Dame Ethel Mary Smyth was an English composer, conductor and writer. She was born into a Victorian upper-middle-class family in Sidcup and grew up in Frimley, near Aldershot, one of eight children. Her father was a general and her mother was French. A governess who had trained as a pianist at the Leipzig Conservatory introduced Smyth early to the music of Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann.
Despite her father's opposition, Smyth entered the Felix Mendelssohn School of Music and Theatre in Leipzig in 1877 to study composition. Dissatisfied with the teaching, including Carl Reinecke's composition classes, she left after a little more than a year. Engelbert Röntgen encouraged her work, while Heinrich von Herzogenberg gave her private composition lessons. Through the Herzogenbergs' household, she took part in Leipzig's cultural life and met Clara Schumann, Anton Rubinstein, Max Friedländer, Edvard Grieg and Johannes Brahms.
In Florence in 1882, Smyth met the philosopher and writer Henry “Harry” Brewster, who became a collaborator and wrote several librettos for her. On returning to Leipzig in 1887, she met Tchaikovsky, whose advice to develop her skill in orchestration encouraged her growing interest in writing for large orchestra. She made her English debut at the Crystal Palace in 1890 with the Serenade in D. Her Mass in D for choir and orchestra was successful at the Royal Albert Hall in 1893 and received a favourable review from George Bernard Shaw.
Smyth's operas initially found few opportunities in Britain. After she interested Grand Duke Charles Alexander of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in her work, Fantasio received its premiere at the Court Theatre in Weimar in 1898. Der Wald premiered at the Berlin State Opera in 1902, was later staged at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and achieved major success at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1903.
Her output, though not extensive, includes chamber music, madrigals, choral works, operas and symphonies. Among its works are a symphony for small orchestra, the Serenade in D, Mass in D, Songs of Sunrise for unaccompanied women's choir, Three Moods of the Sea for baritone and piano, The Prison for soloists, mixed choir and orchestra, string quintets and a string quartet. Thomas Beecham produced The Prison for the BBC.
During 1915–1918, Smyth worked near Vichy in France as a nurse and X-ray assistant. There she began writing autobiographical works, beginning with Impressions That Remained in 1919; its immediate success increased public interest in both her writing and her music. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1922. In later life she corresponded with Virginia Woolf, with whom she was in love.