by Mike Telin
EVENTS ON TODAY’S CALENDAR:
Today’s events begin at 7:00 pm with the Overtones, Cleveland State University’s Vocal Jazz Ensemble directed by Reginald Bowens. Live streamed from the Bop Stop, the program features original arrangements and classic standards. Click here at start time. The event is free but donations are welcome.
Also at 7:00 pm, The Cleveland Orchestra debuts In Focus Episode 9, “Musical Magicians.” Franz Welser-Möst leads John Corigliano’s Conjurer: Concerto for Percussion with Marc Damoulakis (pictured) as soloist, and Dvořák’s String Quintet No. 2 in G, performed by string orchestra. Filmed March 25-27 at Severance Hall, the concert is free to subscribers and patrons who have donated $300 or more to the Orchestra. Premium subscriptions are available. View on-demand through May 13. Click here to watch.
Check our Concert Listings page for more information.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today we honor the births of four luminaries in music. On this day in 1916, violinist, conductor, and teacher Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York City. In 1922 jazz bassist Charles Mingus entered the world in Nogales, Arizona, and 22 years later in 1944, conductor and musicologist Joshua Rifkin also made his debut in New York City.
However — today we will turn our attention to a true maverick of the music world, Dame Ethel Mary Smyth. Born on this date in 1858 in Sidcup, Kent, England, Smyth was a noted composer during her lifetime. Her catalogue includes songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestra, chorus, and operas. Still her compositions were often criticised for not measuring up to those of her male counterparts. In spite of being marginalised, she was the first female composer to be granted a damehood, the equivalent for women of a knighthood.
Smyth began studying composition with Alexander Ewing at age seventeen. After a long battle with her father, she was granted permission to further her studies at the Leipzig Conservatory, where she became a student of Carl Reinecke and later privately with Heinrich von Herzogenberg. While in Leipzig she was introduced to Dvořák, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Clara Schumann, and Brahms.
Smyth’s compositions of note include a Concerto for Violin, Horn and Orchestra, the Mass in D and two operas. The Wreckers is thought to be the “most important English opera composed during the period between Purcell and Britten,” and for more than a century, Der Wald was the only work by a woman composer to be produced at the Metropolitan Opera.
In 1910, Smyth put composing aside and joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WPSU), which advocated for women’s suffrage. Giving up music for two years to devote herself to the cause, she was often seen in the company of the movement’s leader, Emmeline Pankhurst. And Smyth’s The March of the Women became the anthem of the suffragette movement.
In 1912, Pankhurst incited WPSU members to throw stones at the windows of all politicians’ houses who opposed a woman’s right to vote, which led to the arrest and imprisonment of over 100 women.
Throughout her life Smyth was active in sports. An avid equestrian and tennis player in her youth, she was also a passionate golfer and a member of the ladies’ section of Woking Golf Club. After her death in 1944 at the age of 86, her brother spread her ashes in the woods near the club. Click here to watch The North American Co-Premiere of Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Prison (A Mini-Documentary). It’s well worth ten minutes of your time.
