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Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, DBE (, to rhyme with Forsyth;〔S.M. Moon, The Organ Music of Ethel Smyth, Appendix A, 135-137〕 23 April 18588 May 1944) was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Smyth was born in London, as the fourth of a family of eight children. Her father, J. H. Smyth, who was a Major-General in the Royal Artillery, was very much opposed to her making a career in music.〔Gates (2013), ppp. 1 – 9〕 Undeterred, Smyth was determined to become a composer, studied with a private tutor, and then attended the Leipzig Conservatory, where she met many composers of the day. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral and concertante works, choral works, and operas. She lived at Frimhurst, near Frimley Green〔Jebens and Cansdale, p. 4〕 for many years, but from 1913 onwards, she began gradually to lose her hearing and managed to complete only four more major works before deafness brought her composing career to an end.〔 However, she found a new interest in literature and, between 1919 and 1940, she published ten highly successful, mostly autobiographical, books.〔 In recognition of her work as a composer and writer, Smyth was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1922.〔 She died in Woking in 1944 at the age of 86, and at her own request, after cremation at Woking Crematorium, her ashes were scattered in the woodland next to the golf course.〔(Exploring Surrey's past )〕 Smyth received honorary doctorates in music from the Universities of Durham and Oxford.〔(Oxford Uni Press facts )〕 ==Her life in music== She first studied privately with Alexander Ewing when she was seventeen. He introduced her to the music of Wagner and Berlioz. After a major battle with her father about her plans to devote her life to music, Smyth was allowed to advance her musical education at the Leipzig Conservatory, where she studied composition with Carl Reinecke. She left after a year, however, disillusioned with the low standard of teaching, and continued her music studies privately with Heinrich von Herzogenberg.〔 While she was at the Leipzig Conservatory, she met Dvořák, Grieg and Tchaikovsky. Through Herzogenberg she also met Clara Schumann and Brahms.〔 Smyth's extensive body of work includes the Concerto for Violin, Horn and Orchestra and the Mass in D. Her opera ''The Wreckers'' is considered by some critics to be the "most important English opera composed during the period between Purcell and Britten."〔 Another of her operas, ''Der Wald'', remains the only opera by a woman composer ever produced at New York's Metropolitan Opera.〔〔Yohalem, John, ( "A Woman's Opera at the Met: Ethel Smyth’s ''Der Wald'' in New York" ), The Metropolitan Opera Archives〕 Recognition in England came somewhat late for Ethel Smyth, noted conductor Leon Botstein at the time he conducted the American Symphony Orchestra's US premiere of ''The Wreckers'' in New York on 30 September 2007: :On her seventy-fifth birthday in 1934, under Beecham's direction, her work was celebrated in a festival, the final event of which was held at the Royal Albert Hall in the presence of the Queen. Heartbreakingly, at this moment of long-overdue recognition, the composer was already completely deaf and could hear neither her own music nor the adulation of the crowds.〔Leon Botstein, (''The Wreckers'' on americansymphony.org ) Retrieved 1 March 2013〕 Overall, critical reaction to her work was mixed and, as noted by Eugene Gates: :Smyth's music was seldom evaluated as simply the work of a composer among composers, but as that of a "woman composer." This worked to keep her on the margins of the profession, and, coupled with the double standard of sexual aesthetics, also placed her in a double bind. On the one hand, when she composed powerful, rhythmically vital music, it was said that her work lacked feminine charm; on the other, when she produced delicate, melodious compositions, she was accused of not measuring up to the artistic standards of her male colleagues.〔Gates (2006), "Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don't"〕 Other critics were more favourable: "The composer is a learned musician: it is learning which gives her the power to express her natural inborn sense of humour... Dr. Smyth knows her Mozart and her Sullivan: she has learned how to write conversations in music... (Boatswain's Mate ) is one of the merriest, most tuneful, and most delightful comic operas ever put on the stage."〔''The Illustrated London News'', 18 March 1922, p. 386, in reference to a revival of her opera "The Boatswain's Mate"〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ethel Smyth」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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