SMITH, Theodore (c.1740-c.1810) - (Pianoforte) Concerto Ex B (1782)

Theodore Smith (c.1740-c.1810) - (Pianoforte) Concerto Ex B (1782)

Performers: Harald Hoeren (fortepiano); Sephira Ensemble Stuttgart

Drawing: Laurie & Whittle - Concert of vocal & instrumental music, or the rising generation of Orpheus

Further info: Musik Aus Den Archiven Hohenloher Schlösser

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Theodore (Theodor) Smith [Schmidt]

(c.1740 - c.1810)

German composer and keyboard player, active mainly in England. Fétis gave his birthplace as Hanover, and Gerber identified him with Theodor Schmidt, who published symphonies in Paris about 1765. As ‘T. Smith’ he made his London début at Hickford’s Room on 17 March 1766, performing a harpsichord concerto. He joined the Royal Society of Musicians on 1 February 1767; his name is spelt ‘Theodor Smith’ in their records, and on the title-page of his Alfred, but later he preferred ‘Theodore’. After another concert at Hickford’s Room on 21 May 1767, during which his Sinfonia concertante for violin and cello was performed, his musical activities shifted to the theatres and pleasure gardens, influenced by his marriage, about 1768, to the singer Maria Harris. She had been a pupil of Thomas Linley, and Smith composed a set of Vauxhall songs for her in 1769. ‘Mrs Smith’ made her acclaimed theatrical début with Garrick’s company at Drury Lane as Sylvia in Cymon (20 October 1772). She went on to perform in many productions there, including Arne’s The Rose, Garrick’s adaptation of Hamlet (as Ophelia), and Dibdin’s The Wedding Ring and A Christmas Tale. When Garrick rewrote Thomson’s masque Alfred for a production on 9 October 1773, he asked Smith to compose new music, paying him £26 5s. Smith wrote an excellent overture in the style of J.C. Bach and five attractive songs, including a fine coloratura aria sung by his wife in the role of Emma. Performances also included songs Arne had written for the original production in 1740 and some Burney wrote for the 1751 revival under the name ‘Temple of Apollo’. Arne and Drury Lane’s house composer Dibdin were enraged at Garrick’s bringing in, without consulting them, a composer who had had no theatrical experience, and Arne published an advertisement disclaiming responsibility for the music. Dibdin’s complaint drew an angry reply from Garrick (6 October 1773) which, however, is somewhat devious about Smith’s contribution. 

According to Mrs Papendiek, Maria Smith left Theodore and eloped in the summer of 1774: ‘a Mr Bishop took her off, and when the first shock had subsided, he prevailed upon Smith to accept a sum of money and be silent, for his wife would never return to him, and he, Bishop, would marry her’. If this story is true then it must have happened some time later than 1774, for the Smiths christened a son on 10 January 1776. That year Smith also composed an overture and new songs for Thomas Hull’s farce The Spanish Lady, revived for his wife’s benefit at Drury Lane on 9 April 1776. Around this time, however, Smith did lose interest in writing vocal music, and lived mainly by teaching. From 1779 onwards he published several sets of ‘duets for two performers on one harpsichord or piano forte’, with three sonatas in each set. The first was by far the most successful, perhaps because it was much the easiest to play; there were several reprints in London and one in Berlin. Smith’s first set of concertos also appeared in Berlin, and he may have lived there for a short time around 1780. Smith also wrote at least 27 keyboard sonatas, some with flute or violin accompaniment. It seems that Smith never remarried. He took a job teaching in a Chiswick girls’ school for the poor reason that he wanted an occasional glimpse of his ex-wife when she went there to see her daughter. From moping he fell to bitterness: years later William Horsley reported that during his lessons with Smith in the 1790s he ‘received small instruction and much ill usage’. By 1795 Smith was organist at Ebury Chapel in London (near Sloane Square), for which he published a collection of psalms, hymns and anthems (two of them by Arnold and Avison). The Sacro Divertimento, published about 1800, was apparently intended as a full evening’s entertainment in the chapel; a long organ sonata is followed by a number of short anthems and hymns, together with an extract from Handel’s Messiah.