March 18, 2025 - 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

The WSU Humanities Center invites faculty, students, staff, and the community to a Brown Bag presentation given by Eldonna May (PTF, Music History) on the topic of, "Semiotics, the Oxford Movement, and Dame Ethel Smyth’s Solemn Mass in D Major: A Critical Analysis".

Abstract: While her American contemporary Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (1867-1944) limited performances to the occasional charity event at the behest of her high-profile surgeon husband, Britain’s Ethel Mary Smyth (1858-1944) was living the bold, hard-scrabble life of a woman composer, peace advocate, and suffragette. Exhibiting an individual compositional style of significant energy, creative use of orchestral color, free-wheeling counterpoint, a talent for vocal writing, and a proclivity for choral works combined with a great sense of theater, Smyth’s Solemn Mass in D Major (1891) stands as one of the most intriguing settings of the Mass Ordinary of its time. Inspired by the Anglo-Catholicism propounded by the Oxford Movement of the 1830s and its Tractarianism, along with her relationship with Pauline Trevelyan, the work comprises a setting of the Mass Ordinary. The Movement utilized concepts and practices associated with the liturgy and ritual to create a deeper emotional response triggered by church symbolism and iconography.

Please note that this presentation is virtual only. RSVP for the zoom link.