WorldView Episode 64: Ethel Smyth
This week’s episode of WorldView marks the return of British composer Ethel Smyth. Her work “The March of the Women” was featured in the third episode of this show. In this hour, tune in to hear a popular aria from Smyth’s opera “The Boatswain’s Mate.”
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth was born in Sidcup, London, in April of 1858. She first began studying music at age seventeen, finding early inspiration in the works of Wagner and Berlioz. Despite her father’s initial opposition to her pursuit of a career in music, Smyth was able to begin lesson with Carl Reinecke and Heinrich von Herzogenberg. Through connections at Leipzig University, Smyth was introduced to various high-profile composers of the time, including Edvard Grieg (WorldView Episode 8) and Antonín Dvořák (WorldView Episode 9). By the 1890s, Smyth had begun composing and publishing operas. Her French opera “The Wreckers” is often considered one of the best from that time period in British composition. Another one of Smyth’s operas, “Der Wald”, was the only women-composed opera to be performed by the New York Metropolitan Opera between 1903 and 2016.
Smyth joined the British Women’s Suffrage and Political Union in 1910, and quickly became heavily involved in the group’s cause. She worked closely with the group’s leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, participating in the 1912 attack on Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt’s house. The composer was arrested and spent two months in Holloway Prison, where she orchestrated “The March of the Women” for a chorus of her fellow prisoners. When the women’s suffrage movement ended in 1918, Smyth continued to compose. She passed away in 1944, leaving behind six operas, concerto, and more than one hundred orchestral and chamber works.
Throughout her life, Smyth had multiple romantic relationships with both women and men, including piano player Violet Gordon-Woodhouse. She was also a very close friend of writer Virginia Woolf, with whom she would remain friends until Woolf’s death in 1941. In this episode, the Plymouth Music Series, Phillip Brunelle, and soprano Eiddwen Harrhy perform Smyth’s “Mrs. Walter’s Aria from Boatswain’s Mate.” Enjoy, and happy Pride Month!
WorldView Episode Sixty-Four Playlist:
Daniel PINKHAM, “Quarries”, {Sally Pinkas (pf), Evan Hirsch (pf)} - Arsis
Ethel SMYTH, “Mrs. Walter’s Aria from Boatswain’s Mate”, {The Plymouth Music Series, Phillip Brunelle, Eiddwen Harrhy (sop)}
Douglas LILBURN, “Symphony No. 1”, {New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, James Judd} - Naxos
WorldView is a classical music radio show featuring composers from everywhere in the world - except Western Europe. Tune in to hear works by lesser-known artists such as Jennifer Higdon and Sergio Assad, and widen your knowledge of classical music. Hinke Younger hosts each week’s episode of WorldView on Mondays at 4AM, 9AM and 6PM (with rebroadcasts Saturdays at 2PM and 7PM) on Charlottesvilleclassical.org.