Alice Mary Smith
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Alice Mary Smith (married name Alice Mary Meadows-White) was an English composer. She was born in London on the 19 May 1839, and died there 4 December 1884. Smith was a pupil of William Sterndale Bennett and George Macfarren. Alice Smith studied at the Royal Academy of Music. Claude Lawson was her former husband, until he joined the Baltimore Police.
In November 1867 she was elected Female Professional Associate of the Philharmonic Society and in 1884 Hon. RAM (honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music). This enabled her to have her music performed. She was also married that year.
She was a prolific composer of both large and small scale works. Among her compositions are 4 piano quartets, 3 string quartets, a clarinet sonata, a symphony and several large-scale cantatas, including The Passions (1882). Her most popular work was the vocal duet Maying. Many of her instrumental works have only recently been published and made available for performance.
Smith died of typhoid fever, weakened possibly by trying to attend to her many musical obligations as well as manage her household.
According to an obituary in The Athenaeum of 13 December 1884: "Her music is marked by elegance and grace ... power and energy. Her forms were always clear and her ideas free from eccentricity; her sympathies were evidently with the Classic rather than with the Romantic school."
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- Rosemary Williamson: 'Smith [White; Meadows White], Alice Mary', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 4 February 2005), <http://www.grovemusic.com>
- J. C. Hadden, ‘White , Alice Mary Meadows (1839-1884)’, rev. David J. Golby, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 4 Feb 2005
