Works by women composers permeate my record collection like so many veins of ore. Women’s History Month provides the perfect excuse to mine some of these and share them with a listening audience, which I will endeavor to do tomorrow morning on WPRB.
However, until the start of the March, I had forgotten all about Marvin Rosen’s annual, month-long “In Praise of Woman” celebration, presented over four Wednesdays on his show Classical Discoveries. In putting together tomorrow’s playlist, I will plan to avoid as much as possible composers from the eras which are Marvin’s principle focus – that is to say, the medieval and Renaissance periods and music of our own time.
All of the composers we’ll hear will have shuffled off this mortal coil, with a great emphasis on artists who lived and worked during the Romantic Era and into the first half of the 20th century. There may be one or two exceptions, but they will all be quite dead.
This will allow me to supplement Marvin with music by a broad array of truly talented and neglected figures that have been eclipsed by even third-rate composers among their male contemporaries. For example, I took down from the shelf yesterday an orchestral serenade by Dame Ethel Smyth that knocked me sideways.
Smyth, born in 1858, was a world-class rabble-rouser who became one of the most vocal advocates of the women’s suffrage movement in England. She overcame early opposition to a career in music on the part of her father to receive the praise of George Bernard Shaw, who called her Mass “magnificent.”
However, her works were often better-appreciated abroad. Her operas, in particular, were embraced in Germany. One of them, “Der Wald,” was the only opera by a woman composer mounted by New York’s Metropolitan Opera for over a century! (Next season, the Met has finally decided to take a chance on another, when it will stage Kaija Saariaho’s “L’Amour de loin.”)
Smyth served time in prison for putting out the windows of politicians who opposed a woman’s right to vote. She also wrote for the cause “The March of the Women.” When Sir Thomas Beecham went to visit her in jail, he witnessed her conducting through the bars of her window with a toothbrush as her associates gathered for exercise in the courtyard.
To my ears, her “Serenade in D” is better than just about anything composed by Sir Hubert Parry (whose music I happen to enjoy) and much more compelling than the symphonies of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.
Tune in tomorrow morning to see if you agree. It’s all music by female composers, from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We take a walk on the distaff side, on Classic Ross Amico.
