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reh. 20 - 4 mm. before reh. 21
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Skills & Techniques: Dynamic Contrast, High Register, Loud Playing, Marcato Style, Rhythms, Section Playing
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Horn 1-4 (F)
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Scottish National Orchestra (1968)
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British Symphony Orchestra (1930)
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Composer & Composition Information
Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)
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British composer Dame Ethel Mary Smyth (1858-1944) was a composer, conductor, author, and Suffragette. Raised during the Victorian age, Smyth fought against societal restrictions that said a woman should not have a profession. She insisted on an education, she insisted on performances of her works, and she insisted on having her works published. Today Smyth should be heralded as a champion of women’s rights and a pioneer for women in the classical music world, but she is still relatively unknown.
Between 1880 and 1930, she published two sets of lieder, several songs for voice and piano or chamber ensemble, numerous chamber pieces, two symphonic works, six operas, a mass, and a choral symphony. Today we also know of her unpublished works for solo piano, organ, and various chamber ensembles. In addition to composing, Smyth was also a devoted letter-writer, and she turned to writing memoirs and essays later in her life, publishing ten volumes of prose between 1919 and 1940. During her lengthy career in which she frequently traveled between England, Germany, and Italy, Smyth came to know Brahms, Clara Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Bruno Walter, and more. She informally performed for Queen Victoria, and she was friends with the ex-Empress Eugenie of France and the Princesse de Polignac, Winnaretta Singer. In the last decades of her life she formed strong friendships with Edith Somerville and Virginia Woolf. The text & image are reprinted from the Ethelsmyth.org where more information about the composer can be found. |
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The Wreckers (Overture)
The overture to The Wreckers evokes the twinned forces—the physically powerful sea and the socially powerful church—that govern the villagers’ lives. Its opening gesture, of three ascending notes followed by a torrent of dotted rhythms, arrives with the force of a wave crashing against a rocky shore. Initially presented in unison by the strings, woodwinds, and brass, the restless motif bobs and weaves through the orchestra. (Later in the opera, this motif forms the basis of a chorus titled “Haste to the Shore,” in which the villagers gleefully plan their next wrecking scheme.) Its initial appearances in the overture are often juxtaposed with the jarring sound of ascending tritones (known in an earlier era as the “devil’s interval”)—foreshadowing that, despite its sanction by the church, the practice of wrecking has malevolent underpinnings.
A calmer mood soon pervades. The English horn ushers in a mournful rendition of a Cornish folk song; it is passed on to the strings, where it blooms into a serene, lush major key. But the respite is brief, and the wreckers’ theme returns. An atmosphere of increasing agitation culminates in a glorious, hymn-like tune, characterized by rhythmic and melodic unity. The orchestra becomes a choir, its evenly paced phrases punctuated by elegant pauses. The overture swells in grandeur, reaching a celebratory conclusion. If most of the overture is structured similarly to that of an Italian opera, presenting the opera’s melodic “greatest hits” one by one, its rapturous ending evokes Smyth’s Germanic training in its boldness and bombast.
The text is written by & reprinted from Lucy Caplan (Boston Symphony Orchestra) where more information about the composition can be found.
A calmer mood soon pervades. The English horn ushers in a mournful rendition of a Cornish folk song; it is passed on to the strings, where it blooms into a serene, lush major key. But the respite is brief, and the wreckers’ theme returns. An atmosphere of increasing agitation culminates in a glorious, hymn-like tune, characterized by rhythmic and melodic unity. The orchestra becomes a choir, its evenly paced phrases punctuated by elegant pauses. The overture swells in grandeur, reaching a celebratory conclusion. If most of the overture is structured similarly to that of an Italian opera, presenting the opera’s melodic “greatest hits” one by one, its rapturous ending evokes Smyth’s Germanic training in its boldness and bombast.
The text is written by & reprinted from Lucy Caplan (Boston Symphony Orchestra) where more information about the composition can be found.
Notable Performances/Recordings:
BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (2019)
Scottish National Orchestra (2006)
BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (2019)
Scottish National Orchestra (2006)