Never heard of?!! Ethel Smyth – successful composer, ardent suffragette

In their podcast series Never heard of?! NPO Radio 4 and VPRO Vrije Geluiden showcase female composers. In short episodes of 15 to 18 minutes, Rae Milford and Andrea van Pol alternately shed light on their life and work. On 6 August 2021 it was the turn of Ethel Smyth (1858-1944).

Van Pol en Milford recount how Smyth ended up in prison as a suffragette, where she immediately composed her March of the Women; that she was friends with contemporaries such as Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, enjoyed the patronage of celebrities such as Princesse de Polignac and Queen Victoria, and was nevertheless soon forgotten after her death in 1944. ‘But she was convinced that new generations would rediscover her work’, they conclude their podcast. In 2005 Smyth was my Composer of the week for VARA Radio 4.

ETHEL SMYTH: VITAL AND FEARLESS

‘If I hadn’t had three things that have nothing to do with music, I would have gone to waste from loneliness and disillusionment at an early age’, wrote Ethel Smyth when she was sixty. Those three things were: ‘A cast iron constitution, an outspoken fighting mentality and a modest but independent income.’ Many people know Smyth mainly as one of the famous English suffragettes, who fought for women’s right to vote and wrote the famous March of the Women, which became a sort of battle song.

Smyth had enormous vitality and led a stormy life, in which she made no secret of her love for women. But most importantly, in a time when women were hardly taken seriously as composers, she created an impressive oeuvre, in which large-scale choral and orchestral works abound. Unlike many of her peers, she did not need to limit herself to composing chamber music.

Smyth wrote no less than six operas, of which Der Wald was staged by the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1903. – Never before had an opera by a woman been heard there, and it would last until 2016 before this occurred once more, when they staged L’amour de loin by Kaija Saariaho. Smyth’s most successful and best-known opera The Wreckers seems to have been the model for the opera Peter Grimes, which Benjamin Britten composed a year after her death.

A LIFE FOR MUSIC

Ethel Smyth was an original and strong-willed soul who did not allow herself to be dictated to by anything or anyone. Her fighting spirit came from no strangers: she was born the daughter of an army general, on 22 April 1858. As was customary in upper-class circles, she was taught by governesses as a child and then sent to a boarding school.

Her upbringing naturally included piano lessons, and when Smyth learned to play Beethoven’s piano sonatas, she decided to ‘devote my life to music’- A salient detail: just like Beethoven, Smyth would become deaf at an early age.

In a time when women were hardly taken seriously as composers, Ethel Smyth created an impressive oeuvre, in which large-scale choral and orchestral works abound.

Tweet

When she announced at 17 that she was going to study composition, her father exclaimed that he would ‘rather see her dead and buried’. Whereupon she decided on the spot to ‘make life at home into such hell that my parents had to let me go’, as she commemorates in her hilarious memoirs. In 1877 she went to the Leipzig Conservatory, where she studied with Carl Reinecke and others.

Characteristic for her critical and independent mind is that after one year only Smyth left the academy, dissatisfied with the teaching climate. She continued to live in Leipzig, however, where she became intensely involved in musical life. She was soon on friendly terms with musicians such as Johannes Brahms, Edvard Grieg, Joseph Joachim, Julius Röntgen and Clara Schumann, who stimulated her compositional aspirations. Because of her fearless, determined attitude and musical intensity, Brahms jokingly called her ‘the oboe’.

She studied privately with Heinrich von Herzogenberg, whose teaching made her blossom. She also fell madly in love with his wife Lisl, the first in a series of fervently loved women. ‘If I ever worshipped a creature on earth, it was Lisl’, she would later say. ‘She was attractive, intelligent and musically extraordinarily gifted’.

Elisabeth had studied with Brahms for a short time, whose music Ethel greatly admired. She also had great respect for Bach, whom she described as ‘the beginning and end of music’. This love is reflected in her Prelude and Fugue for piano solo, which she composed in 1880.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MNS5woXjZQ

POWERFUL GESTURES – MELODIC RICHNESS

Ethel Smyth gradually developed her own style, rooted in Romanticism and interspersed with Wagner, Debussy and English folklore. Whatever genre she composed in, her music always grabs you by the scruff of the neck with its powerful gestures, overwhelming melodic richness and varied, well-balanced structures.

Her music was frequently performed by famous musicians in prestigious halls. Yet it was not until 1883 that she published her first opus, the String Quintet in E major opus 1. This work is influenced by her affair with Elizabeth von Herzogenberg, who was a fervent advocate of Antonin Dvořák. Smyth had met Dvořák herself and in the first movement of her quintet, we clearly recognise elements of Bohemian folk music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZKEigaXFoU

The String Quintet had its premiere in the Leipzig Gewandhaus. ‘The piece lacks the feminine charm one would expect from a female composer’, wrote one critic. Smyth was annoyed by such preconceived judgements, but could let them slide because she did not have to live off her compositions.

Independent and headstrong as she was, she also flouted social conventions. Sometimes she even managed to antagonise her best friends. When, in 1884, her relationship with Elisabeth van Herzogenberg had turned into a close friendship, she began an affair with her Lisl’s brother-in-law Harry Brewster. Lisl was affronted and turned away from her in shock. Though this saddened Smyth, she did not give up on Brewster; to ease the heartache, she bought a little dog, Marco.

LARGE-SCALE COMPOSITIONS

In the same period, Peter Tchaikovsky advised her to start writing orchestral works. He gave her some instrumentation advice and wrote to a friend: ‘She is one of the few female composers who really matter. She has composed several interesting works. The best of these is a Violin Sonata, which I heard in an excellent performance by the composer herself and the violinist A Brodsky.’ – He is referring here to Adolph Brodsky, a famous Russian violinist who spent some time in Leipzig. In response to Tchaikovsky’s exhortation, Smyth wrote her ambitious, almost forty-minute long Serenade in 1889.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQk2o38c_c8

The Serenade had its world premiere in 1890 in the renowned Chrystal Palace in London. It was also her first composition to be performed in England. Earlier that year she had returned from Leipzig to her native country, where she fell in love with yet another woman, Pauline Trevelyan. ‘Her extreme gentleness and fragile beauty adorn her soul’, she wrote of her new lover.

Trevelyan was a devout Catholic and her intense devotion to this faith inspired Smyth to compose a grand Mass in D for soloists, choir and orchestra. She completed this over one-hour long work in a year, mostly at Cap Martin, near Monaco. Here, her friend Empress Eugénie, the widow of Napoleon III, had a summer villa. When she had finished her Mass in 1891, Smyth played two parts for Eugénie and Queen Victoria during a stay at the royal castle Balmoral in Scotland.  

In her memoirs, Smyth reports vividly: ‘It involved me singing both the choral parts and the solos and trumpeting the orchestral effects as well as I could. One particular effect in the drums even involved footwork, and I imagine that – at least in terms of volume – choir and orchestra were hardly missed.’ Queen Victoria was very impressed and invited her to come and play a longer excerpt. Her son Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, then arranged for the Royal Choral Society to premiere the Mass on 18 January 1893 in the Royal Albert Hall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVSpw3srMbc

OPERAS

The premiere of the Mass in 1893 was well received, except for one sour response. ‘It was funny to see a female composer trying to ascend to the higher regions of musical art’, wrote one critic. George Bernard Shaw described the Mass as ‘the light literature of church music’. Such criticisms increasingly antagonised Smyth and contributed to her eventually becoming an active campaigner for women’s suffrage.

Sir Thomas Beecham: ‘The prisoners marched across the courtyard singing March of the Women at the top of their voices, while Ethel Smyth, from a window, beat time in almost Bacchic frenzy with a toothbrush’.

Tweet

Smyth had always had a great affinity with the human voice, and after the success of her Mass in D, she began work on the first of six operas, Fantasio. She wrote the libretto with Harry Brewster, her only male lover. After endless peddling, the opera was finally performed in Weimar. Shortly afterwards, she completed Der Wald, which was staged with great success at Covent Garden in 1902 – described by Smyth as ‘the only blazing triumph I ever had’.

The American premiere in the New York MET a year later led to questionable praise in The Telegraph: ‘This little woman writes music with a masculine hand and has a sound and logical brain, such as is supposed to be the especial gift of the rougher sex. There is not a weak or effeminate note in Der Wald, nor an unstable sentiment.’

For her next opera, The Wreckers, Harry Brewster again wrote the libretto, based on a legend Smyth had heard in Cornwall. The inhabitants of an 18th century fishing village lure cargo ships onto the cliffs, after which they plunder them. The lovers Thirza and Mark rebel against this and light warning fires. They are discovered and locked up in a cave, where they are drowned in the rising tide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mIyT62cBA4

The Wreckers premiered in Leipzig in 1906, in a drastically shortened version. Nevertheless, The Times judged it to be ‘one of the very few modern operas that we should count as Great Art’. In England, the opera was performed three years later, but despite its success and the power of the score, it is rarely if ever performed on stage today. My attempts to interest programmers and conductors invariably came to nothing.

SUFFRAGETTE

At the beginning of the 20th century, when Smyth had a brief affair with Princesse de Polignac and started to spice up her music with touches of French flair. In 1910, she received an honorary doctorate from Durham University and that same year she fell in love with Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the English women’s movement. She decided to devote the next two years to the cause of women’s suffrage and became one of the militant suffragettes. After throwing a stone through the windows of the Home Office, she was sentenced to six weeks in prison.

While in prison, she promptly wrote the protest piece March of the Women for female choir, which would become the anthem of the women’s movement. When Sir Thomas Beecham visited her in prison, he stumbled on a scene typical of Smyth. The prisoners marched across the courtyard singing March of the Women at the top of their voices, while Smyth, from a window, ‘beaming with delight, beat time in almost Bacchic frenzy with a toothbrush’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ_ppIKBWPY

After this, Smyth composed her comic opera The Boatswain’s Mate, in which the high-spirited Mrs. Waters rejects two suitors because she does not see any point in giving up ‘my independence for Mr. Wrong’. – Smyth herself had always refused to marry her lifelong friend Harry Brewster, who died in 1908. – In her opera she included quotes from March of the Women.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXDlk63uGkQ

DEATH

In the early twentieth century, Smyth slowly lost her hearing, which made composing more difficult. She therefore developed another talent: writing. In 1919, a two-volume autobiography, Impressions that Remained, was published. Thanks to its lively style it was highly successful, providing her with a welcome extra income. In 1922, she was knighted, in recognition of her great importance to English musical life. Henceforth she went through life as Dame Ethel Smyth; four years later she received an honorary doctorate from Oxford.

Despite her deafness, Ethel Smyth continued to compose. In 1927 she wrote her much-praised Concerto for violin, horn and orchestra. In 1930 she wrote her last large-scale work, the impressive cantata/vocal symphony The Prison for soprano, baritone, choir and orchestra on a metaphysical text by Brewster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y_T9pxvv8A

OBLIVION AND BELATED RECOGNITION

Smyth remained militant in the last decades of her life, campaigning for the right of women to play in orchestras and to compose. Her music was heavily promoted by such luminaries as Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter, who described her as ‘a composer of great significance’.

Towards the end of her life, however, Ethel Smyth’s music fell out of favour and was less frequently performed. Many saw her as an eccentric composer who published amusing memoirs. On the other hand, she also received belated recognition.

Bernard Shaw, for instance, responded enthusiastically to a new performance of her Mass in D: ‘Dear Lady Ethel, thank you for persuading me to listen to that Mass. Wonderful! […] It was your music that cured me forever of the old delusion that women could not do the work of men in art and other things.’ Shaw even confessed that without Smyth he would never have been able to write his play Saint Joan.

After a short illness Ethel Smyth died on 8 May 1944, at the age of 86. Her unfailing confidence in the power of her music proved prophetic, as Van Pol and Milford observe in their podcast. Lately, Smyth’s ever-scintillating music has been resurrected (be it sparsely) in concert halls and on CD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VKc3jRxvvE

Contemporary Classical is ranked among the 70 best classical music blogs worldwide. Your support, however small, is welcome through PayPal (friends option) or direct money transfer to NL82 INGB 0004261694, TJM Derks Amsterdam

A 1958 radio documentary features testimonies from Ethel Smyth herself, Thomas Beecham, Bruno Walter, Ethel Davidson (niece of Smyth), C S Lang, Ronald Storrs, Adrian Boult, Herbert van Thal & others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP_qrXdKdq8

#ClaraSchumann #DerWald #EmmelinePankhurst #EthelSmyth #HarryBrewster #TheWreckers

First Ladies at the MET: Ethel Smyth & Kaija Saariaho

In 1903, Ethel Smyth debuted at the Metropolitan Opera New York with her opera Der Wald, as the first female composer ever. One hundred and thirteen years later, Kaija Saariaho followed in her footsteps with L’Amour de loin. Recently, Der Wald was released on CD. Saariaho died this summer; the MET has scheduled Innocence in 2025-26. This opera had its Dutch premiere in October.

There are people with whom you feel a deep connection, even though you have never met them. Such a person is Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), whose magnificent opera The Wreckers was performed at the 2022 Glyndebourne Opera Festival. The CD recording of this opera so enraptured me in 1994 that I immediately made attempts to have it performed in the Netherlands. Fruitlessly, as I wrote before.

Because…, well. Smyth was a woman, and even long after her death that still proved to be a major handicap, as I myself experienced many times. As a child, for instance, I was not allowed to join the local brass band – because I was a girl. When I was finally admitted, the conductor constantly found new ways to humiliate and/or ignore me. One day I decided I’d had enough. I threw my instrument at his feet and left, never to return. A century before, Smyth had resolutely snatched all parts from the lecterns when a conductor refused to perform her opera Der Wald in full. This made us soulmates.

Struggle to get Der Wald staged

Speaking of the setbacks Smyth faced, previous to the world premiere of Der Wald in 1903 she said: ‘The life of any composer who values his art more than his peace of mind is one long struggle from beginning to end, especially if you are a woman musician. The persistent and ever-increasing pressure on body, mind and soul, make it so hard to bear.’

‘I have exceptional physical fitness. I golf, I ride, I do all outdoor sports. Otherwise, the disappointments, discouragements and inevitable difficulties would have destroyed my health long ago. I managed to win the race. It seems to me that the hour has struck for women’s work in the music world. Any woman after me will find it easier because of my pioneering journey over this barren road.’ 

Unfortunately, her assessment turned out to be a bit too optimistic, as only in recent years more attention is paid to the work of female composers, especially thanks to the #MeToo movement. These days some male composers even complain that composition commissions mostly go to (young) women. Looking at concert programmes, however, one sees that they are still dominated by men.

Smyth had to fight for her music throughout her life, and the world premiere of Der Wald was no exception. The idea came from writer-philosopher Henry Brewster (1850-1908), her only male lover ever, whom she invariably called H.B. In 1898, they had written the libretto together for her first opera, the also German-language Fantasio. Brewster had even asked her to marry him, but with her characteristic decisiveness, she replied: ‘I wonder why it is so much easier for me to love my own sex more passionately than yours.’ Nevertheless they remained intimate friends until Brewster’s untimely death in 1908.

No care for mortal joys or sorrows

His synopsis of Der Wald immediately appealed to Smyth. She described the story as ‘a short, poignant tragedy which for a moment interrupts the tranquil rites of the Spirits of the Forest’, while the real story was ‘the eternal march of Nature – Nature that enwraps human destiny and recks nothing of mortal joys and sorrows’.

Not surprisingly, the opera is set in a forest. The wood spirits sing of their own immortality in contrast to the short lifespan of humans and animals. The young couple Röschen and Heinrich are to be wed and ask the blessing of the forest, but cruel Iolanthe goes all out to take Heinrich away from his sweetheart. The latter, however, remains steadfast even when Iolanthe threatens him with death. He snaps at her: ‘Then take my life, thou damned witch, and hell take thy soul!’ Whereupon Iolanthe kills Heinrich and Röschen throws herself dying in his arms. Unperturbed the forest spirits resume their rituals.

Powerful score spiced with pinches of Wagner and Debussy

The score of the one-act opera is packed with powerful choral and orchestral passages in Smyth’s signature style. This is rooted in romanticism and laced with pinches of Wagner, Debussy and English folklore. The overwhelming melodic richness and the varied, well-structured set-up are striking. When things get tense, Smyth doesn’t hesitate to virtually shut down the orchestral apparatus, allowing the soloists to convey the dramatic content even more empathically. In more light-hearted passages, we hear preliminary echoes of William Walton’s Façade.

Despite the necessary hurdles, Smyth managed to get Der Wald performed at the Royal Theatre in Berlin. The world premiere on 9 April 1902 was received somewhat coolly by critics, but audiences responded positively, becoming increasingly enthusiastic at the next three performances. In July, the opera was also staged at Covent Garden in an English translation, generating a resounding success. Smyth wrote in her memoirs: ‘It was the only blazing triumph I ever had.’

Der Wald first opera by a woman composer at the MET

Determined to get Der Wald performed in America too, Smyth took the night boat from London to Paris to meet Maurice Grau, manager of the MET. She arrived at 7am, called Grau at his hotel and got on the ferry back at 11am – with a contract. The handwritten document is preserved in Berlin’s State Library. We read that Smyth was to receive 40 British pounds for two performances and 20 pounds for each subsequent production. ‘You are certainly a businesswoman,’ Grau had observed. Still, the fee seems on the low side by modern standards: 40 pounds then are roughly equivalent to 6300 pounds now, somewhat over seven thousand euros.

‘Determined to get Der Wald performed in America too, Smyth took the night boat from London to Paris to meet Maurice Grau, manager of the MET. She arrived at 7am, called Grau at his hotel and got on the ferry back at 11am – with a contract.’

Tweet Ethel Smyth, portrait by John Singer Sargent

That the MET would bring an opera by a woman caused quite a stir in the US. Months before the premiere, the occasion was covered in every conceivable media outlet. Smyth herself travelled to New York and gave many interviews. In 2021 American pianist and musicologist Amy Zigler managed to dig up as many as 102 articles, published in 21 different states, ranging from previews, interviews, reviews to simple announcements. A striking constant is that Smyth’s womanhood is explicitly stressed, as well as her connections with the European aristocracy (she was friends with Empress Eugénie and Queen Victoria, among others) and the American upper class (John Singer Sargent drew her portrait in 1901). 

US premiere resounding public success

The premiere – in the original German version – on 11 March 1903, conducted by Grau, was a resounding success. The audience rewarded Smyth with a thunderous applause that lasted  over 10 minutes, bombarding her with flowers when she appeared on stage. However, reviews from New York critics were extremely negative. ‘The case is one of vaulting ambition and a general incompetency to write anything beyond the most obvious commonplaces’, observes The New York Times. The Sun denounces its ‘vigour and masculinity’, while the Evening World calls the music ‘distinctly unfeminine, it lacks sweetness and grace of expression’. – So precisely the ambitious and powerful nature of her music is held against Smyth.

Her skilful orchestration is reluctantly mentioned at times, invariably followed by the accusation that any melodic ingenuity would be missing, and the music uninspired and without passion. Remarkably often, too, Smyth is called ‘girl’, even though she was already 44 years old. Almost a century later, little had changed: when I started working as a music journalist in the mid-nineties, it struck me that in the sporadic articles featuring women composers, they were invariably referred to by their first names. – A highly effective way to make a person seem small and insignificant.

1903 New York – misogynous and provincial

Today New York may count as the enlightened epicentre of the Western world, a century ago it was rather provincial; its critics had a misogynous disposition and listened with firm ear flaps on. In stark contrast, reviewers in the other 20 states praised Smyth’s overpowering, confident style. The Indianapolis Journal mentions the ‘wealth of musical ideas and a skill of construction which result in a strongly rounded whole’; the Topeka State Journal speaks of ‘a work of refinement, finish and musicality’, while the Telegraph calls her harmonic palette ‘masterful and convincing’, praising her ‘excellent sense of timbre. There is no sparing of brass, and there is no mincing of the means that speak the language of musical passion’. 

Smyth herself faced only the reviews from New York, but where years later I still get vicariously furious, she did not let herself off the hook: ‘Der Wald is certainly not fit for that tribe’, she writes to Brewster. – With whom she promptly began work on her next opera, The Wreckers. Just how diametrically opposed the critics’ reaction was to that of the audience is  evidenced by the fact that Der Wald produced the biggest box-office success of the entire season.

2016 New York – praise for Kaija Saariaho

It would take a hundred and thirteen years before the MET again ventured into an opera by a woman, L’Amour de loin by Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023), whom I also portrayed before. The reception of Saariaho’s opera in 2016 was considerably more favourable than the acrid bias Smyth had faced in 1903. For one thing women composers were no longer an absolute rarity, but perhaps more importantly, the opera had already made a 16-year-long triumphant tour of international stages.

The contrast between the two composers could hardly be greater. Whereas Smyth had a distinctly powerful style that draws you irrevocably into a musical argument brimming with full stops, commas and exclamation marks, Saariaho paints rather in pastel shades. She spins ever-changing, filigree fabrics of sound without fixed contours, immersing us in a benevolent ocean of sound, which blurs the sense of time and place.

Kaija Saariaho + Thea Derks at Dutch National Opera, February 2016

They were also quite different in temperament: Smyth was outspoken and militant, did not let anything or anyone get her down, and had a great sense of humour; I laughed my ass off at her memoirs. Saariaho was her opposite. Although I love her music, too, and interviewed her several times, we never developed a personal connection. Saariaho was reserved and formulated with extreme caution, piercing me with her ever suspicious gaze. Her pointed eyebrows, raised high, made her facial expression seem even sterner than she probably intended. Nor have I ever caught her laughing out loud; at most, a faint smile sometimes appeared on her lips.

Towards a canon of women composers

Like Smyth, Saariaho composed six operas, but unlike her British predecessor, she was invariably successful; she is considered one of the most important composers of our time. Her last opera, Innocence, was again showered with praise after its premiere in Aix-en-Provence in 2021. ‘An opera for the ages,’ a Dutch newspaper summed it up succinctly.

So in terms of appreciation of women composers, things have changed a bit for the better in the last hundred years. The MET has commissioned new opera’s from Jane Tesori and Missy Mazzoli, and Saariaho’s Innocence is scheduled for its 2025-26 season.

The wait now is for a reappraisal of Ethel Smyth. The splendid recording of Der Wald by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and great soloists such as Morgan Pearse and Natalya Romaniw is surely a step in the right direction. It underlines once again that Smyth deserves a permanent place in the opera repertoire. I hope that in the foreseeable future we can rightly speak of a canon of Ladies at the MET.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd7sFsDXj9o&ab_channel=BBCSingers-Topic

* Amy Zigler: “What a splendid chance missed!”: Dame Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald at the Met. Opera Journal, December 2021.

This article first appeared in the Nov-Dec issue of the Dutch music magazine De Nieuwe Muze.

I will play Der Wald in my radio show An Ox on the Roof on Concertzender NL on Sunday December between 5-6 pm Central European Time. The broadcast stays online for streaming.  

#DerWald #EthelSmyth #HBBrewster #KaijaSaariaho #MeToo #TheWreckers