{"id":15379,"date":"2023-04-02T16:12:47","date_gmt":"2023-04-02T14:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=15379"},"modified":"2023-12-12T16:26:34","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T15:26:34","slug":"ethel-smyth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=15379","title":{"rendered":"With baton in hand: On T\u00e1r & Ethel Smyth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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T\u00e1r<\/em> has been on my mind. A Todd Field<\/a> film released at the end of last year; much talked about, though receipts suggest not seen nearly as much – albeit more so of late (award season!) and much more so since its wider release outside of the US. And looked upon mostly favorably<\/a> and sometimes not<\/a>. For now I can only add that it says much about these fractious times that a film about an absolutely not-nice but lauded female conductor – that all agree is brilliantly portrayed be Cate Blanchett – could be hauled from the creative space of the movie theater and plunged into the vitriolic and intransigent arena of the culture-war theater. I will see it and then have my say. (Though be warned my impartiality is not assured: most anything with Blanchett – with the exception of Armani ads! – is okay by me. I like to think we sound alike.) And have been encouraged to do so by a just read piece<\/a> by Nicholas Spice in the LRB<\/em> (Vol. 45 No. 6 \u00b7 16 March 2023<\/a>) that broadly considers the art of conducting through Field’s film, a recent translation and commentary of Richard Wagner’s essays “On Conducting” (amazingly open access<\/a> at JSTOR) and an experiential memoir by Alice Farnham<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is probably no reason Spice should mention Ethel Smyth<\/a> in his essay, but I would not have minded her spirited and stubborn presence; for she, too, has been fluttering around in my head. In the midst of my continuing Virginia Woolf stuff<\/a>, I have been occupied with that period at the beginning of the 1930s during which Woolf found herself the object of the affections of the celebrated composer, conductor and suffragette; the attentions of whom aroused and irritated at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ethel Smyth’s The Prison: A Work To Be Reckoned With<\/a><\/blockquote>