Biography
Among the foremost women composers active during the nineteenth century, Alice Mary Smith produced symphonies and extended choral compositions alongside songs and chamber works. Following her passing she slipped into obscurity, with interest in her output reawakening only in the present century.
Born in London on 19 May 1839 into an affluent household, Smith benefited from an elite musical training under William Sterndale Bennett and George Alexander Macfarren, prominent figures among English composers of the period. A song appeared in print by 1857, and at twenty-four she completed her Symphony in C minor, which received a performance from the Musical Society of London. In 1865 she completed the operetta Gisela of Rüdesheim, scored for chorus, orchestra, and soloists and presented by the Fitzwilliam Music Society at Cambridge.
Her orchestral catalogue also encompasses a second Symphony in A minor, prepared for a competition yet never entered, six further overtures, and a second operetta, The Masque of Pandora, which remained unfinished. Among her most widely recognized pieces are the large anthems Whoso hath this world's goods and By the waters of Babylon—the earliest compositions by a woman to be heard in Anglican church services—together with settings of the canticles and the expansive secular cantata Ode to the Passions, given at the Hereford Festival in 1882. She further composed what is likely the earliest clarinet sonata written in England by any composer, additional chamber music, and numerous songs, among them the once-popular duet O that we two were maying.
Smith died of typhoid fever in London on 4 December 1884. Even amid the broader revival of works by women, her music returned to the concert hall only gradually; the London Mozart Players issued recordings of her symphonies on the Chandos label in 2005, and additional pieces have since appeared. The major cantatas remain unrecorded as of the early 2020s. Ian Graham-Jones published the biography The Life and Music of Alice Mary Smith in 2010.
Born in London on 19 May 1839 into an affluent household, Smith benefited from an elite musical training under William Sterndale Bennett and George Alexander Macfarren, prominent figures among English composers of the period. A song appeared in print by 1857, and at twenty-four she completed her Symphony in C minor, which received a performance from the Musical Society of London. In 1865 she completed the operetta Gisela of Rüdesheim, scored for chorus, orchestra, and soloists and presented by the Fitzwilliam Music Society at Cambridge.
Her orchestral catalogue also encompasses a second Symphony in A minor, prepared for a competition yet never entered, six further overtures, and a second operetta, The Masque of Pandora, which remained unfinished. Among her most widely recognized pieces are the large anthems Whoso hath this world's goods and By the waters of Babylon—the earliest compositions by a woman to be heard in Anglican church services—together with settings of the canticles and the expansive secular cantata Ode to the Passions, given at the Hereford Festival in 1882. She further composed what is likely the earliest clarinet sonata written in England by any composer, additional chamber music, and numerous songs, among them the once-popular duet O that we two were maying.
Smith died of typhoid fever in London on 4 December 1884. Even amid the broader revival of works by women, her music returned to the concert hall only gradually; the London Mozart Players issued recordings of her symphonies on the Chandos label in 2005, and additional pieces have since appeared. The major cantatas remain unrecorded as of the early 2020s. Ian Graham-Jones published the biography The Life and Music of Alice Mary Smith in 2010.