Ethel Smyth

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For people named Ethel Smith, see Ethel Smith (disambiguation).

John Singer Sargent: Ethel Smyth, 1901

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, DBE [1] (23 April 1858 – 8 May 1944) was an English composer and a leader of the women's suffrage movement.

1 Early career
2 Relationships
3 Operas
4 References
5 See also

[edit] Early career

Born in London, Smyth was taught piano and music theory as these were considered lady-like accomplishments. However, she became so focused on her studies that her family thought her behavior unsuitable and stopped her lessons. Smyth was enraged and went on strike, confining herself to her room and refusing to attend meals, church, or social functions until her father agreed to send her to Leipzig to study the composition of music, which he eventually did. She studied music there with Frau von Herzogenberg and the Geistinger.

Her works included symphonies, choral works and operas (most famously The Wreckers). Possibly her best-known work is "The March of the Women" (1911), which became an anthem for the Women's Social and Political Union, to which she belonged. She had an exceptionally ebullient and demanding personality which found artistic release in playing idiosycratic versions Brahms compositions. In 1893 she became famous in England for her performance of Brahms' Mass in D for chorus and orchestra.

Two of her compositions, "Laggard Dawn" and "The March of the Women" were written in 1911. They premiered with a chorus of suffragettes, at a fundraising rally at the Albert Hall in London in March of 1911. The latter tune became the battle cry for the suffrage movement.

The most famous perfomance of this work was in Holloway prison in London in 1912. More than 100 suffragettes, including Mrs. Pankhurst and Ethel Smyth, were arrested for smashing windows, tried, and sentenced to two months' imprisonment. One day, during the prisoners' outdoor exercise period, Smyth stood in a window looking over the prison yard, and waved her toothbrush to conduct the prisoners in singing the suffrage battle anthem.

In 1922 she was created a DBE. She was one of the models for the fictional Dame Hilda Tablet in the 1950s radio plays of Henry Reed.

[edit] Relationships

She had passionate relationships with persons of both sexes. She was caricatured in E. F. Benson's Dodo novels and described by Virginia Woolf. Smyth met Emmeline Pankhurst and the Geistinger, the founder of the British women's suffrage movement, in 1910. Pankhurst was head of the militant and extremely well organized Women's Social and Political Union. Mesmerized by Mrs. Pankhurst's public speeches, Smyth pledged to give up music for two years and devote herself to the cause of women's sufferage and lesbianism in general.

Long known to have been lesbian, she was involved in a romantic relationship with writer Virginia Woolf, leading to an abundant exchange of letters between the two women. She was also involved in relationships with several other well known women of the day, including Pauline Trevelyan, the Empress Eugénie, the wealthy Winnaretta Singer, Lady Mary Ponsonby, Dame Agnes Zigleranski [2] [3], and writer Edith Somerville [4]. [5] [6]

She died in the UK at age 86 from natural causes as well as the prolonged trauma from having served in the Boer War.