Okay, raise your hands here. How many of you have heard the music of Dame Ethel Smyth?

Last night the Three Choirs Festival programmed her Mass in D on the opening concert and I must confess that I had not heard of nor heard the music of this woman composer. As you can tell, they are going all out to follow the women’s equality theme at this Festival.

(However, Sharon Kleckner rightly observed that the organist for the opening service, Peter Dyke, was a man. I also did not tell you that the welcoming remarks and closing blessing were said by men. I would say that half the choir and orchestra were also men.)

According to the program, the family did not want their surname be pronounced to rhyme with “scythe” but preferred to pronounce it like “Smith.”

“The daughter of a military man with fixed ideas on the role of women in society, Ethel Smyth had had to fight long and hard to achieve her ambition to study music in Leipzig.” She did, however, show her compositions to Brahms, and became friends with Tschaikovsky, Clara Schumann, and Grieg.

The Mass in D was a massive work, calling for full orchestra, choir, and soloists, and lasted 65 minutes. The harmonic language and size of the forces was definitely Romantic in style.

Smyth wasn’t able to get any English Choral societies to sing the work, but she did introduce the work to Queen Victoria in Scotland, “in the manner of composers,” which I take to mean that she played the orchestral parts on the piano and sang much of the solo and chorus parts.

The work was debuted at Royal Albert Hall on January 18, 1893 to excellent reviews, but “several of them were extremely patronising, one of them declaring himself to have been entertained to see ‘a lady composer attempting to soar into the loftier regions of musical art.’ This was the aspect that angered Smyth most.”

Sir Adrian Boult conducted the work in Birmingham in 1924, and Smyth herself conducted it a year later at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, and again in 1928. Apparently the Dean insisted that she cover her head while conducting while in the Cathedral. “She obliged by wearing her doctoral cap and gown but, soon finding it was getting in her way, managed with a shake of her head to dislodge the cap which, legend has it, fell into the Dean’s lap.”

I’m afraid the Mass was not my style, and I found the Gloria to go on and on. Still I was amazed that this huge work was written by a woman and was certainly a quality piece of music.

And look who I found in the front row! Former Lutheran Church of Honolulu music director, Joseph Hansen, with Rick Cicinelli and Noreen Naughton!

Fresh flowers are used all across the front of the stage, which by the way, is facing the back of the church, so everything is turned around in the Cathedral. The high altar is behind us.