Album of the week #22: Mass in D Major & Overture to "the Wreckers"

Check out our new ALBUM OF THE WEEK! 

This week's choice is very special - let's celebrate PRIDE MONTH together:

Mass in D Major & Overture to "the Wreckers", 

by Ethel Smyth

Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) was an English composer and member of the women's suffrage movement. She composed several pieces for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works, and operas.

She had several romantic relationships in her life, most of them with women and described her sexuality as an "Everlasting puzzle".

In recognition of her work and compositions, she was awarded a damehood - and she was the first female composer to win this honor.

Read more about her here

We invite you to listen and share this album - because equality should be celebrated EVERYDAY! 

Happy listening!

About the album:

Ethel Smyth was one of England’s foremost Victorian composers, and a prominent suffragette. She was the first female composer to be honoured with a Damehood. She studied composition with Carl Reineke in Leipzig (alongside Dvorák, Grieg and Tchaikovsky) and then privately with Heinrich von Herzogenberg (who introduced her to Brahms and Clara Schumann). Her Mass in D is her only large-scale religious work, although it was certainly composed for the concert hall rather than the church. Scored for 4 soloists, choir, and orchestra, the Mass in D sets the usual six parts of the mass, but is performed with the Gloria at the end, not second, at the instruction of the composer. Her opera The Wreckers, set in mid-eighteenth-century Cornwall, is considered by some critics to be the ‘most important English opera composed during the period between Purcell and Britten’. The Overture sets the scene wonderfully, as well as introducing the main thematic material to follow.

Source: High Res Audio

JUNE 24

ALICIA ANN SPOTTISWOODE - UK
Born 24 June

More about her

Find scores by Alicia Ann Spottiswoode:

RUTH SHAW WYLIE - USA
Born 24 June

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 Check here last year's composers of the day

6 LGBTQI+ Composers you should listen TODAY

Equality should be celebrated every day and Donne's main goal is to AMPLIFY all the voices.

We would like to invite you to listen to these amazing LGTBQI+ composers during June, the PRIDE MONTH! And don't forget to share.

Do you have any other names to suggest? We would love to make a part two of this list! Let us know!

And happy listening!

ETHEL SMYTH - USA

Dame Ethel Smyth (1858 - 1944) was a queer English composer, writer and a member of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Her works consists in Operas, Piano Solos, Orchestras, Vocals, Chamber Musics and Organ Solos.

Listen to her here:

PAULINE OLIVEROS - USA

Pauline Oliveros was an American composer and accordionist. She had an important role in the development of electronic art music. 

Listen to her here:

 

WENDY CARLOS - USA

Wendy Carlos is a transsexual american musician and composer known for her electronic music and film soundtracks. She made musics for A Clockwork Orange, The Shinning, Tron and others. She also made an album with the music from Bach synthesized and won three Grammy Awards! 

Listen to her here:

JENNIFER HIGDON - USA

Jennifer Higdon is an American Composer of Classical Music and a teacher. She won several prizes including a Pulitzer Prize for Music and two Grammy Awards! She met her wife in high school and they live today in Philadelphia. 

Listen to her here:

 

KRISTIN NORDERVAL - USA

Kristin Norderval is a LGBTQI+ composer and performer. She is a master in the art of improvisations - from classical music to jazz. As a composer, she tries to explore the nuances of the human voice. 

Listen to her here:

DEBORAH CHEETHAM - AUSTRALIA

Deborah Cheetam is a world-renowned Indigenous opera singer, composer, playwright and creator of Australia’s first Indigenous opera @shortblackopera, with a passion and strong commitment to improving access to careers in the arts for young Indigenous Australians.⁠

Listen do her here:

JUNE 18

SHIRLEY MIER - USA

Born 18 June

More about her here

Find scores by Shirley Mier:

RENE ORTH - USA
Born 18 June

More about her here

Find scores by Rene Orth:

 Check here last year's composers of the day

23 APRIL 2019

DAME ETHEL SMYTH - UK
BORN 23 APRIL

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth attained prominence as one of the most accomplished female composers in a male dominated environment, and as one of the main representatives of the suffragette movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas.

Ethel Smyth pursued a career in music, first privately, and then at the Leipzig Conservatory. Her persistence led to a successful music career, although some critics complained that her music was “too masculine.” In recognition for her work as a composer and writer, Smyth was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1922...the first female composer to be awarded a damehood.

Dame Ethel was an extremely accomplished and fascinating woman who had a bit of a defiant streak. As a child in Kent, England she took part in unladylike activities like hiking and bike riding. As a young woman, she defied her father's wishes and studied music composition, even enrolling in a German music conservatory in 1877. The conservatory was too dull for her, so she opted for private instruction. Smyth rubbed shoulders with the likes of Johannes Brahms, Antonin Dvorak and Clara Schumann. She went on to make a career for herself writing German lyrical poems, violin sonatas, piano music and eventually operas. In 1906 Germany, Smyth halted the run of her opera, Standrecht on its opening night after discovering that one of the acts had been significantly cut against her wishes.

♫ LISTEN

Wreckers Overture by Ethel Smyth

► FIND SCORES BY ETHEL SMYTH 

EMILIA GIULIANI - ITALY  

BORN 23 APRIL

Emilia Giuliani was the daughter of the famous Mauro Giuliani, played duets with her father and was known throughout Southern Italy as a guitar virtuoso until she died tragically early for unknown reasons. In one occasion she even shared the stage with Franz Liszt and was judged his equal by audience and critics alike.

As a composer, Emilia Giuliani’s work only superficially resembles her father’s. Even in his most extended and adventurous pieces Mauro, ever the craftsman, stays within the harmonic and formal boundaries of Viennese classicism. Emilia, however, explores the outer reaches of her singular harmonic imagination with a fresh and daring disrespect for convention. Her Sei Preludi op.46 are a unique contribution to the classical guitar repertoire. While much guitar music inhabits a world of measured charm, endeavoring to delight rather than agitate the listener’s senses, Emilia demands immediate and complete attention.

♫ LISTEN

Varazioni su Non più mesta by Emilia Giuliani

 ► FIND SCORES BY EMILIA GIULIANI