Composer Amy Beach (1867-1944) and her husband, Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach (1813-1910), a surgeon at Mass. General Hospital, were married by Phillips Brooks in 1885.  They lived directly behind Emmanuel at 28 Commonwealth Avenue.  This bronze plaque by its entrance reads:  “The first American woman  to compose a symphony and perform with the Boston Symphony Orchestra lived here from 1885-1910.”  Although she subsequently lived in Europe, New York, and elsewhere, Amy owned the house until 1918.

Dr. Beach had been a boy chorister at  Church of the Advent and was confirmed and a communicant there. He was buried, however, from Emmanuel in June 1910. Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was baptized November 4, 1910, by The Rev. Dr. Elwood Worcester and confirmed in April 1911 by Bishop William Lawrence.  Her mother, who died in February 1911, was also buried from Emmanuel.

According to Betty Buchanan, who edited the score and wrote the notes to Beach’s The Canticle of the Sun  (Recent Researches in American Music v. 57, 2006:  viii).

Amy Beach and her husband seemed to find a common ideological ground at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, which was not Anglo-Catholic, but had felt the influence musically and liturgically of the Oxford Movement and had a superb music program with a large choir of men and boys. Her deep interest in theology and philosophy is evident from the books she read and noted in her diaries and correspondence. She often referred to the writings of Elwood Worcester, Emmanuel’s rector. Believing in the interconnection within one’s total nature, he proclaimed that the moral weakness of the time was due to the fact that people were brought up to resist all natural impulses. Instead the moral life seeks a “Master Passion”, which shall be the expression of the whole personality – body, mind and spirit. The Te Deum and Benedictus from her Service in A, published by the Schmidt Company in 1905-1906, were premiered at Emmanuel during the Easter season in 1906.

Amy Beach’s music has been played in Boston over the years.  Her song “Ecstasy” was sung in 1894 by contralto Mrs. Homer E. Sawyer at the Boston Music Hall for the benefit of Emmanuel Church and the Baptist Hospital.

Amy Beach in 1908

A number of performances of Beach’s music are recorded in Emmanuel leaflets under Arthur Sewall Hyde, Emmanuel organist 1905-1908, including Christmas Eve 1905:  Ante Communion Postlude, Invocation, and  April 8, 1906: Evening Prayer Offertory Anthem, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.  Invocation (op. 55) was also performed by Ellen Hinkle, flute, and Nancy Granert, organ, on May 19, 2013, as part of our Sunday service.

Lynwood Farnham, Emmanuel organist 1912-1918, who was hired at Mrs. Beach’s suggestion, used her music at many services during his tenure.  Our service leaflets record several premieres including her Te Deum and Benedictus in A.  The 1917 Yearbook‘s Report of the Organist and Choirmaster notes:

The past season has been one of unusual interest. Among the choral works sung were … a selection from Bach’s “St. John” Passion [and] a new Cantate Domino and Deus Misereatur by Mrs. Beach.

• See this list of her sacred choral works.
• Listen to Amy Beach: American Romantic released in 2022 by PBS in its video series Now Hear This.

In his The Remarkable Mrs. Beach, American Composer: A biographical account based on her diaries, letters, newspaper clippings and personal reminiscences (Warren MI: Harmonie Park Press, 1994) Walter S. Jenkins noted:

Funeral services for Dr. Beach were held on Thursday morning, June 30 [1910] at Emmanuel….The Rev. Dr. Elwood Worcester, rector of the church, officiated at the very simple service, which attracted a church-full of distinguished representatives of the medical and musical professions of Boston.  Immediately after the church services, Dr. Beach’s body was taken to the crematory at Forest Hills Cemetery, and following cremation his ashes were disposed in an urn embedded in the Beach lot [#3988 Dahlia Path], where, at the back side of this lot, the bodies of Dr. Beach’s mother, father, and father-in-law already lay.

Amy Beach’s Benedictus and Benedictus es were premiered in February 1924 at Emmanuel Church Boston.  The anthem “Let This Mind be in You”  (op. 105) was first sung on Palm Sunday 1924 at Emmanuel. In 1927 she spent Christmas in Boston and “heard her Constant Christmas beautifully given” at the carol service on Christmas Day at Emmanuel Church on Newbury St, and on 9 January 1928 performances of her Benedictus es, Benedictus, Kyrie, andGloria tibi at the same church “went finely”.

Albert Williams Snow [d. 1939], Emmanuel Organist 1918-1938, taught organ at New England Conservatory and performed with the BSO. In 1936, the 75th anniversary of the Church’s founding included music composed by parishioner Amy Beach.