wednesday books voted early!

Impressions that Remained, Vol. I, Ethel Smyth. While exploring the music of women composers, I've recently gotten into the English suffragist composer Ethel Smyth -- originally because I heard about her opera Der Wald, the first opera by a woman to be performed at the Met (and it was over a hundred years until the second one, in 2016), and immediately went "this has to be part of the Fire and Hemlock Extended Musical Universe somehow", though I still haven't figured out how. More recently I've been listening to Smyth's orchestral music, and looking up stuff about her extremely interesting life -- she was a larger-than-life personality, as openly queer as an English lady of her time could be, and knew almost everyone who was anyone in music at the time -- decided that I needed to know more about her, and finding that she had written extensive memoirs decided to start with the primary source.

This pairs well with Charles Auchester, as it is the actual memoirs of a musically talented Englishwoman who went to Germany to become a composer, and is written with more wit and humor. (I wonder what Smyth thought of Charles Auchester, if she read it. Probably, like most musical cognoscenti, she thought it was trash, but it seems like the sort of book that might have made an impression on her at the right age.) And on the other hand, it also pairs well with Evelyn Sharp's suffragette memoirs.

It gets off to a slow start with Smyth's early years and family background. (Amusingly, Smyth makes a point of how Parents These Days are overprotective, and that if she had kids she'd raise them more like she was raised. Which is relatable, except that we've been through several generational cycles of this since then, so her examples of non-overprotective parenting are slightly horrifying, such as when she cuts her hand literally to the bone.) However it quickly picks up steam -- I've just gotten to the point where Smyth has started to settle in at Leipzig.

This bit about how Smyth's brief engagement to Willie Wilde, older brother of Oscar, gives a good sense of her personality:


And then ... the love letters began to arrive! Now although to propose to a girl five hours after you have seen her being sea-sick is a proof, as I said to myself, of true love, and though to go on proposing after your seat has given way beneath you argues not only passion but sense of humour, undefeatedness, and other admirable qualities, the fact remains that I had accepted this young man from flattered vanity, light-heartedness, adventurousness, anything you please except love. Consequently the letters, which I have since re-read, and which are really very like the genuine thing, rapidly put me off; nor did I like his gentle but continued insistence on the article of silence. In short, before three weeks were over, probably to his secret relief, I had broken off the engagement, adding that I would like to keep the ring as a souvenir! And keep it I did, until a year or two afterwards, when I lost it while separating two dogs who were fighting in deep snow in the heather. Thus ended my first and last engagement, the hero of which I never saw again--a pity, for they say he became even a better talker than his brother.


I look forward to reporting more on this book!

The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson. Still rereading this, but don't have much to say for the moment.