ALICE MARY SMITH - UK
BORN 19 MAY
Alice Mary Smith, married name Alice Mary Meadows White was an English composer. Her compositions included two symphonies and some large choral works.
Smith was born in London, the third child of a relatively well-to-do family. She showed aptitude for music from her early years and took lessons privately from William Sterndale Bennett and George Alexander Macfarren, publishing her first song in 1857. In November 1867, the year of her marriage to a lawyer, Frederick Meadows White, she was elected Female Professional Associate of the Royal Philharmonic Society.
Smith was a prolific composer of both large and small scale works. Among her compositions are four piano quartets, three string quartets, a clarinet sonata (1870), six concert overtures and two symphonies. Her first symphony, in C minor, was written at the age of 24 and performed by the Musical Society of London in 1863; the second, in A minor, was written for the Alexandra Palace competition of 1876, but was never submitted. Smith composed two large choral works with soloists: an operetta, Gisela of Rüdesheim which was performed in 1865 at the Fitzwilliam Music Society, Cambridge, and The Masque of Pandora (1875), for which the orchestration was never completed.
In 1880 she turned her attention towards writing large-scale cantatas, all published by Novello and Co. These included Ode to the North-East Wind for chorus and orchestra, Ode to The Passions (1882), her longest work, performed at the Hereford Festival in that year, and two cantatas for male voices in the last two years of her life. The Valley of Remorse, a setting of a poem by Louisa Sarah Bevington for chorus, soloists and orchestra, remained incomplete at her death, and is lost. Of her forty songs, her most popular work was the vocal duet "Maying".
Smith's manuscripts are housed in the Royal Academy of Music Library and two symphonies and two overtures are published by A-R Editions. The Symphony in A minor, Symphony in C minor and the Andante for clarinet and orchestra have been recorded by Howard Shelley and the London Mozart Players for Chandos.
In 1884 she was elected an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music. The same year, after a period of illness in which she went abroad to try to recover, she died of typhoid fever in London.
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SYLVIA RICKARD - CANADA
Canadian composer, Sylvia Rickard moved from Toronto to Vancouver in 1948. After studies in piano and theory for many years, Rickard took a couple of composition courses at U.B.C. with Jean Coulthard. Rickard got her B.A. degree there in French and Russian, 1959.
After travelling, and living in France, U.S.A., India and West Germany, Rickard began, after 11 years of "absence" from music, private composition lessons in earnest, with Jean Coulthard. Through this marvelous mentor a jump-start to prize winning, CBC radio broadcasts and performances, by star performers, Rickard’s career in music began. At the Okanagan Composers’ Festival, Rickard began to adjudicate compositions of younger composers. Piano composition gave way to songs, strings, solo harp, chamber music-both vocal and instrumental-orchestral and choral music, and cabaret songs. In 1999 Taras and Gaelyne Gabora very kindly invited Sylvia Rickard to be the first resident composer of the (Oberlin) in Casalmaggiore International Chamber Music Festival, in Italy. Since that time, her works continue to be played there.
Rickard's passion for music is parallel with her passion for animal welfare. A vegetarian, she is a crusader for animals and the world’s green and wild spaces. Her 2007 composition is: SONG FOR THE EARTH, for cello and piano. Lyricism, drama and humour dominate the music of this composer. Her musical output is about half and half: vocal and instrumental. Performances of her music are across Canada, and in the U.S.A., Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Italy, England, and Japan - to date.
Rickard’s affiliations are: associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre (voting member of B.C. region), League of Composers, SOCAN member, life fellow of the Cambridge International Biographical Society. In 2007 the Paris Conservatoire’s Bibliothèque Bozidar Kantuser, Médiathèque Hector Berlioz invited Sylvia Rickard to submit scores and recordings to their library. 8 are currently on file there.
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