of the singer. The accompaniments are technically demanding. They demonstrate her intimacy with the texts she chose to set, mastery of the form, and awareness of trends in current European musical styles.

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was also the first American woman to succeed as a composer of large scale works of serious music. In 1885, she made her piano debut with the Boston Symphony and married H.H.A. Beach, a distinguished Boston surgeon and Harvard professor, slightly older than her father. Her husband was negative about his wife's aspirations for a career as a pianist and, as a result, she turned to composition, teaching herself how to compose with music theory books.

Following the mores of Victorian society, her husband also restricted her concert appearances but encouraged her largely self-taught composing. She completed over 300 compositions (121 of them art-songs). In addition, she wrote more than 150 numbered works, ranging from chamber and orchestral works to church music. Major orchestras premiered her orchestral works, often marking the first time these orchestras had every performed music written by a female composer.

Much of Beach's work shows the influence of American late Romantic composers, as well as Brahms, Wagner, and Debussy. The majority of her compositions display her idiomatic style and gift for melody. To them she added her characteristic intensity and passion. In her later years, she moved beyond the late-Romantic style as her works became more chromatic and dissonant; nevertheless, she retained an intense lyricism throughout her career as a composer.

"Ecstasy" is the second song of three in Beach's Op. 19, written in 1891. Beach herself wrote the text for this song. Its reference to "storm and sunshine" are reinforced by the harmonic progressions that the piano traces to indicate that the music traverses both light and shade. In contrast, the voice and violin soar above, in expresive, ardent, and intertwining lines.

"Ecstasy" became so popular that the poem was included in The Poetry Digest: Annual Anthology of Verse for 1939. Beach earned enough from the royalties of this song to buy a lot on Cape Cod for a summer house.

The Three Browning Songs, Op. 44, composed in 1900, were commissioned by and dedicated to the Browning Society of Boston. Robert Browning (1812-1889) was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the most important and well-regarded Victorian poets.

Beach's well-crafted lyrical sings in the late Romantic style were initially so popular that often the audiences' enthusiastic response to them prompted them to be encored several times; they immediately became favorites in the repertoire of leading singers, too. They have remained, over the years, Beach's most popular songs. "The Year's at the Spring," the first of the songs, appeared invariably in the vocal recital repertoire in the beginning of the 20th century. It was very beloved by Beach's audiences; often, the reception was so positive that the song was encored multiple times. It was also very often chosen to be an encore.

Beach recalled that she composed this song in her head when she was riding in a train. The train wheels' constant rhythmic pattern can be detected in the piano accompaniment. The sequential patterns in the vocal line and the insistent drive of the triplets in the piano accompaniment produce a dramatic arc.