Amy Beach (1867-1944) was a leading representative of the late nineteenth-century Romantic musical style cultivated by The Boston School; yet she had no formal training as a composer and never studied abroad. In 1885 she was launched as a concert pianist; however, her marriage in that same year, at eighteen, to Dr. H. H. A. Beach, a prominent Boston surgeon, rather forced her to composing instead. A self-taught genius, she mastered every form of composition from the symphony to the simple song.