“Historical Anthology of Music by Women”
Rebecca Clarke is primarily remembered as a violist and a chamber music performer. She gained attention as a composer during the early decades of the twentieth century. Born in Harrow, England, Clarke began her musical studies as a violin student at the Royal Academy of Music. After her father removed her from the Academy in her third year, her interest turned to composition, and she was accepted as a student of Sir Charles Stanford at the Royal College of Music. Although several women had studied composition at the Academy (Maude Valerie White, for example, was the first woman to win the prestigious Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1879), Rebecca Clarke was the first female student of Stanford at the Royal College of Music.
When she left the Royal College, Clarke supported herself as a violist in several orchestras and ensembles in London. She played chamber music with many great artists, including Pablo Casals, Artur Schnabel, Jacques Thibaud, Jascha Heifetz, Myra Hess (who was a former classmate at the Royal Academy), Percy Grainger, and Arthur Rubinstein. In 1912, she became a member of the Queen’s Hall Orchestra under the direction of Sir Henry Wood, who was the first conductor to admit women in his orchestra. Clarke made several tours of Europe and America as a soloist; she cofounded the English Ensemble, a piano quartet, and was a member of a string quartet with the sisters Adila Fachiri and Jelly d’Aranyi, and Guilhermina Suggia.
Clarke gained recognition as a composer in 1919, when her Viola Sonata tied for first place with Ernst Bloch’s Suite for Viola and Piano for a prize offered by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Since there could be only one winner, the jury requested that Mrs. Coolidge cast the deciding vote. She chose the Bloch piece, but in view of the deadlock, the jury insisted that the name of the runner-up be divulged. The jury was surprised to discover that the piece was composed by a woman.
In 1944 Rebecca Clarke married the American pianist and composer James Friskin. She settled in New York, where she maintained an active schedule as teacher, lecturer, and writer. Clarke contributed essays on “Bloch” and the “Viola” for Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music. Her complete musical oeuvre includes 58 songs and part-songs and 24 instrumental works, mostly chamber music.
The Trio for Violin, Violoncello, and Piano won second prize at the Coolidge Festival in 1921. It has much in common with the French, so-called Impressionist style of Ravel in its predilection for harmonic opulence, instrumental color, clarity of melody and rhythm, and Classical structure. The first movement, presented here, adheres strictly to sonata form. Clarke based the entire movement on two chords set a tritone apart: E-flat minor and A minor. Used bitonally throughout the movement, these two chords not only serve as the pitch material for Clarke’s powerful motto but also set up a conflict that is not resolved until the end of the entire work. This is demonstrated at the end of the first movement, where the violin sounds a low A against an E flat in the cello and piano. Clarke achieves some ravishing instrumental effects, such as the piano arpeggios against the pizzicato in the strings and the bariolage passages that occur in the violin and cello.
Recording
Piano Trios by Rebecca Clarke and Katherine Hoover, Suzanne Ornstein, violin; James Kreger, cello; Virginia Eskin, piano. Leonarda LPI-103, 1980.
Further Reading
Johnson, Christopher. Introduction to Rebecca Clarke, Trio. Women Composers Series. New York: Da Capo Press, 1980.
Reprinted from Rebecca Clarke, Trio. Women Composers Series, Da Capo Press, 1980. By permission.
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