Short Orchestral Works

Book excerpt: One of the most prolific women composers of her time, Alice Mary Smith (1839–84) produced the greatest number of publicly performed large-scale orchestral and choral works of any of her gender. This edition presents three of her short orchestral compositions for the first time in print. The Andante for Clarinet and Orchestra, an orchestral transcription of the slow movement of Smith’s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano of 1870, was greatly admired by the English clarinetist Henry Lazarus, who performed it multiple times. The two intermezzi, along with the overture, comprise the complete orchestral music from Smith’s grand choral cantata The Masque of Pandora, a setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem. Designed as independent instrumental movements, Smith fully orchestrated the intermezzi for a performance in 1879 by the New Philharmonic Society under William Ganz. In the introduction to the edition, Graham-Jones includes a brief biography of Smith and reproduces numerous reviews and program notes from the various performances of these three works.