Alice Mary Smith (1839–84) was one of the few women composers in the early to mid-Victorian era to write in larger-scale genres. Moreover, she was able to have nearly all her works publicly performed. By 1878 Smith had turned her attention to works for chorus and orchestra: Ode to the Passions was the second of four choral pieces published before her untimely death.

The work closely follows the text of William Collins’s The Passions: An Ode for Music of 1746 and is in nine movements (some of w...