Ethel Smyth

But be careful not to confuse her with Ethel Smith (1902-1996), the famous American organist who pioneered the Hammond organ in pop music and jazz, perhaps best known for her interpretation of “Tico Tico.” Although the two artists share similar first and last names, they evolved in distinct musical worlds and eras: Ethel Smyth (with a “y”) was a British classical composer of the late Romantic period, while Ethel Smith (with an “i”) was an American organist active during the mid-20th century.

A vocation against all odds

Family hostility towards her musical career 

Ethel Mary Smyth was born on April 22, 1858, in Sidcup, a suburb of London, to a British military upper middle class family. Growing up alongside seven siblings in Aldershot, Ethel was subject to the military discipline and rigid social conventions that came with it, especially during the Victorian era. Her father, Major General John Hall Smyth, was an authoritarian British army officer. Her mother, Nina Struth, was French.

From an early age, Ethel’s governess introduced her to music. The piano quickly became her passion, and at the age of 12 she already wanted to become a composer. In Victorian England, women were forced to rule out musical careers; music could never be a profession for a woman from a wealthy family. Her parents were categorically opposed to her ambitions, but Ethel Smyth already possessed the iron will that would characterize her throughout her life. She went on a hunger strike until her father gave in to her unwavering determination.

In 1877, Ethel’s musical dreams took her to Leipzig, Germany, when she was 19 years old. It was a major personal victory to study music in an era where women rarely had a say in their own destiny.

Studies in Leipzig

Ethel Smyth enrolled at the Conservatory in Leipzig, becoming the first woman to take composition classes at this prestigious institution. She studied with Carl Reinecke, director of the Conservatory and renowned composer. She also took piano lessons with Louis Maas and harmony and counterpoint lessons with Salomon Jadassohn.

But she was disappointed. The Conservatory's teaching style was too conservative, giving her no wiggle room to find her compositional voice or experiment. Ethel decided to pause her studies to take private lessons with Heinrich von Herzogenberg, a renowned composer and choir director. Now, Ethel was getting somewhere: he helped her develop a unique style that had prominent composers excited about her music. During her years in Leipzig, Ethel Smyth met the leading figures of the music world, including Johannes Brahms, Edvard Grieg, Clara Schumann, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The latter, impressed by the young Englishwoman's talent, strongly encouraged her to pursue her career and advised her to take orchestration lessons.

Tchaikovsky later wrote an eloquent testimony in his memoirs: "Miss Smyth is one of the few female composers who are among those working in the field of music. She has composed several interesting works, the best of which I have heard, a violin sonata, which was extremely well played by the composer herself. She showed promise for a serious and talented career in the future." This encouragement from one of the greatest composers of the time strengthened Ethel's resolve in her musical vocation.

Rejection of social norms 

From an early age, Ethel Smyth refused to conform to the rules and expectations imposed on women in her social circle, including Victorian dress codes for women. Opting instead for more practical outfits like pants and a pipe, her masculine presentation was a powerful political transgression in a society with strictly-defined gender roles.

In 1882, during a stay in Florence, she met Henry Brewster, an expatriate American writer and philosopher. This encounter marked the beginning of a deep friendship that was essential to her life. Brewster became her confidant, her intellectual advisor, and, above all, the librettist for several of her operas. Their intellectual and platonic relationship caused a stir in a society where relations between men and women were strictly codified.

Ethel Smyth never married. Instead, her letters and diaries reveal her successive love affairs with women such as Pauline Trevelyan, the Princess de Polignac, Lady Mary Ponsonby, and Edith Somerville. At the age of 71, she fell madly in love with writer Virginia Woolf. Woolf maintained a correspondence with Ethel until her own suicide in 1941. Ethel’s choice to live openly as a lesbian at a time when homosexuality was a social taboo, another of her multitude of daring choices.

International career

Relationships with Brahms, Grieg, and Tchaikovsky 

During her ten years in Germany, Ethel Smyth frequented the most prestigious musical circles in Europe. Out of all the musicians she met, Johannes Brahms won a special place in her heart. The Viennese master, renowned for his gruff character, teased the young composer about her shortcomings in counterpoint, but nevertheless encouraged her. Brahms' influence can be felt in several of her works, notably in her Mass in D major, where the choral writing and monumental architecture are reminiscent of Brahms' German Requiem.

Edvard Grieg and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky were also among her most invaluable supporters. Tchaikovsky in particular saw Ethel as a composer with a promising future and had no hesitations in making it known. Her relationships with the giants of Romantic music gave Ethel recognition and added to her legitimacy in a deeply male-dominated field. Unlike many female composers of her time, she was never relegated to the status of a talented amateur: she was recognized as a professional in her own right.

Clara Schumann, herself a talented composer who had sacrificed her career to that of her husband Robert, was both an inspiring and troubling example for Ethel. She embodied what a female composer subjected to social constraints could become: a brilliant performer, certainly, but a stifled creator. Ethel, for her part, was determined never to follow down that path.

Gradual success in England and Europe

In 1890, Ethel Smyth returned to England with determination to conquer her home country’s musical scene. That same year, her Serenade in D major premiered at London's prestigious Crystal Palace. It was a resounding success, and three years later, her Mass in D major followed suit at the Royal Albert Hall—with the unexpected support of Empress Eugénie, widow of Napoleon III, who was exiled in England.

The Mass in D major is remarkable thanks to the energy, intense drama, and fervent atmosphere that it exudes off the page. Ethel took bold liberties with traditional liturgy: instead of slipping in between the Kyrie and the Credo as it should, the Gloria arrives triumphantly at the end of the work. This unexpected move embodied the young composer's independent spirit, one that she nurtured throughout her life.

Between 1893 and 1910, success came on the heels of success. In 1898, her first opera, Fantasio, was staged in Weimar. In 1902, Der Wald (The Forest) was performed in Berlin and at the Royal Opera House in London. The following year, Ethel Smyth became the first woman composer to have her work performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Self-assertion in “masculine” genres

At a time when women composers were confined to Lieder and the piano, Ethel Smyth deliberately established herself in the most prestigious “masculine” genres: opera and symphony. This choice was no mere accident—it was an act of social and political resistance. By composing operas and symphonic works, Ethel asserted her place among the ranks of men.

Her undisputed masterpiece remains The Wreckers, premiered in Leipzig in 1906 in German, then staged in London in 1909 and 1910. These premieres were made possible thanks to Ethel's friend and staunch supporter, renowned conductor Thomas Beecham. The Wreckers tells the dark and passionate story of a community of ship-plunderers in Cornwall in the 18th century and became the most accomplished English opera of its time.

In 1911, Ethel reached a new milestone: she conducted her first concert. For yesterday’s audiences, a female conductor was almost inconceivable. Yet Ethel took to the podium with the same determination she had shown in establishing herself as a composer. In 1928, a concert was organized to celebrate her artistic jubilee. The program included the overture to The Wreckers, the chorus Hey Nonny No, Les Rêves sans sommeil (Sleepless Dreams), and her Mass in D major. Among her other notable operas is The Boatswain's Mate, a successful comic opera premiered in London in 1916. Her eclectic catalog includes about 100 works and spans the entire alphabet in terms of style, ranging from very conventional pieces to daring experimental compositions.

Involvement in the suffrage movement Commitment to women's suffrage

In 1910, with her musical career at its peak, 52-year-old Ethel Smyth attended a feminist meeting of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst. Sparks flew, and this encounter changed her trajectory. Immediately captivated by Emmeline Pankhurst's charisma and determination, Ethel threw herself heart and soul into the suffragette movement.

British suffragettes differed from other feminist movements in their radicalism. Unlike moderate suffragists, they did not hesitate to resort to direct, spectacular, and sometimes violent actions: street demonstrations, window smashing, setting fire to mailboxes, and hunger strikes. Their slogan was “Deeds, not words.” Ethel, who had always despised passivity and convention, felt among her people and immediately identified with this combative approach.

She promised to put her musical career on hold for two years in order to devote herself entirely to women's suffrage. She kept her promise scrupulously. In 1911, she composed The March of the Women, a martial and rousing composition that immediately became the official anthem of the WSPU. The lyrics, written by Cicely Hamilton, proclaim:

“Shout, shout, up with your song! / Cry with the wind, for the dawn is breaking; / March, march, swing you along, / Wide blows our banner, and hope is waking.”

Ethel conducted her work herself at a huge gathering at the Royal Albert Hall, and shortly thereafter, The March of the Women took to the streets: it was sung at all suffragette demonstrations, rallies, and meetings. Even today, it still resonates as a timeless feminist anthem.

Imprisonment

In 1912, Ethel took part in a demonstration outside the home of a Secretary of State. In a spectacular act of protest, she threw a stone that broke the window of his residence. She was immediately arrested and sentenced to two months in Holloway, the famous women's prison in London where many suffragettes were incarcerated. Far from being discouraged, Ethel turned her cell into a rehearsal room and the exercise yard into a concert hall. Thomas Beecham, her loyal friend and musical advocate, visited her and witnessed the ambiance firsthand. In his memoirs, he wrote humorously: “When I arrived, the prison guard was in fits of laughter. He said to me, ‘Go into the quadrangle’. There were a dozen ladies pacing up and down and singing loudly. Ethel stood at a window on the first floor, beating time with a toothbrush.”

Ethel Smyth's commitment to the suffrage movement was not in vain. In 1918, British women over the age of 30 finally won the right to vote (men could vote from the age of 21). Full equality was achieved in 1928, when the voting age for women was finally lowered to 21.

Final years and belated recognition

Debilitating deafness

From the 1920s onwards, Ethel Smyth began to suffer from progressive deafness that worsened as time went on. Fellow great Beethoven had suffered from the same affliction. For a musician, losing one's hearing is the worst tragedy there is. Gradually, Ethel had to give up composing, as it requires a keen auditory perception of harmonies and timbres.

Refusing to sink into bitterness, she instead turned to writing. Between 1919 and 1940, she published ten volumes of autobiographies and essays in which she recounted her fascinating journey, her struggles, her loves, her triumphs, and her frustrations. These works are a valuable testimony to the realities confronting women artists in the early 20th century. Among her best-known books are Impressions That Remained (1919), Streaks of Life (1921), and Female Pipings in Eden (1933).

In 1922, Ethel Smyth received an extraordinary honor: King George V appointed her Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She thus became the first female composer to receive this title of nobility. A few years later, the University of Oxford awarded her an honorary doctorate in music. With these official distinctions in her hand, the world had finally given public recognition to her immense contribution to British music. In 1930, her choral symphony The Prison was premiered in London. This meditative and profound work reflects her thoughts on freedom, oppression, and transcendence.

Ethel Smyth died on May 8, 1944, in Woking, Surrey, at the age of 86. She had suffered from pneumonia. In accordance with her last wishes, her ashes were scattered in the forest near her property by her brother Bob, to the sound of her symphony The Prison. Even in death, Ethel refused to conform to traditional funeral conventions.

Her repertoire in the limelight

As is common with women composers, after her death, Ethel Smyth's music gradually disappeared from the public eye. For more than half a century, her operas were no longer staged and her symphonies were no longer performed in the concert hall. Ethel Smyth sank into an unjust oblivion, another victim of a musical system that privileged male artists.

It was not until the 2000s that her work began to be unearthed and reevaluated. Recordings of her operas, notably The Wreckers, were released by various labels. Concerts were dedicated to her. In 2020, the Rosa Bonheur classical music festival honored her by programming her works alongside those of Rebecca Clarke, another great British composer who has been unjustly neglected.

In July 2022, the city of Leipzig recognized Smyth as one of the city’s preeminent female figures with a commemorative plaque at 19 Salomonstraße. In 1979, American feminist artist Judy Chicago honored her by making Ethel Smyth one of the 39 guests at her monumental art installation The Dinner Party, an iconic work celebrating women who have made their mark on history.

Today, Ethel Smyth is finally recognized not only as a talented composer, but also as a pioneer of musical feminism. Her life and work testify to the courage it took to be a female composer at a time when women were systematically denied the right to create. She inspired literary characters, notably Edith Staines in E. F. Benson's Dodo (1893) and Dame Hilda Tablet in Henry Reed's play of the same name (1950).

But Ethel Smyth was much more than a composer: she was a revolutionary. Through her rejection of societal norms, her political commitment to women's rights, and her relentless pursuit of the most prestigious musical genres, she paved the way forward for all the women composers who followed her. Her March of the Women still resonates today as a call to revolt against all forms of oppression. And her operas, finally rediscovered, bear witness to a musical genius that is just waiting to be fully recognized.