A new fully orchestrated performance edition of Mass in D by Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) will have its New England premiere on March 3 at 4 p.m. at Emmanuel Church in Boston, performed by Cappella Clausura, a musical group based in Newton that specializes in performing the music of female composers. The group will be joined by SHIFT Orchestra Project for this premiere.
More information and tickets are available at www.clausura.org.
According to publicity materials, Smyth was a British composer, women's suffrage activist and memoirist, described as having an outsized personality and with friends amongst the upper classes that led to an introduction to Queen Victoria for whom Smyth played her Mass in D on the piano, singing all the parts. Queen Victoria went on to sponsor its premiere in 1893 at the Royal Albert Hall.
Smyth revised the Mass in 1925 but was unable to get the score printed, although it was performed a number of times around the UK. The Mass in D was performed for a final time in 1933 for her 75th birthday, under the baton of her close friend and champion Sir Thomas Beecham. Until now a fully orchestrated performance edition of the Mass has never been published. Although it is in Latin, the Mass follows the Anglican arrangement of the liturgy with the Gloria at the end, as Smyth--an Anglican--wanted it to have a joyous and grand finale.
Among Smyth’s other works are “The March of the Women,” the anthem of the women’s suffrage movement in Britain. Her opera “Der Wald” was performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1903 and remained the only work by a woman to be staged by the Met until 2016, and her opera “The Wreckers” has recently enjoyed a resurgence of performances worldwide.