Ethel Smyth — was a real firecracker. Also in the film Suffragette one could hear a strophe of it during a re-enacted demo. Leipzig is calling Ethel Smyth, raised in a suburb of London in an upper-middle class family, had a German nanny who had been trained as a pianist in Leipzig and gave piano lessons to little Ethel.
It soon became apparent that Ethel was particularly gifted for music. The idea matured in her to study in Leipzig as well. But not piano playing to become a performer, but to become a composer! At that time, this was considered quite hopeless, since women had no chance of getting a job as a director of music due to their sex. This is one of the reasons why great works by women are hardly known today — they could not simply rehearse their works with an orchestra that they presided over and perform them as a matter of course.
They would have had to rent an orchestra and a concert hall for this purpose and would have had to take care of advertising etc. When Ethel heard Clara Schumann — one day at one of her London concerts in , there was apparently no stopping her. Ethel got her wish by striking out at everything that was proper for a fine English young lady: churchgoing, family visits, Sunday walks. In this way, she more or less softened her father, who wanted nothing to do with all these ideas.
Her mother, on the other hand, was her greatest supporter, and so Ethel Smyth was able to embark on the great journey to Leipzig by ship and train — without a chaperone! In Leipzig she quickly gained a foothold, but found out very quickly that the study material at the conservatory was taught in such a dull and listless manner that she needed an alternative.
Private student in an illustrious circle Heinrich von Herzogenberg accepted her as his private student, and from then on things went up. A love that Heinrich von Herzogenberg either tolerated or ignored.
