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Dame Ethel Smyth Mass in D Susanna Hurrell soprano Catriona Morison mezzo-soprano Ben Johnson tenor Duncan Rock baritone Sakari Oramo Bridgeman Images Bridgeman Ethel Mary Smyth; portrait signed 18 January 1893 Dame Ethel Mary Smyth (1858 – 1944) 1 Overture to ‘The Wreckers’ (1902 – 04) 9:14 Lyrical Drama in Three Acts À la mémoire de Prince Edmond de Polignac Allegro con brio – Moderato – Allegro – Moderato – Allegro – Moderato – Grazioso – Adagio – Moderato mosso – Allegro molto – Poco più mosso – Animato – Andante maestoso – Allegro con brio – Allegro – Più allegro – Più mosso Mass (1891, revised 1925)* 61:24 in D • in D • en ré for Soli, Chorus, and Orchestra Written for Pauline Trevelyan N.B. – It is recommended that in performing this work, the numbers be given in following order: Kyrie, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, Gloria. E.S. 2 1 Kyrie eleison 9:01 Chorus: ‘Kyrie eleison’. Adagio – Chorus: ‘Christe eleison’. [Adagio] – Chorus: ‘Kyrie eleison’. [Adagio] – Più mosso – Chorus: ‘Christe eleison’. Tempo I – Chorus: ‘Kyrie eleison’. [Tempo I] – Meno mosso – Più largo 3 3 3 Credo 17:00 Chorus: ‘Credo in unum Deum’. Allegro con fuoco – Tenor solo: ‘Qui propter nos homines’. L’istesso movimento – Soprano solo: ‘Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto’. Andante – Meno mosso – Chorus: ‘et homo factus est’. Tempo I. Andante – Chorus: ‘Crucifixus etiam pro nobis’. Adagio non troppo – Chorus: ‘Et resurrexit tertia die’. Allegro con fuoco – Chorus: ‘cujus regni non erit finis’. Largamente – Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass soli: ‘Credo in Spiritum Sanctum’. Andante – Chorus: ‘Dominum, et vivificantem’. Allegro energico – Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass soli: ‘qui ex Patre Filioque procedit’. Andante – Chorus: ‘Qui cum Patre et Filio simul’. Allegro energico – Chorus: ‘simul adoratur et conglorificatur’. L’istesso movimento – Chorus: ‘Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum’. Adagio – Chorus: ‘et vitam venturi sæculi’. Allegro non troppo – Allegro pesante – Chorus: ‘Amen’. [Allegro pesante] – Più mosso – Più allegro 4 4 4 Sanctus 4:33 Alto solo, Chorus: ‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth’. Adagio non troppo – Chorus: ‘Osanna in excelsis’. Poco più mosso – Alto solo, Chorus: ‘Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua’. Tempo I 5 5 Benedictus 6:00 Soprano solo, Chorus: ‘Benedictus qui venit’. Andante 6 6 Agnus Dei 7:34 Tenor solo, Chorus: ‘Agnus Dei’. Adagio ma non troppo – Un poco più allegro – Tempo I – Meno mosso 5 7 2 Gloria 16:37 Chorus: ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’. Allegro vivace – Tenor, Soprano, Alto, Bass soli, Chorus: ‘Et in terra pax’. [ ] – Chorus: ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ / ‘Laudamus te’. Tempo I – L’istesso movimento – Bass, Alto soli, Chorus: ‘Domine Fili unigenite Jesu Christe’. Adagio – Alto, Bass soli: ‘Quoniam tu solus Sanctus’. [ ] – Chorus: ‘tu solus Sanctus’. L’istesso movimento – Allegro con fuoco – Tenor solo: ‘Jesu Christe’. [ ] – Alto solo: ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’. Poco meno mosso – Chorus: ‘in gloria Dei Patris’. Tempo I – Largamente – Chorus: ‘Amen’. Più mosso – Andante TT 70:45 Susanna Hurrell soprano* Catriona Morison mezzo-soprano* Ben Johnson tenor* Duncan Rock baritone* BBC Symphony Chorus* Neil Ferris chorus director BBC Symphony Orchestra Stephen Bryant leader Sakari Oramo 6 Susanna Hurrell Harry Livingstone Catriona Morison Julie Howden Smyth: Mass in D / Overture to ‘The Wreckers’ Mass in D studied music in Germany – proved more The late 1880s were challenging for Ethel therapeutic. Smyth (1858 – 1944). She had flourished in Smyth, who had at one time been Leipzig, where she had arrived aged nineteen associated with the Oxford movement to study at the Conservatory. Her classmates but had since forsaken much of her faith, there included Edvard Grieg, Antonín Dvořák, was intrigued by the Catholicism of the and Pyotr Tchaikovsky but Smyth found the Trevelyans, even predicting, teaching underwhelming and soon decided Oh what a Mass I will write one day! Agnus instead to study privately with Heinrich von Dei qui tollis peccata mundi. What words! Herzogenberg. She was warmly welcomed What words! into his circle, which included eminent She never converted though, later explaining musicians such as Johannes Brahms and that ‘I wrote a Mass and I think that sweated Georg Henschel. Relations cooled, however, it out of me’. The piece in question, the Mass in part simply with the passing of time in D, was dedicated to Pauline Trevelyan. but also as a result of Smyth’s passion for Like many other Masses it is a work for the Herzogenberg’s wife, Lisl, and, subsequently, nineteenth-century concert hall rather than Lisl’s brother-in-law, Harry Brewster. Smyth the church, although apparently Smyth began to spend more time in England, bemoaned that it had never been attempted where her beloved mother was unwell, but in its rightful home, an Anglican cathedral. made frequent trips to Italy and Germany. In Another friend, Empress Eugénie of Munich, the conductor Hermann Levi tried France, was crucial to the completion and to lift Smyth’s spirits by encouraging her to first performance of the Mass. Smyth partly attend concerts of Wagner and Beethoven composed it while vacationing on the (she responded enthusiastically to the Empress’s yacht at Cap Martin. Although Missa solemnis). Spending time with the the score was admired by Levi, and Smyth English-Irish Trevelyan family – especially had recently enjoyed her first orchestral their alluring daughter Pauline, who had also successes – her Serenade and the Overture 9 to Antony and Cleopatra played at Crystal I realized various mistakes I had made – for Palace – it proved hard to arrange a premiere instance, scoring the solo parts of the of the Mass, until the Empress invited Smyth Sanctus for a quartet of soft brass. When to meet Queen Victoria at Balmoral. Smyth the poor contralto, emerging from a welter enthusiastically played her the Benedictus of choral and orchestral billows, attacked and Sanctus on the piano, singing both solo one of her solo passages, I perceived that and choral parts and, she recalled, ‘trumpeting a brass curtain ring flung to an overboard forth orchestral effects... a noisy proceeding passenger in mid-Atlantic would be about as in a small room’. The gusto with which Smyth adequate a ‘support’ as my four lonesome presented her music won the Queen over, instrumentalists, who in that vast empty hall which helped to persuade the Royal Choral sounded like husky mosquitoes. Society to take the Mass on. Empress Eugénie She immediately revised the scoring and the proved indispensable, again, by paying for premiere was warmly received, the Credo the work to be published (a condition of loudly applauded by the audience, and Smyth performance) and promising to make a rare granted several curtain calls. public appearance at the premiere. Smyth’s In her 1893 vocal score, Smyth Mass in D was eventually heard, at the Royal recommends that the Mass be given in Albert Hall, in 1893, in a programme that also the following order: Kyrie, Credo, Sanctus, included Haydn’s Die Schöpfung. Benedictus, Agnus Dei, Gloria. It was Smyth recalled that during rehearsals, unorthodox to place the Gloria at the end The soloists and chorus were delightful, and rather than second, but Smyth declared that so was [the eminent conductor Sir Joseph] she wanted the Mass to end triumphantly, Barnby, although he afterwards confessed whatever was the liturgical convention. The it was not until the last rehearsal that he Mass is scored for a double choir with four discovered what he called ‘an iron rod’ vocal soloists (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) and running through music that hitherto had a large orchestra with double winds, and lots struck him as disjointed, over-exuberant, of brass and percussion, as well as organ. and unnatural. Smyth exploits the possible combinations of Indeed, it was only at rehearsal that Smyth soloists and choral parts differently in each realised that her orchestration was not as movement; for example, the Sanctus is an effective as she had hoped: alto aria accompanied by the sopranos and 10 altos from the chorus, who are only later pretty organ-stop, conclusively proves her joined by the basses and tenors; then the limitations. upper voices support the soprano soloist in The Archbishop of Canterbury also had the Benedictus. Similarly, although she was reservations about the work; he complained never quite satisfied with the orchestration, that in the Kyrie, ‘God was not implored, but Smyth explores the varied timbres of the commanded to have mercy’. J.A. Fuller- large ensemble, from the soft opening of Maitland in The Times, however, recognised the Kyrie to the full force of the culminating the Mass as a great achievement: Gloria. It is through these textural and This work definitely places the composer colouristic changes that a sense of dramatic among the most eminent composers tension and climactic release is achieved, of her time, and easily at the head of all rather than through a complex harmonic those of her own sex. The most striking structure. thing about it is the entire absence of Smyth explained that she the qualities that are usually associated was bent on two things only: to make with feminine productions; throughout a pleasant noise, and to manage that it is virile, masterly in construction and every word should go straight home to workmanship, and particularly remarkable my listeners. for the excellence and rich colour of the Not all critics agreed that this was an orchestration. appropriate attitude towards writing a Mass. It is difficult to disentangle the reception of George Bernard Shaw likened the Gloria to an the Mass in D by Smyth from assumptions opening chorus in comic opera and opined about her compositional abilities based that ‘the whole work, though externally on her gender and, it should also be highly decorous, has an underlying acknowledged, her privileged social profanity’. For Shaw, Smyth demonstrated a connections. Despite the audience’s stronger ‘decorative instinct’ than a religious enthusiasm, Smyth was unable to organise one.

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