La Marcha de las Mujeres de la compositora Ethel Smyth. Un himno para el movimiento sufragista

The document we present, The March of the Women, is a score composed in 1911 by the English composer Dr. Ethel Smyth (1858–1944), a piece that would become the anthem of the suffragist movement. After meeting Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), at a rally, the composer abandoned her intense and acclaimed musical activity for two years in order to dedicate herself fully to the suffragist cause. The composition of this anthem provided the movement with its own song of identification and cohesion, one that represented and symbolized the struggle of those women. Its music, rooted in the tradition of nineteenth-century patriotic and revolutionary hymns, was sung by English suffragists at their events, and the composer herself created several versions of it. This is a historically and musically significant document, one that reveals the importance of music in expressing the ideals of a collective movement—in this case, suffragism—and the emotions of those who identified with it.