MUSIC AND MEMORIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24421, 5 October 1940, Page 4

MUSIC AND MEMORIES

ETHEL SMYTH’S YESTERDAYS lb What Happened Next. By Ethel Smyth. (Longmans Green) £1 2s 6d. Dame Ethel Smyth has come to be regarded as one of the indisputably great women of our time, whether as musician, author, or social worker. With the possible exception of the exquisite Madame Charminade, Dame Ethel is the only woman composer whose name is at all widely known, and her reputation as an author has developed enormously with the publication of her own life story in a succession of volumes. The newest book, What Happened Next, opens in 1894, and takes us up to 1908. It will be seen, therefore, that Dame Ethel treats of a period which is remote, to say the least of it, and hence it is a debatable point whether the events and experiences which she records so painstakingly are going to prove of general interest. Yet one doubts whether it would be possible to obtain a clearer picture of European life as it was lived in the spacious days which marked the transition from one century to another, and the way in which the author relives those experiences and conjures up pen-pictures of her old acquaintances, is little short of amazing. We are given a remarkable portrait, for example, of her American friend, Henry Brewster, who was eventually to write the libretto for Dame Ethel’s well-known opera, “The Wreckers.” In the first part of the book we read an amusing account of Ethel Smyth’s efforts to gain a hearing for her first opera, “Fantasia," which she was obliged to hawk round every town in Germany before it was eventually performed. The chronicle of her alternate disappointments and successes in the world of music is refreshingly set down and should be generally enjoyed. Many famous personages. royalties, musicians, and artists are mentioned throughout the book and there is an extensive “letter section ” dealing mainly with correspondence between the author and Henry Brewster on matters of literary and musical interest. J. G