When her father refused to let her attend the Leipzig Conservatory, Smyth went on a hunger strike until he relented.
Composer Biography
Dame Ethel Smyth was a formidable woman whose music was championed by conductor Bruno Walter and the London String Quartet, and premiered in London, Berlin, and New York.
Composer Biography
Smyth was known for her numerous relationships, mostly with women, and Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, an accomplished musician, was her first love.
Composition History
Smyth compiled the libretto for The Prison from a philosophical work by her dear, late friend Henry Bennet ('HB') Brewster, who was an Anglo-American philosopher and man of letters.
Historical Context
Imprisonment was not an abstraction for Smyth; in 1912, during the suffrage campaign, she was arrested and served three weeks in Holloway Prison for throwing stones at a government official's house.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Smyth used the title 'symphony' (in lower case) for The Prison to denote an ancient Greek idea of 'concordance' of sweet sounds, not the orchestral genre.
Composer Biography
Smyth decided at an early age to become a composer after a governess introduced her to Beethoven, and her family later hired composer Alexander Ewing to teach her composition.
