Ethel Smyth Essentials

Active as a composer from the late 1870s until losing her hearing in the 1910s, British suffragist Ethel Smyth helped control the reins of the Romantic era. Her operas, like The Boatswain's Mate and The Wreckers, are thrillingly buoyant and offer a rich sense of Romantic drama; chamber works like the Violin Sonata in A Minor offer cascading lyricism reminiscent of Brahms, while the String Quartet in E Minor has a rich gravitas that evokes Tchaikovsky. A determined activist, Smyth would write one of her most enduring pieces in “The March of the Women”, which became the anthem of the Women's Social and Political Union in the UK.