4 - Progress and Professionalism

Summary

The last years of the nineteenth century saw many high-profile performances in Britain, Europe, and the USA of complex, large-scale musical works composed by women. In 1890, for example, a distinctive four-movement orchestral Serenade by the British composer Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) was performed at the Crystal Palace in London. In 1895 La Montagne, a drame lyrique in four acts and five tableaux by the French composer Augusta Holmès (1847–1903), her fourth opera, was premiered at the Paris Opéra while the ‘Gaelic’ Symphony by the American composer Amy Beach (1867–1944) was first heard in Boston’s Music Hall the following year, 1896. The ‘Gaelic’ Symphony went on to be widely performed in Europe and the United States, and was critically well received, with one reviewer of the premiere praising it as ‘high-reaching, dignified and virile’.¹