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Ethel Smyth

London, 1858 - 1944, Woking, Surrey

BiographyEthel Smyth was a twentieth-century British composer and a champion of women’s rights and female musicians. During her lifetime, she composed symphonies, choral works (musical pieces written for a choir), and operas including The Wreckers,1906, and is most well known for The March of Women, an anthem for the women’s suffrage movement. In 1922, she was named a Dame of the British Empire.
In 1910, Smyth met Emmeline Pankhurst, an ardent feminist, one of the founders of the British suffrage movement, and head of the Women’s Social and Political Union, a militant all-women’s activist group founded in 1903 that campaigned especially for women’s suffrage. Due, in part, to Pankhurst’s influence, Smyth took two years off from her music career to devote her time to women’s rights and suffrage activism. During this time, she wrote The March of Women, 1911, a piece that later became the battle cry for the British Women’s Movement. In 1912, Smyth and Pankhurst were arrested in London, along with 100 other suffragettes, for throwing stones at the houses of suffrage opponents; she was imprisoned for two months. While in Holloway prison, Smyth led the women in a rousing rendition of The March of Women, conducting them with her toothbrush, in what would become the most famous performance of the song.
She studied Brahmsian musical composition (the romantic style of lyrical and classical music developed by the German composer Brahms) and music theory at Leipzig Conservatory in Germany beginning in 1877 and her sophisticated music elicited rave reviews. In 1889, she returned to London and developed talents in multiple areas of composition, culminating in an oeuvre that included orchestral pieces, choral arrangements, chamber music, and six operas. She earned acclaim for her performance of Mass in D, which was enthusiastically received in London in 1893. Despite this success and her immense talent, she struggled to find musicians to perform her works because she was a woman.
Smyth began to lose her hearing in 1912. After visiting an aural specialist in Paris, she went to Egypt, where she began work on The Boatswain’s Mate, a comic opera. This became one of the most revolutionary pieces she completed, due in part to her unorthodox style and method—the first half of the opera contained both words and music, but the second half was entirely instrumental. The Boatswain’s Mate, a more accessible and light-hearted piece for the general public, was partially in response to the Grand Opera style of the time, which emphasized splendor and sophistication.
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Dame Ethel Smyth
BRITISH COMPOSER
WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
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Alternative Title: Ethel Mary Smyth
Dame Ethel Smyth, in full Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, (born April 22, 1858, London, England—died May 9, 1944, Woking, Surrey), British composer whose work was notably eclectic, ranging from conventional to experimental.

Born into a military family, Smyth studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and was encouraged by Johannes Brahms and Antonín Dvo?ák. She first gained notice with her sweeping Mass in D (1893). Her best-known work is The Wreckers (1906), the most-admired English opera of its time. March of the Women (1911) reflected Smyth’s strong involvement in the woman suffrage movement. The comic opera The Boatswain’s Mate (1916) enjoyed considerable success. Smyth wrote a multivolume autobiography, Impressions That Remained (1919–40).
CITE
Contributor:
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
Article Title:
Dame Ethel Smyth
Website Name:
Encyclopædia Britannica
Publisher:
Encyclopædia Britannica, inc.
Date Published:
April 01, 2016
URL:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ethel-Smyth
Access Date:
January 08, 2018
I.S.

Person TypeIndividual

Last Updated8/7/24

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