Vancouver Bach Choir Gives 135-Year-Old Mass Its Canadian Debut
Why Dame Ethel Smyth's 1891 mass had to wait until now is a tale of changing tastes and attitudes.
This week marks a significant moment in Canadian classical music history as the Vancouver Bach Choir presents the Canadian premiere of Dame Ethel Smyth's Mass in D major. Composed in 1891, this grand concert work for soloists, large choir, and orchestra has waited 135 years for its first performance in Canada, a delay that reflects evolving musical preferences and social perspectives.
Historic Performance Details
The landmark performance will take place at Vancouver's Orpheum Theatre on February 28 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets range from $20 to $55 and are available through Showpass. While the Vancouver Bach Choir regularly presents substantial choral works during the pre-Easter season, this particular concert represents something extraordinary—the Canadian debut of a composition that predates even Vancouver's oldest choir, which approaches its centennial anniversary in coming seasons.
The Composer's Remarkable Journey
Born in 1858 as an almost exact contemporary of Sir Edward Elgar, Ethel Smyth emerged from a conventional, well-to-do family with an improbable ambition: to become a composer. Possessing both exceptional talent and formidable work ethic, she arranged to study in Germany, where she entered the outer orbit of the great Johannes Brahms. Upon returning to England, Smyth leveraged social connections to advance her career, composing her mass while a guest of the deposed French Empress Eugénie in the south of France.
Sections of the work were soon heard at Windsor by Queen Victoria, Eugénie's close friend, and the complete mass received its premiere at London's Albert Hall in 1893. Following this impressive launch, Smyth produced a substantial repertoire including orchestral works, operas, and chamber music, establishing herself as a significant musical voice of her era.
Activism and Artistic Legacy
Smyth gained additional recognition—and sometimes notoriety—through her passionate activism for women's suffrage. She composed the anthem "The March of the Women" ("Shout, Shout, Up with Your Song!"), a catchy tune she later incorporated into her opera The Boatswain's Mate. Her activism led to imprisonment in Holloway Prison, where conductor Thomas Beecham famously witnessed her conducting fellow suffragists with a toothbrush from her cell window.
As the twentieth century progressed, Smyth's music gradually faded from concert programs, seeming increasingly irrelevant in a musical landscape dominated by modernists. Despite her passionate advocacy for her work—including an enthusiastic but reluctant correspondence with Virginia Woolf in her later years—performances essentially ceased after her death in 1944, though her multi-volume autobiography preserved countless entertaining anecdotes about her remarkable life.
Rediscovery in Contemporary Programming
Today's classical music revolution has seen performers, conductors, and ensembles actively diversifying their concert offerings. With renewed interest in Romantic-era works beyond the traditional canon, musicians are reconsidering compositions by historically overlooked figures like American composer Amy Cheney Beach—whose own mass was resurrected by the Vancouver Cantata Singers several seasons ago—French composer Cécile Chaminade, and now Ethel Smyth.
The Vancouver Bach Choir's performance of Smyth's grand mass represents both an appropriate programming choice and a long-overdue recognition of her artistic contributions. This Canadian premiere not only introduces audiences to a significant historical work but also contributes to the ongoing reassessment of women composers in classical music history, ensuring Smyth's voice finally receives the hearing it deserves more than a century after its creation.
