Era: Late Romantic

KREISLER, Fritz

Born in Vienna, Feb 2, 1875
Died in New York, Jan 29, 1962

While also a composer, Fritz Kreisler is best known for his mastery of the violin. At just seven years old, Kreisler was admitted to the Musikverein Konservatorium (the youngest student ever to enter).
- He went on to study at the Paris Conservatory, where he won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome at 12 years old.
In his teens, Kreisler toured in the United States. However, following his return to Vienna, he began feeling discouraged about his success as a musician and switched his focus to studying medicine.
In 1899, after nearly a decade away from performance, Kreisler returned to the stage where he would continue to foster an international career as a virtuoso violinist.
Fun fact – Kreisler was an anomaly in that he achieved such an exemplary skill level on his instrument despite devoting very little time to practicing.
As a composer, Kreisler is well-known for his compositions ascribed to 18th-century composers, such as Pugnani, Francoeur, and Padre Martini. The pieces were originally published as arrangements, but the composer later admitted they were original works.¹

Learn More

Biography from Interlude, which goes into more detail about Kreisler’s military experience, among other aspects of his life.

Pieces

Late Romantic Romantic French

LAMBERT, JR.: Lucien-Leon Guillaume

Born in Paris, 1858
Died in 1945

Lambert Jr. (or Lambert fils) was the son of Louisiana-born composer of Creole descent, Charles Lucien Lambert Sr. (c. 1828 – 1896).
Lambert Jr. was a pianist as well as a composer. His teachers included his father, Theodore Dubois and Jules Massenet.
Lambert Jr. Spent the first portion of his career in Paris, composing piano music, orchestral music and a Requiem, among other works. He spent the latter part of his career in Portugal, employed as a pianist for the Portugese royal court.²
Lambert Jr. made several wax cylinder recordings in 1905; as such, he is thought to be the first classical musician of African descent to appear in music recordings.³

Biography from AfriClassical

Pieces

Overture to Brocéliande

Late Romantic Austrian Hungarian

LEHÁR, Franz

Born in Komáron, Hungary, April 30, 1870
Died in Bad Ischl, Oct 24, 1948

Born in Hungary, Lehár (accent on first syllable) entered the Prague Conservatory at 12, and served as an army bandmaster for more than a decade until his career as a conductor and composer of operetta got off the ground.
Later in his career Lehár founded a music publishing house and composed original film scores.
Not-Fun Fact: Lehár’s situation during WWII was complicated: Hitler loved Die lustige Wittwe, but Lehár’s wife was Jewish and a number of his friends perished in concentration camps. Lehár was criticized outside Germany and Austria for not taking an early and vocal stand against Hitler.⁴

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Swedish

LINDBERG, Oskar

Born in Gagnef, Dalarna, Feb 23, 1887
Died in Stockholm, April 10, 1955

Lindberg was an organist and teacher as well as a composer.
Lindberg was a conservatory professor of harmony and also taught high school music. He was instrumental in compiling a hymnal in 1939, which contained 14 of his original hymn compositions.
Style: Lindberg’s composition was influenced both by the late Romantic music of styles of Rachmaninoff and Sibelius, and by his own family heritage of folk music (he had peasant violinists in his ancestry).⁵

Pieces

Andante (arr. Milone)

20th Century Late Romantic English

LLOYD, George

Born in St Ives, Cornwall, June 28, 1913
Died in London, July 3, 1998

“I never wrote 12-tone music because I didn’t like the theory. I studied the blessed thing in the early 1930s and thought it was a cock-eyed idea that produced horrible sounds. It made composers forget how to sing.”⁶
– George Lloyd

George Lloyd was an English composer and conductor who became an icon for anti-modernism in classical music.
Lloyd studied at Trinity College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. By his late teens/ early twenties, he had composed his first symphony (Symphony No. 1, 1932)and his first opera (Iernin, 1933-34).
Lloyd was highly inspired by Verdi in his writing, particularly in his operas.
During WWII, Lloyd served with the Royal Marines as a bandsman. During a shipping accident, the composer was one of only four survivors and suffered from oil ingestion and shell shock (not to mention trauma).
- Following his recovery from the war, Lloyd intermittently composed while also working as a market gardener in Dorset. About 20 years later, in 1973, he moved to London and once again took up composing full-time, with great success. The last 20 years were seen as a renaissance for the composer.⁷

Learn More

Biography from the George Lloyd Society (lots of photos!)
Short biography from BBC Music Magazine

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic American Polish

LOW, Leo

Photograph of Leo Low courtesy of JewishChoralMusic.com

Born in Volkovysk, Poland, 1878
Died in 1960

Leo Low was a Jewish composer and conductor of choral music.⁸
Low studied at the Warsaw Conservatory and subsequently directed several influential Jewish choirs in Warsaw, including the Hazomir Choral Society (Europe’s premier secular Jewish choir), and he served as director of music and resident composer at the Tłomacki synagogue.⁹
Low emigrated to the United States in 1920,¹⁰ and continued his career as a composer and choral director in New York and in Palestine.¹¹

Biography and partial works list from the Milken Archive

Pieces

Likhtelekh

20th Century Late Romantic Norwegian

LUND, Signe

Born in Christiania [now Oslo], April 15, 1868
Died in Oslo, April 6, 1950

Lund was a Norwegian composer who studied music in Christiana, Berlin, Copenhagen and Paris.¹²
Lund was encouraged by Edvard Grieg early in her career.¹³
Around 1901, the London Times described Lund as “The most interesting composer of the younger Scandinavian school.”¹⁴
- I found that quotation in a 1901 profile in the English magazine The Sketch, which also discussed her mentorship from Edvard Grieg, called her “the latest Parisian beauty,” and detailed her love of creating soup recipes. All in all, an interesting example of turn-of-the-century attitudes toward women composers.
Lund taught in Norway and the United States; she was based in Chicago from 1902-1920, and in addition to composing, she lectured frequently on Norwegian topics.¹⁵
Lund helped found the Norwegian Composers Association in 1917.¹⁶
Lund was outspoken about her political opinions, and her support for Adolf Hitler and the Norwegian Nazi party more or less destroyed her reputation in the United States by the 1940s. (In 1943 she wrote a string quartet celebrating the 10^th anniversity of the Norwegian Nazi party.)³⁸

Biography from music publisher Bergmann Edition

Pieces

Barcarolle, Op. 33, No. 1

Late Romantic Russian

LYAPUNOV, Sergei

Born in Yaroslavl’, Nov 18/30, 1859
Died in Paris, Nov 8, 1924

Sergei Lyapunov was a Russian composer, pianist, educator, conductor, and ethnomusicologist. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Karl Klindworth (a pupil of Liszt), Tchaikovsky, and Sergei Taneyev. After graduating from the conservatory, Lyapunov met Mily Balakirev and chose the leading figure of “The Five” as his mentor. With Balakirev’s encouragement, Lyapunov began publishing his compositions.
In 1893, Lyapunov was commissioned by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society to collect Russian folksongs from the regions of Vologda, Vyatka, and Kostroma, to the northeast of Moscow. The experience had a significant on the composer’s musical voice, and folk elements made regular appearances in his music from that point on.
As a composer, Lyapunov primarily wrote works for orchestra, piano, and voice.
After the Russian Revolution, Lyapunov emigrated to Paris, where he sadly passed away from a heart attack just a year later.¹⁵

Biography

Pieces

Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes, Op. 28

Late Romantic Romantic Scottish

MACKENZIE, Sir Alexander Campbell

Born in Edinburgh, Aug 22, 1847
Died in London, April 28, 1935¹⁶

Short Biography

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Finnish

MADETOJA, Leevi

Born in Oulu, Feb 17, 1887
Died in Helsinki, Oct 6, 1947

Leevi Madetoja (pronounced “Leh-vi Mah-det-oya”) was a Finnish composer, educator, and music critic who followed in the footsteps of Jean Sibelius in leading the Finnish national Romantic school.
Madetoja studied at the music institute in Helsinki under Sibelius, followed by a period of study in Paris under Vincent d’Indy and in Vienna/ Berlin under Robert Fuchs.¹⁷

Biography

Pieces

The Ostrobothnians: Suite, Op.52

20th Century Late Romantic Austrian

MAHLER, Alma

Born in Vienna, August 31, 1879
Died in New York, December 11, 1964¹⁸

Perhaps best known for her marriage to Gustav Mahler and/or her relationships with some of Europe’s most acclaimed artists, Alma Mahler was also a composer in her own right.
Alma Mahler’s marriage to Gustav Mahler was famously fraught with challenges, not the least of which was Gustav Mahler’s disapproval of his wife’s compositional aspirations. Consequently, nearly all of Alma Mahler’s works were composed between 1898-1901, before her marriage to Gustav Mahler in 1902.
As a composer, Alma Mahler exclusively wrote songs (Lieder). Three sets were published during the composer’s lifetime (Fünf Lieder, Vier Lieder, and Fünf Gesänge) along with a small handful of individual songs published posthumously, though her oeuvre likely contains many more pieces that have not been published and/or have been lost.¹⁹
A note on Alma Mahler’s various names – the composer is most commonly referred to as Alma Mahler or Alma Mahler-Werfel today; however, you might find Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler on her published songs because they were composed before her marriage to Gustav Mahler (Schindler was her maiden name).

Biography from Universal Edition

Pieces

Fünf Lieder (“Five Songs”)

Late Romantic Austrian

MAHLER, Gustav

Born in Kalischt, near Iglau [now Kaliště, Jihlava], Bohemia, July 7, 1860
Died in Vienna, May 18, 1911²⁰

Biography from The Guardian

Pieces

Late Romantic Catalan

MALATS, Joaquín

Joaquín Malats, photographed by Pau Audouard Deglaire

Born in Barcelona, March 4, 1872
Died in Barcelona, c.1912

Malats was a concert pianist and teacher who studied in Paris, toured Europe and the Americas, but was based for most of his career in his hometown of Barcelona.
Malats was friends with Granados and Albéniz and appeared with each in two-piano duo concerts. Malats helped inspire Albéniz’s Iberia, and Malats played the Spanish premieres of all four parts of Iberia as they appeared.²¹

Pieces

Serenata Española

20th Century Late Romantic Italian

MASCAGNI, Pietro

Born in Livorno, Dec 7, 1863
Died in Rome, Aug 2, 1945

Mascagni studied at the Milan Conservatory, where Puccini was his roommate.²²
Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana marked the birth of a new style of opera – “verismo” (realism). While Puccini would ultimately become most famous for writing this opera style, Mascagni was responsible for its initiation into the musical vernacular.
In addition to his career as an opera composer, jumpstarted by Cavalleria rusticana, Mascagni had a second career where he conducted opera in Italy and throughout Europe.
Due to the composer’s association with Mussolini and his fascist regime later in his life, Mascagni’s music has largely been overshadowed by his Italian contemporaries (with the exception of Cavalleria rusticana).²³

Pieces

Cavalleria Rusticana: Intermezzo

20th Century Late Romantic Russian

MEDTNER, Nikolai

Born in Moscow, Jan 5, 1880
Died in London, Nov 13, 1951

Nikolai Medtner (pronounced MET-ner) was a Russian pianist and composer, and a contemporary of Rachmaninov and Scriabin.
Medtner began learning the piano at a young age and became a highly skilled pianist, eventually graduating from Moscow Conservatory at age 20. However, rather than pursue a career as a concert pianist, Medtner chose to devote himself fully to composition. Unsurprisingly, his most revered works are those written for piano.
Like many Russian artists, Medtner fled Russia during the Revolution, never to return, first settling in Paris and then London.
- Medtner’s Russian colleagues respected and supported the composer’s work, particularly Rachmaninov. However, French audiences found Medtner’s music to be too conservative. Audiences across the channel in England held the composer in extremely high regard, ultimately leading the composer to relocate to London.
As a composer, Medtner’s music is characterized by “rich and dark harmonies in the lower part of the keyboard are frequently adorned by melodic and harmonic inflections borrowed from Russian folk music. However, what truly distinguishes Medtner’s music is ‘a strong vein of classicism apparent in its tightly controlled structures and its contrapuntal textures.'”
Fun/ scandalous fact: Medtner fell in love with his brother, Emil’s, wife, violinist Anna Mikhaylovna Bratenskaya. While Emil was studying in Germany, he was subsequently interned after the breakout of WWI. With Emil out of the picture (for lack of a better phrase), Nikolai and Anna married… Emil must not have held a grudge, however–after their deaths, the two brothers were buried next to each other in London.²⁴

Pieces

Skazki (Fairy Tales), Op. 26

Late Romantic Finnish

MELARTIN, Erkki

Born in Käkisalmi, Finland [now Priozersk, Russia], Feb 7, 1875
Died in Pukinmäki, Helsinki, Feb 14, 1937

Erkki Melartin (pronunciation) studied at the Helsinki Music School with Martin Wegelius (1892–9) and in Vienna with Robert Fuchs.
Melartin went on to serve as director of the Helsinki Music School from 1911–36, where he “raised an entire generation of composers as a teacher, and supported young modernists.”
As a composer, Melartin was incredibly prolific, and his extensive output includes six symphonies (in addition to several more pieces for orchestra), stage works, chamber music, art songs, choral pieces, piano works, and more.
- Melartin’s music is rooted in the Late Romantic idiom while experimenting with the newer Impressionist and Expressionist styles.
- Largely overshadowed by his Finnish contemporary, Jean Sibelius, Melartin was writing symphonies around the same time as Sibelius and maintained a distinctive style and musical voice throughout.²⁵

Learn More

Short biography from Fennica Gehrman

Pieces

Late Romantic Italian

MONTI, Vittorio

Born in Naples, January 6, 1868
Died on June 20, 1922

Short biography

Pieces

Csárdás

NAZARETH, Ernesto

Born in Rio de Janeiro, March 20, 1863
Died in Rio de Janeiro, Feb 4, 1934

Nazareth was a Brazilian pianist and composer of salon music (mostly dances for piano).
Nazareth’s teachers included Louisiana-born composer Lucien Lambert Sr.
Nazareth’s dances, especially his tangos, inspired composers like Heitor Villa-Lobos and Darius Milhaud.²⁶

Short biography and timeline from Musica Brasilis

Pieces

Vem cá, branquinha

Late Romantic Danish

NIELSEN, Carl

Born in Sortelung, near Nørre Lyndelse, Funen, June 9, 1865
Died in Copenhagen, Oct 3, 1931

Nielsen is best known for his six symphonies, but he was also prominent in Denmark as a teacher, writer on music, conductor, and composer of songs.²⁷

Biography from the Carl Nielsen Society

Pieces

Maskarade: Overture

20th Century Late Romantic Croatian

PEJAČEVIĆ, Dora

Born in Budapest, Sept 10, 1885
Died in Munich, March 5, 1923

Pronunciation (IPA): [peja’tʃɛvɪtʃ]

Pronunciation: “peh-ya-CHEH-vich”

Pejačević was a Croatian composer whose musical style is late Romantic and Impressionist. Her works include a symphony, a piano concerto, vocal works and chamber works.²⁸
Pejačević was a member of Croatian nobility and she grew up in her family’s estate at Našice, Slavonia.²⁹
Pejačević studied at the Croatian Music Institute in Zagreb,³⁰ and privately in Dresden and Munich.³¹.
Pejačević’s Piano Concerto in g minor, Op. 33, was the first concerto by a Croatian composer. During her lifetime, her music was performed many times in musical centers of Germany, Austria, and Croatia.³²
Pejačević died shortly after the birth of her first child, at the age of 38.³³

Biography from the Croatian Music Information Center

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Brazilian

PERNAMBUCO, João

Born in Jatobá, November 2, 1883
Died in Rio de Janiero, October 16, 1947³²

Pronunciation: first name
Pronunciation: last name

Born João Teixeira Guimarães (Pernambuco, the state in which he was born, appears to have been a stage name)

Pernambuco came from a poor Brazilian family. His father was Portuguese, and his mother was a member of the indigenous Caeté people.
Pernambuco learned the music as a child, from street musicians.
Pernambuco played and composed throughout his life, but earned a living as an ironworker.
Pernambuco was master of the Brazilian musical genre of chôro .
Due to his illiteracy, Pernambuco had to rely on other musicians to transcribe and publish his compositions. Unfortunately, this resulted in the theft of many of this works by unscrupulous composers. One exception was Heitor Villa-Lobos, who heard of Pernambuco’s trouble and had several of the composer’s works published with Pernambuco properly attributed.³³
Pernambuco called himself “The Troubadour of the Poor.”³⁴
Biography from AllMusic

Pieces

Sons de Carrilhões

20th Century Late Romantic German

PFITZNER, Hans

Portrait of Hans Pfitzner (1910) by Lothar von Seebach

Born in Moscow, May 5, 1869
Died in Salzburg, May 22, 1949

Pfitzner was a conservatory professor, conductor and a composer of late Romantic, anti-modernist theatrical music (mostly opera and incidental music).
Pfitzner’s musical conservatism (a dedication to the German Classical and Romantic tradition) caused him to vocally oppose the modernist and popular styles of his time, in a pro-German xenophobic manner that make him sympathetic to the Nazis when they rose to power in the 1930s.
- Pfitzner’s political relationship with the Nazi party was complicated. He tried to use his influence to save a Jewish friend from a concentration camp and failed.³⁵

Biography

Pieces

Late Romantic French

PIERNÉ, Gabriel

Born in Metz, Aug 16, 1863
Died in Ploujean, Finistère, July 17, 1937

Pierné studied at the Paris Conservatoire with César Frank (organ) and Jules Massenet (composition).
Pierné won the Prix de Rome when he was 19.
Pierné was the conductor of the Concerts Colonne, in which capacity he directed premieres of works by Debussy and Ravel. He also directed the premiere of The Firebird for the Ballets Russes.³⁶

Short biography

Pieces

Ramuntcho

Late Romantic Mexican

PONCE, Manuel

Born in Fresnillo, Zacatecas, Dec 8, 1882
Died in Mexico City, April 24, 1948

Full name: Manuel María Ponce Cuéllar

Ponce was recognized as the leading Mexican composer of his time, instrumental in helping to create a Mexican national style.
As a young man, Ponce was a church chorister and organist. He then went on to study music in Mexico City, then in Bologna, Italy, and then in Berlin, before returning to Mexico. He also visited France from 1925-1933 to refresh his compositional style, studying with Dukas and collaborating with Andrès Segovia.
Ponce served at the Conservatorio Nacional in Mexico City as a piano professor, and latterly as its Director.
Ponce was a lecturer on musicology, especially Mexican music. He also edited Mexican music publications and wrote extensively on musical topics.³⁷

Short biography

Pieces

Late Romantic Italian

PUCCINI, Giacomo

Portrait of Giacomo Puccini by Arturo Rietti

Born in Lucca, Dec 22, 1858
Died in Brussels, Nov 29, 1924

Fun fact: Giacomo Puccini represented the fifth generation of musicians and composers in his family. His family had been professional musicians in Lucca since the 1700s.³⁸

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic English

QUILTER, Roger

Born in Hove, Nov 1, 1877
Died in London, Sept 21, 1953

Quilter was best known as a writer of English art song, especially favoring texts by Shakespeare, Shelley and Herrick.³⁹

Short biography

Pieces

Late Romantic Russian

RACHMANINOV, Sergei

Sergei Rachmaninoff, photographed c. 1910.

Born in Oneg, 20 March/April 1, 1873
Died in Beverly Hills, CA, March 28, 1943

Biography

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Italian

RESPIGHI, Ottorino

Photograph of Ottorino Respighi (1934) by Ghitta Lorell

Born in Bologna, July 9, 1879
Died in Rome, April 18, 1936

Respighi studied violin and viola at the Liceo Musicale, Bologna, as well as composition. He also had some composition lessons with Rimsky-Korsakov when he was employed as a violist in Russia.
Respighi was an enthusiastic transcriber of 17th and 18th C., the influence of which can be seen in his compositions.
For much of his career Respighi taught composition at the Liceo Musicale di S Cecilia in Rome.⁴⁰

Short biography

Pieces

Late Romantic Austrian

REZNICEK, Emil von

Born in Vienna, May 4, 1860
Died in Berlin, Aug 2, 1945

Reznicek was an Austrian conductor and composer who held theater, military and conservatory appointments at different stages of his life.
Reznicek was a late Romantic, tonal composer. In 1932 he and Richard Strauss founded an organization to support tonal composition, but Reznicek left in 1942 when the Nazis tried to co-opt the group.⁴¹

Short biography

Pieces

Donna Diana

20th Century Late Romantic Modernist French

SATIE, Erik

Born in Honfleur, May 17, 1866
Died in Paris, July 1, 1925

Article on Satie from The Guardian

Selection of Satie facts from France Musique

List of Weird Satie Facts from Soundfly

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic French

SCHMITT, Florent

Born in Blâmont, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Sept 28, 1870
Died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris, Aug 17, 1958

“Throughout his life, Schmitt was valued for his independent spirit and refusal to be identified with any school or group. In a time when many composers embraced Impressionism, his music, albeit influenced by Debussy, was admired for its energy, dynamism, grandeur, and virility, for its union of French clarity and German strength… Schmitt was considered a pioneer during his lifetime, rejected by some and embraced by others for a style that influenced and helped prepare for later innovations by Stravinsky, Ravel, Honegger and Roussel.”
Grove Music Online⁴²

Florent Schmitt was encouraged by his parents to pursue music from an early age. In his late teens, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied under Massenet and Fauré.
- Historical context: The year that Schmitt joined the Conservatoire, 1889, was the same year that the Eiffel Tower was completed and the Moulin Rouge opened.
Schmitt won the Prix de Rome in 1900 for his secular cantata, Sémiramis, and spent the next four years composing in the Italian city.
Schmitt wrote an extensive catalog of works during his long life, which makes how little he is known today relative to his contemporaries (Debussy and Ravel) even more surprising.
One of the distinctive features of Schmitt’s music was his love of unequal time signatures (5/8, 7/8, etc.). He is best known for his orchestral music.
In addition to composing, Schmitt was also a music critic, which caused him to make many enemies through his reviews and articles.
- In everyday life, Schmitt didn’t shy away from making his presence or opinions known, for better or worse.
- “A story goes that some poor pianist, engaged in disentangling Schmitt’s counterpoint, had to cope with the composer’s voice from the back of the hall shouting, ‘It’s a C Sharp!'”⁴³

Learn More

Biography of the composer (with many interesting images)
Biography from Hyperion Records

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Modernist Austrian

SCHREKER, Franz

Born in Monaco, March 23, 1878
Died in Berlin, March 21, 1934

Schreker was a conductor, Berlin Conservatory professor, and composer, notably of opera.
Schreker’s style was influenced by late Romanticism as well as by an eclectic mix of early 20^th C. modernist styles, ranging from Impressionism to Expressionism.⁴⁴

Pieces

Valse lente (1908)

20th Century Late Romantic English

SCOTT, Cyril

Born in Oxton, Cheshire, Sept 27, 1879
Died in Eastbourne, Dec 31, 1970⁴⁵

Cyril Scott was an incredibly prolific composer and pianist. He composed approximately 400 works during his lifetime, including orchestral music, operas, oratorios, chamber music, choral works, piano works, and songs.
Conductor Eugene Goossens is said to have called Scott “the father of modern British music.”⁴⁶
Scott belonged to the Frankfurt Group, a group of composers who studied with Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory in the late 1890s. Other group members included Roger Quilter, Henry Balfour Gardiner, Percy Grainger, and Norman O’Neill.
In addition to his work in music, Scott was also a writer, poet, and painter. His literary output includes several volumes of poetry, several unpublished plays, and an autobiography, My Years of Indiscretion.
- In the 1920s, Scott became a follower of the Higher Occultism and also took a keen interest in naturopathy, osteopathy, and homeopathy. Scott subsequently wrote several books and articles related to these topics in addition to his other writings. ⁴⁷
- You can view some of Scott’s watercolor paintings here.

Biography

Pieces

Three Little Waltzes, Op. 58

20th Century Late Romantic Finnish

SIBELIUS, Jean

Born in Hämeenlinna, Dec 8, 1865
Died in Järvenpää, Sept 20, 1957

Biography from the Swedish Finn Historical Society

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic English

SMYTH, Dame Ethel

Portrait of Ethel Smyth by John Singer Sargent

Born in London, April 22, 1858
Died in Woking, May 8, 1944

Name Pronunciation

There is no consensus.

This article (2018) claims that Smyth’s family pronounced the name “Smith,” not “Smythe”

This dissertation (see p. 136) discusses Peter Avis’s theory that it should be pronounced with a long “i” and an unvoiced “th,” like “Forsyth.”

This account also says that Smyth’s friend Sir Thomas Beecham was no use as a source on this issue because he always called her Dame Ethel. (That’s a brilliant way to stay out of the controversy.)

In her autobiography Streaks of Life, Ethel Smyth tells a humorous story in which she seems surprised that a woman pronounces her name to “rhyme with ‘scythe.'”

This except makes me, personally, think it should be pronounced “Smith.”

Biography

Smyth studied music at the Leipzig Conservatory, and privately in Leipzig. Her associates during her time living in Leipzig included Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms.
Smyth was particularly interested in opera. She composed six, including The Wreckers (composed 1902-4).
In 1910-1912, Smyth was romantically involved with suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst, and she became deeply involved in the women’s suffrage movement, including composing the suffrage anthem March of the Women.
Smyth was also a prolific and popular writer, and the author of two memoirs.
From the 1920s onward, Smyth received broader recognition for her work, including being made a Dame of the British Empire. She used her late-career celebrity to support the careers of women in music: for example, she lobbied for women to be hired in professional British orchestras.⁴⁸

Biography from the British Library

Biography from Exploring Surrey’s Past

Also includes biographical timeline, works list, and access to the The Lewis Orchard Collection at Surrey History Centre.

Pieces

Late Romantic English

SOMERVELL, Sir Arthur

Born in Windermere, June 5, 1863
Died in London, May 2, 1937⁴⁹

Short biography

Pieces

Violin Concerto in g minor

Late Romantic American

SOUSA, John Philip

Born in Washington, DC, Nov 6, 1854
Died in Reading, PA, March 6, 1932⁵⁰

Biography from the United States Marine Band

Pieces

The Stars and Stripes Forever

20th Century Late Romantic British

STANFORD, Sir Charles Villiers

Born in Dublin, Sept 30, 1852
Died in London, March 29, 1924⁵¹

Biography via The Stanford Society

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Swedish

STENHAMMAR, Wilhelm

Born in Stockholm, Feb 7, 1871
Died in Stockholm, Nov 20, 1927

Stenhammar was a Swedish conductor, organist, and pianist. He studied organ and theory with private teachers, but as a composer, he was mostly self-taught.
Fun fact: Stenhammar came from an artistic family that included and architect and composer (his father) a visual artist (his mother), singers (his uncle and aunt), and a choral conductor (his cousin). As a child he was part of a family choir that sang for upper-class families.
Stenhammar was a conductor who held posts directing the Stockholm Philharmonic Society, the Swedish Royal Opera, the New Philharmonic Society, and the Göteborg Orchestral Society.⁵²

Biography and works list from Swedish Musical Heritage

Pieces

Late Romantic Austrian

STRAUS, Oscar

Born in Vienna, March 6, 1870
Died in Bad Ischl, Jan 11, 1954⁵³