Ethel (Mary) Smyth was born in 1858 in Sidcup, the daughter of a British considered typical Victorian family. She spent her youth at a time when creative power of women was flatly denied and chastity and decency should be the highest ideals of a woman. At nine, she received her first piano lessons from a German governess, who graduated in Leipzig to study music. It was with Carl Reinecke that Ethel Smyth began her composition lessons at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1877 as the first female student in his class. Soon afterwards, she chose Heinrich von Herzogenberg – who was completely under the spell of the overpowering Johannes Brahms – as her personal teacher and friend. Herzogenberg provided helpful guidance for her studies and work up until 1884.
At the same time began their close friendship to the family von Herzogenberg.
Smyth began taking private lessons in composition from Heinrich Aloysius von Herzogenberg. Even then, there were prejudice, the quality of her compositions was reduced because they were written by a woman.
Quite a number of compositions by Ethel Smyth were printed and performed in her lifetime. Another previously unpublished work – the string trio in D major op. 6 – now appears in print, so that her name will be “known” and spread further.
After both Ludwig van Beethoven, despite his three large-scale experiments in op. 9 (around 1797), and Franz Schubert, after his one and only finished string trio of 1817 (D 581), had turned their attention to the string quartet as a compositional challenge, the genre of the classical string trio, with its highly virtuosic basic concept of what was intended as three completely equal parts for violin, viola and cello, lived on only on the fringes for a long time.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in his great late Divertimento in Eb major (KV 563), written in 1788, had recreated the musical characteristics of the string trio and at the same time exhausted its considerable possibilities almost completely. A whole century passed before a further development of this genre began in equivalent works, by Max Reger, Paul Hindemith and Anton von Webern in particular.
At the start of this newly awakened interest we find three string trios in particular which were all written in Leipzig: the two string trios op. 27, nos. 1 and 2 by Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843–1900) published in 1879 and the string trio in C minor op. 249 by Carl Reinecke (1824–1910) composed in 1898. It is here that this string trio in D major op. 6 by Ethel Mary Smyth (1858–1944) belongs.
It was with Carl Reinecke that Ethel Smyth began her composition lessons at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1877 as the first female student in his class. Soon afterwards, she chose Heinrich von Herzogenberg – who was completely under the spell of the overpowering Johannes Brahms – as her personal teacher and friend. Herzogenberg provided helpful guidance for her studies and work up until 1884.
The idea of composing for study purposes not only a number of string quartets but also a string trio, with its special compositional characteristics, most probably came from Herzogenberg.
