Ethel Smyth was born in London on April 22, 1858. After receiving her early musical training in England, she entered the Leipzig Conservatory in 1877. She left the Conservatory in 1878, but continued her studies with Heinrich von Herzogenberg. During her years in Germany, she came to know many important musicians, including Brahms, Clara Schumann, and Grieg.
Smyth came to prominence in England in the early 1890s, with performances of her Serenade and Antony and Cleopatra in 1890 and the Mass in D in 1893. (These performances are the focus of the scrapbook in this collection.) She then turned her efforts to the stage. Over the next thirty years, she composed six operas: Fantasio, Der Wald, The Wreckers, The Boatswain's Mate, Fête galante, and Entente cordiale .
Beginning in 1910, Smyth was an important figure in the drive to gain women the right to vote in England, a movement led by her friend Emmeline Pankhurst. Smyth composed a suffragist anthem, and went to prison for throwing a rock through a window of the Colonial Secretary's home.
In the final three decades of her life, Smyth increasingly suffered from hearing loss. She continued to compose, but she devoted much of her time to a series of autobiographical books that vividly display her colorful and energetic personality. By the time of her death in Woking, England on May 8, 1944, she had long been recognized as the leading British female composer of her era.
From the guide to the Ethel Smyth: Letters and Scrapbook, 1877-1944?, (Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University)
