Achtergronden 2026

The Prison is the last large-scale composition by the English opera composer Ethel Smyth, a choral work that not only crowned her own career but erected a monument to her longstanding companion and librettist, the American writer and philosopher Henry Brewster (1850–1908). Smyth had met Brewster in 1882 during a months-long stay in Florence. Though he was married at the time to a sister of Smyth’s Leipzig confidante Elisabeth von Herzogenberg (1847–1892), he fell in love with the young composer. In the end this led to a permanent breech between Smyth and the Herzogenbergs even though she broke off contact with Brewster for a five-year period. It was not until early 1890 that the two lovers met again at the première of Smyth’s first orchestral work, Serenade in D. Following the death of Elisabeth von Herzogenberg and Brewster’s wife Julia (1842–1895), Brewster and Smyth began a collaboration that resulted in three operas: Fantasio (premièred 24 May 1898), Der Wald/The Forest (premièred 9 April 1902) and Les Naufrageurs/Strandrecht/The Wreckers (premièred 11 November 1906). Smyth made her librettist the dedicatee of The Forest and of Chrysilla, the third of her four French songs, which was intended as a literary and musical portrait of Brewster.

More than twenty years later Smyth’s symphony again ensured that Brewster’s writings were in the public eye. Here she set excerpts from his metaphysical book The Prison: A Dialogue, which discusses the inner struggle of humans to break free from the shackles of the self and to attain full awareness of the immortality of one’s soul in order to face death. Brewster shapes his monograph in the form of a conversation between friends on a manuscript allegedly written by an anonymous prisoner. For her symphony Smyth chooses excerpts from the prisoner’s final statements, dividing them among the vocal roles of the Prisoner (bass), his Soul (soprano), and the Voices (chorus). She had toyed with the idea of setting Brewster’s work to music for a long time: ‘Dame Ethel Smyth had felt that in the thoughts of her friend, H. B. Brewster, there was some hidden force waiting for its release in music, something which he had tried to say, had in fact succeeded in saying, but which needed the aid of a language, music, apprehended more intuitively than the written word can be.’1 Besides the musical setting, Smyth was greatly concerned with making Brewster’s text available to the public once again in the form of a reprint. In an extensive preface to the new edition, she sheds light on Brewster’s general significance to philosophy and to her personal life.2

Proceeding from the underlying book, Smyth succeeds in interrelating the text with the music and further subjects through her composition, her introductory commentaries3 and the motto she prefixed to the score. The title page of the vocal score bears the final words of Plotinus (‘I am striving to release that which is divine within us, and to merge it in the universally divine’). She felt that those are ‘summing up Brewster’s essentially Greek line of thought’.4 She also made use of two Greek melodies only recently deciphered: ‘the Aidin Inscription’ (1st century AD) , better known today as the Seikilos Epitaph, and the ‘Ajax Fragment’ (5th century AD), also referred to as a ‘fragment of a dramatic lament on death of Ajax’. Besides relating them to Greek philosophy, she also assigned symbolic significance to these melodies in several respects. Her introductory commentary refers to the similarity of the two Greek songs to Gregorian musicand Eastern Folk Melodies, thereby tying them in with early Christianity. The Prelude to Part II, ‘The Deliverance’, also quotes Smyth’s organ chorale Schwing dich auf zu deinem Gott, written in Bach’s style. The chorale deals with a Christian believer conquering his sins through faith and the comfort it gives him. By quoting the chorale, Smyth adds yet another layer of meaning to The Prison, for it reveals a parallel between the prisoner and the Christian sinner and the inner struggles both must wage. In an article for the BBC’s magazine The Radio Times she suggests another context created by the use of the two Greek melodies: ‘If my use of this exquisite melody [the Aidin Inscription] should indirectly contribute to bring home to the world-crowd of indifferents the hideous, stupid waste of war; if it should put one spark more life into their vague, half-hearted will for peace, then, whether the musical Prison find favour today, tomorrow, or never, it will not have been written in vain.’5 After its discovery in 1883, the Seikilos stele, on which the Aidin Inscription is found, was preserved in the Museum of Smyrna (now Izmir). Like her contemporaries, Smyth assumed that it was destroyed by fire during the Greco-Turkish War in 1922. By using a world cultural heritage destroyed in an armed conflict, she raised a symbolic banner against war.6

Borrowing existing musical material is a feature commonly found in Smyth’s music. By employing familiar motifs from her own works or those by other composers she could, in each new piece, come to terms with the meanings of the originals. The Aidin Inscription and the Ajax Fragment occur for the first time in The Prison when the chorus sings of the indestructibility of human passions. The Seikilos Epitaph enjoins the reader to enjoy life and to take advantage of it as long as possible, for life is short. The words that Smyth supplied to this melody sing of the eternity of joy in life. To the original meaning of the Seikilos Epitaph she adds the further meaning that joy in life survives death, thereby giving rise to an eternity beyond one’s own brief existence. By assigning the melody to high voices (women and woodwind, or soprano, tenor, woodwind, harp and violins in the reprise), she depicts eternal joy in life as something celestial. In the Greek Ajax Fragment, Ajax’s suicide is lamented by women. Smyth underlays their lament with the words: ‘No hearts but ours shall ever ache and leap, Our passions are the tingling blood of mankind’. Unlike the original, however, in The Prison the Ajax Fragment is intoned by male rather than female voices, thereby opening up new possibilities of interpretation. Though the dead Ajax is lamented by women in the original, ultimately, Smyth tells us, his sorrow and his reasons for committing suicide are his own. Brewster’s philosophical idea claims, for its part, that precisely these sorrows and passions are the mainspring of human endeavour, and thus harbour eternity within them. By incorporating Greek music more than one and a half millennia old, Smyth also succeeds in symbolising the eternity of music, and thus of human existence.

But The Prison is more than just a retelling of Brewster’s metaphysical writings, the philosophical question of eternity and the current topic of war: it is also Smyth’s distinctive contribution to the genre of the symphony. In her introductory remarks she points out that she chose the generic term ‘symphony’ in its very broad original sense and made no attempt to emulate the classical formal model in her composition. For this very reason her use of the term symphony for The Prison has been criticised as overly vague. Presumably she used it to suggest a greater internal unity of conception than is implied by the term ‘oratorio’. Nonetheless, owing to its dramatic impetus, The Prison has been categorised alongside Handel’s oratorios.7 Smyth herself simply called it a choral work. In her oeuvre, however, it can be seen as the conclusion of her evolution as an opera composer. Her first large-scale choral work, the Mass in D, already reveals a gift for musical drama. The six operas she composed between 1892 and 1924 deal with various forms of music theatre. We therefore find, in her catalogue of works, operas laid out in one and three acts, through-composed and number operas on serious or comic subjects, pieces designed as music dramas and others based on the English ballad opera. Her two comic operas, The Boatswain’s Mate (premièred 28 January 1916) and Entente Cordiale (premièred 22 July 1925), would, she hoped, create an English form of non-grand opera and help bring about a national school of opera composers. She then returned to a serious subject in The Prison. Because of its metaphysical content, the original text is unsuitable for operatic treatment, and Smyth turned to an alternative form. Nevertheless, there are parallels with her operas, not only because the words stem from her longstanding opera librettist. By dividing the text between two solo voices and chorus, she creates an interaction and plot dynamic approximating opera. Just as in The Wreckers, the chorus assumes the role of a protagonist. Moreover, the work’s division into two parts (capable of being performed separately) and orchestral interludes (for which, as in her operas, she prepared independent concert arrangements) likewise recalls the structure of opera. In sum, The Prison resists straightforward classification as a symphony.

Smyth herself considered The Prison to be one of her most successful and significant works.

This partly explains her bitter disappointment when, having received positive reviews when she conducted the première in Edinburgh, it failed with the critics at its repeat performance in London. Smyth responded with several articles and letters to the editor in which she railed at length against English music critics.8 As at her opera performances, the reaction to The Prison gave Smyth an opportunity to vent her musico-political opinions.

The Prison formed a central item of the great jubilee concert held on 3 January 1934 during the BBC’s Ethel Smyth Festival, thereby becoming a renewed object of attention. All in all, however, it was rarely performed during the composer’s lifetime or thereafter. Smyth managed to convince the London publishing company Curwen (the British representative of her longstanding principal publisher Universal Edition in Vienna) to issue a vocal score. Today the autograph score and a copyist’s set of orchestral parts are owned by the London publishing company ChesterNovello. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, the Berliner Cappella performed the work in the Konzerthaus Berlin on 27 September 2008, together with the singers Claire Singher (soprano), Johannes Schwaersky (baritone) and the Northwest German Philharmonic of Herford conducted by Kerstin Behnke. A live recording can be obtained from the chorus on request.

Marleen Hoffmann, 2015

THE PRISON

The whole is the record of a struggle to escape from the bonds of self (the Prison),

PART I
CLOSE ON FREEDOM

THE PRISONER
I awoke in the middle of the night and heard the sighing of the wind.
Even so is my life passing away.
A little rustling in the dark, A little traceless rustling.
Then a great yearning seized me, and I said to myself:

“I would like to go out Once more among the living!
Can nothing of it all be of good to others? Can I not send them a farewell message?
Scatter it on leaves to the wind, Or engrave it in blood on the stones?
If I were set free and could speak to men What should I have to say?”

HIS SOUL
Tell them that no man lives in vain, That some small part of our work,
For reasons unknown to us, has been tossed aloft And garnered in for ever.
It was perhaps not our best work, Not perhaps a great or a good work;
Maybe a moment of despair or of joy, Of passion or of kindness . .
Perhaps almost nothing, a sight, a sound, a dream ... perhaps what men call a sin;
But as a child drops a coin in the moneybox His big friend keeps for him
So have we flung that stray moment into eternity, Beyond the sun and the stars.

VOICES
We are full of immortality, It stirs and glistens in us under the crust of self
Like a gleam of sirens under the ice,
And any blow which breaks the crust Brings us into the company of the eternal ones

Whom to feel is to be as they.
That blow you surely will strike somehow,

the film you have spread you will likewise rend, You who live and die.

We are full of immortality, this hour that is with us now Will endure for ever.
It has always been, It will not be buried with us;
It has fallen on us like a drop Of the fabulous river Whose waters make men invulnerable,
And by so much of us as it has touched do we escape destruction.
Surely, surely you will slip into heaven!

THE PRISONER
I was alone with the sorrow of my wasted life, but now the room is not cheerless any more;

It is companionable as with the haze Of morning and the twitter of swallows . .
Behold! in this very moment I am outliving death!
What is the creed that works this wonder?

Where is my philosopher’s stone, My magic pebble? What is the secret?

HIS SOUL
There is no secret; Only something that overwhelms And stuns to rest.
Mighty enough to break away from you, perfect enough to need you no more,
To shake you off and endure for ever.
But not in you; and only for ever because not in you.

It must not be retained, it passes and wanders on to others
Who are waiting in desolation as you waited

THE PRISONER
Will it return to me with the same face as tonight, sublimely sad?

HIS SOUL
It will perhaps return as a rapture of joy that will sweep you away,
Or as some unwordable storm suddenly hushed to the pipe of a trush.

VOICES
Who are our Saviours? There is one here tonight Whose name is Sorrow.

Others are elsewhere, under other names, Or nameless.

They claim no bondage from us, they make no list of chosen souls.
They stroll amid the human throng Indifferent to whom and what they touch,
And whatever they have touched is eternal.

THE PRISONER
In the faint grey morning I hear A sound as of distant surf,
I breathe the breath of the ocean,
And it seems to me that l am as a doomed ship
Whose crew - a motley crew of hopes and thoughts and passions –

had suddenly recollected that they could not drown, but will surely re-appear,

VOICES
And, drenched with the wine of oblivion, Man some new craft,

putting their pride again in some gallant ship of self,
Till its sails, too, hang in rotten shreds, and pitiful timbers give way once more.

(He sleeps)

PART II
THE DELIVERANCE

Dawn: sound of organ music in the prison chapel. (The Prisoner awakes)

HIS SOUL and VOICES
The struggle is over; the time has come, The choice is made.
Abandon to destruction, The unity of which you are conscious,
Take refuge in the lastingness of its elements.
Bid farewell for ever to the transient meeting Of eternal guests, who had gathered here for an hour.

They are taking leave of one another, Never, perhaps, throughout the course of ages to meet again

— all of them and none but they — Under the same roof!

THE PRISONER and VOICES
I hear them overhead moving to depart, And the sound of their several footfalls
Quivers through me in sweet-bitter shudders;

I hear the flight of the divine vultures that bear away my substance shred by shred.

The wind of their wings is as ice on my forehead,

And, from I know not where, wells into my eyes the tranquil glory of a boundless sunset.

VOICES
What are they waiting for, the departing guests?

HIS SOUL

Only for a word that shall set them free . .

THE PRISONER

Go then, pass on, immortal ones! Behold, I burst the bonds that pent you up within me;

I disband myself!

THE PRISONER and VOICES
I disband myself And travel on for ever in your scattered paths;

Wheresoe’er you are there shall I be, I survive in you!

I set my ineffaceable stamp on the womb of time!

VOICES
The laughter we have laughed Rose in the bulrushes of yore

And mingled with the sound of the syrinx,

The kisses that have wandered to our lips Will never grow cold;

No hearts but ours shall ever ache and leap,

Our passions are the tingling blood of mankind.

HIS SOUL

For years you have been conning your lesson.

Learning to say “Not me, not mine", Ashamed both of sorrow and of joy,

Till they slowly were lifted from within you And stretched overhead

Endless and unchangeable as the milky way

Whose soft light descends indifferently on all men, from generation to generation.

Now someone says to you: “It is well so far; taste also the dead .”

THE PRISONER

Then let there be banners and music!

HIS SOUL AND VOICES
Banners and music!
THE PRISONER
This is no leavetaking,
I am not even going home.

I thank you, days of hope and pride, I thank you, lamentable solitude,

And you, shades of those that loved me; I sorrow with you, grieving ones,

And melt with you, O fond ones;

I triumph with those who vanquish, I rest with those who are dead!

THE PRISONER and HIS SOUL

I have nothing that is mine but a name

I bow my down in my dream of day to the life eternal.

VOICES (softly)
The laughter we have laughed rose in the bulrushes of yore, etc.

Bow down in your dream of a day to the life eternal. .

EPILOGUE

PRISONER
I am the joy and the sorrow
I am the mirth and the pride

The love . . the silence and the song.

I am the thought . .
I am the soul . .
I am the home .

ECHO (HIS SOUL and VOICES)
This is no leavetaking

(Let there be banners and music) We are not even going home.

. . the thought .. . . the soul . . .. the home ..

END

Vertaling: machinetranslation.com

DE GEVANGENIS

Het geheel is de beschrijving van een strijd om te ontsnappen aan de banden van het zelf (de Gevangenis),

DEEL I

CLOSE ON FREEDOM

DE GEVANGENE

Ik werd wakker midden in de nacht en hoorde het zuchten van de wind.

Zo gaat mijn leven voorbij.

Een beetje geruis in het donker, een beetje spoorloos geruis.

Toen greep een groot verlangen me aan, en zei ik tegen mezelf:

"Ik zou graag nog eens naar buiten willen gaan tussen de levenden!

Kan niets daarvan goed zijn voor anderen? Kan ik hun geen afscheidsgroet sturen?

Verspreid het op bladeren naar de wind, Of graveer het in bloed op de stenen?

Als ik vrijgelaten zou worden en met de mensen kon spreken, Wat zou ik dan te zeggen hebben?"

ZIJN ZIEL

Vertel hen dat niemand tevergeefs leeft, Dat een klein deel van ons werk,

Om redenen die ons onbekend zijn, omhoog is geworpen en voor altijd is verzameld.

Het was misschien niet ons beste werk, Misschien niet een groot of goed werk;

Misschien een moment van wanhoop of van vreugde, Van passie of van vriendelijkheid . .

Misschien bijna niets, een blik, een geluid, een droom ... misschien wat de mensen een zonde noemen;

Maar zoals een kind een munt in de spaarpot laat vallen die zijn grote vriend voor hem bijhoudt,

Zo hebben wij dat verdwaalde moment in de eeuwigheid geworpen, voorbij de zon en de sterren.

STEMMEN

Wij zijn vol van onsterfelijkheid, Het roert en glinstert in ons onder de korst van het zelf

Als een glans van sirenes onder het ijs,

En elke klap die de korst breekt, brengt ons in het gezelschap van de eeuwigen,

Wie te voelen is te zijn zoals zij.

Die klap zul je zeker op de een of andere manier geven,

de film die je hebt verspreid zul je eveneens verscheuren, Jij die leeft en sterft.

Wij zijn vol van onsterfelijkheid, dit uur dat nu bij ons is, zal voor altijd voortduren.

Het is altijd geweest, Het zal niet met ons begraven worden;

Het is op ons gevallen als een druppel van de schitterende rivier wiens wateren de mensen onkwetsbaar maken,

En door zoveel van ons als het heeft aangeraakt, ontsnappen wij aan vernietiging.

Zeker, zeker zul je de hemel binnenglippen!

DE GEVANGENE

Ik was alleen met de smart van mijn verspilde leven, maar nu is de kamer niet meer zonder vreugde;

Het is meelevend als de nevel van de ochtend en het getjilp van zwaluwen . .

Zie! in ditzelfde moment overleef ik de dood!

Wat is het geloof dat dit wonder bewerkt? Waar is mijn filosoofsteen, Mijn magische kiezel? Wat is het geheim?

ZIJN ZIEL

Er is geen geheim; Alleen iets dat overweldigt en verbluft tot rust.

Machtig genoeg om van je weg te breken, perfect genoeg om je niet meer nodig te hebben,

Om je af te schudden en voor altijd te bestaan.

Maar niet in jou; en alleen voor altijd omdat het niet in jou blijft.

Het mag niet worden vastgehouden, het gaat voorbij en dwaalt verder naar anderen

die in verwoesting wachten zoals jij wachtte

DE GEVANGENE

Zal het terugkomen naar mij met hetzelfde gezicht als vanavond, subliem treurig?

ZIJN ZIEL

Het zal misschien terugkomen als een vervoering van vreugde die je zal meeslepen,

Of als een onbenoembare storm die plotseling verstomd is tot de fluit van een merel.

STEMMEN

Wie zijn onze Verlossers? Er is hier vanavond eén wiens naam Verdriet is.

Anderen zijn elders, onder andere namen, Of naamloos.

Zij eisen geen slavernij van ons, zij maken geen lijst van gekozen zielen.

Zij wandelen te midden van de menselijke menigte Onverschillig voor wie en wat zij aanraken,

En wat zij ook hebben aangeraakt is eeuwig.

DE GEVANGENE

In de vage grijze ochtend hoor ik een geluid als van verre branding,

Ik adem de adem van de oceaan,

En het lijkt me dat ik als een veroordeeld schip ben

wiens bemanning - een bont gezelschap van hoop en gedachten en passies - plotseling herinnerde dat zij niet konden verdrinken, maar zeker weer zullen verschijnen,

STEMMEN

En, doorweekt met de wijn van vergetelheid, bemannen een nieuw vaartuig,

zijn trots opnieuw in een dappere van zich zelf bewust scheepje stekend,

Tot ook de zeilen in rotte flarden hangen, en treurige balken opnieuw bezwijken. (Hij slaapt)

DEEL II

DE BEVRIJDING Dageraad: geluid van orgelmuziek in de gevangeniskapel. (De Gevangene ontwaakt)

ZIJN ZIEL en STEMMEN

De strijd is voorbij; de tijd is gekomen, De keuze is gemaakt.

Verlaat de vernietiging, De eenheid waarvan je je bewust bent,

Zoek toevlucht in de blijvende elementen.

Neem voor altijd afscheid van de tijdelijke ontmoeting Van eeuwige gasten, die hier voor een uur zijn samengekomen. Zij nemen afscheid van elkaar,

Nooit, misschien, gedurende de loop der eeuwen weer te ontmoeten - allemaal en niemand anders dan zij - Onder hetzelfde dak!

DE GEVANGENE en STEMMEN

Ik hoor hen boven me bewegen om te vertrekken, En het geluid van hun verschillende voetstappen

Trilt door mij in zoet-bittere schokken; Ik hoor de vlucht van de goddelijke gieren die mijn substantie schredder voor schredder wegnemen. De wind van hun vleugels is als ijs op mijn voorhoofd,

En, van ik weet niet waar, wellen in mijn ogen de rustige glorie van een grenzeloze zonsondergang.

STEMMEN

Waar wachten zij op, de vertrekkende gasten?

ZIJN ZIEL

Alleen op een woord dat hen vrij zal maken . .

DE GEVANGENE

Ga dan, ga verder, onsterfelijke! Zie, ik breek de banden die jou binnenin mij opsloten; Ik ontbind mezelf!

DE GEVANGENE en STEMMEN

Ik ontbind mezelf En reis voor altijd in jullie verspreide paden; Waar jullie ook zijn, daar zal ik zijn, Ik overleef in jullie! Ik zet mijn onuitwisbare stempel op de baarmoeder van de tijd!

STEMMEN

De lach die we hebben gelachen Steeg op in de rietvelden van weleer En vermengde zich met het geluid van de syrinx, De kussen die naar onze lippen zijn gewandeld Zullen nooit koud worden; Geen harten dan de onze zullen ooit pijn doen en springen, Onze passies zijn het tintelende bloed van de mensheid.

ZIJN ZIEL

Jarenlang heb je je les geleerd. Leren te zeggen "Niet ik, niet van mij", Beschaamd zowel voor verdriet als voor vreugde,

Tot ze langzaam van binnenuit werden opgetild En zich boven ons uitstrekte Eindeloos en onveranderlijk als de Melkweg Wiens zachte licht onverschillig neerdaalt op alle mensen, van generatie op generatie. Nu zegt iemand tegen je: "Het is goed tot nu toe; proef ook de doden."

DE GEVANGENE

Laat er dan banieren en muziek zijn!

ZIJN ZIEL EN STEMMEN

Banieren en muziek!

DE GEVANGENE

Dit is geen afscheid,

Ik ga zelfs niet naar huis. Ik dank jullie, dagen van hoop en trots, Ik dank jullie, treurige eenzaamheid,

En jullie, schaduwen van degenen die van mij hielden; Ik treur met jullie, treurende, En smelt met jullie, O geliefden; Ik triomfeer met degenen die overwinnen, Ik rust met degenen die dood zijn!

DE GEVANGENE en ZIJN ZIEL Ik heb niets dat van mij is behalve een naam Ik buig mijn hoofd in mijn droom van de dag naar het eeuwige leven.

STEMMEN (zachtjes)

De lach die we hebben gelachen steeg op in de rietvelden van weleer, enz. Buig je hoofd in je droom van een dag naar het eeuwige leven. .

EPILOOG GEVANGENE

Ik ben de vreugde en het verdriet

Ik ben de blijdschap en de trots De liefde . . de stilte en het lied. Ik ben de gedachte . .

Ik ben de ziel . .

Ik ben het huis .

ECHO (ZIJN ZIEL en STEMMEN)

Dit is geen afscheid (Laat er banieren en muziek zijn) Wij gaan zelfs niet naar huis. . . de gedachte .. . . de ziel . . .. het huis ..

EINDE