![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drplaceboIt's Forgotten Masterpiece Friday!
I've wanted to feature Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) at some point. Her Viola Sonata is no longer a forgotten masterpiece now that it's been the most-performed piece in the viola repertoire for the last 20 years, but some of her other pieces deserve more attention.
Clarke was English-American, born in Harrow, England, and a dual citizen through her American father. She entered the Royal College of Music as a violinist; while she was there, Charles Stanford, who saw great promise in her as a composer, urged her to spend some time playing viola to better understand the middle voices in the orchestra. She soon realized that the viola was coming into its own as a solo instrument, and that her considerable height (approximately 6'4") made her especially well-suited to the larger instrument; she adopted the viola as her main instrument and never looked back.
In her student years, Clarke quarreled constantly with her father, who did not want her to take up a musical career. Ironically it was her father who unwittingly pushed her into her career as a professional violist: in 1910, she confronted her father over his extramarital affairs, and was turned out of the house and cut off from family funds. At that point, she concluded she had no choice but to make a living playing the viola. Two years later, she made history as one of six women joining the Queen's Hall Orchestra, the first six women to play in any British professional orchestra. In 1916, embarked on a career as a touring soloist and chamber musician, which continued into the 1930s. This was when she first made her mark as a composer, writing pieces under the pseudonym "Anthony Trent" for herself to perform in recitals. After "Anthony Trent" received critical praise, Clarke composed and submitted a viola sonata for a 1919 competition under her own name. It tied for first prize with a piece by Ernest Bloch, at which point some reporters speculated that "Rebecca Clarke" was a pseudonym for Bloch himself!
Clarke's composition career ended abruptly during the Second World War. At the outbreak of war, she was visiting her brothers in the United States, and found herself stranded there for the duration of the war. She composed a number of pieces between 1939 and 1942, but in 1942, struggling financially, she accepted a non-musical job as a governess for a wealthy Connecticut family and ceased composing and performing. She married Juilliard professor James Friskin in 1944, when they were both in their 50s. Although Friskin tried to encourage her to resume composing, she never did. She suffered from lifelong depression, found it difficult to accept praise, and was thoroughly discouraged by the mid-1940s. Throughout her career as a composer, she had been her own greatest detractor. By the 1960s, all of Clarke's music was out of print and all but forgotten.
Unusually for a forgotten composer, Clarke's music was rediscovered within her lifetime. In 1976, a writer named Marian McKenna, who was completing a biography of pianist Myra Hess, tracked down Clarke, who was one of Hess's few surviving childhood friends. McKenna asked radio journalist Robert Sherman to interview her about Hess. During this interview, Clarke showed Sherman recital programs on which she and Hess had performed together, including some featuring Clarke's own music. Interest in her music was revived almost overnight, and within ten years Clarke's Viola Sonata was a staple of the instrument's solo repertoire. Other pieces took longer to come to light; about half of Clarke's output remained unpublished at her death in 1979, with a few pieces being discovered in her personal papers only in the 21st century.
Clarke's Piano Trio took second prize in the 1921 edition of the same competition in which her Viola Sonata had tied for the first prize two years earlier. A passionate, atmospheric work steeped in post-Romantic harmonic language, it begins with a powerful hammered gesture in the piano that serves as a unifying theme for the entire piece, appearing in various moods through an impetuous first movement, a meditative second movement, and an ecstatic finale.
Movements:
I. Moderato ma appassionato
II. Andante molto semplice (9:35)
III. Allegro vigoroso (15:26)
I've wanted to feature Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) at some point. Her Viola Sonata is no longer a forgotten masterpiece now that it's been the most-performed piece in the viola repertoire for the last 20 years, but some of her other pieces deserve more attention.
Clarke was English-American, born in Harrow, England, and a dual citizen through her American father. She entered the Royal College of Music as a violinist; while she was there, Charles Stanford, who saw great promise in her as a composer, urged her to spend some time playing viola to better understand the middle voices in the orchestra. She soon realized that the viola was coming into its own as a solo instrument, and that her considerable height (approximately 6'4") made her especially well-suited to the larger instrument; she adopted the viola as her main instrument and never looked back.
In her student years, Clarke quarreled constantly with her father, who did not want her to take up a musical career. Ironically it was her father who unwittingly pushed her into her career as a professional violist: in 1910, she confronted her father over his extramarital affairs, and was turned out of the house and cut off from family funds. At that point, she concluded she had no choice but to make a living playing the viola. Two years later, she made history as one of six women joining the Queen's Hall Orchestra, the first six women to play in any British professional orchestra. In 1916, embarked on a career as a touring soloist and chamber musician, which continued into the 1930s. This was when she first made her mark as a composer, writing pieces under the pseudonym "Anthony Trent" for herself to perform in recitals. After "Anthony Trent" received critical praise, Clarke composed and submitted a viola sonata for a 1919 competition under her own name. It tied for first prize with a piece by Ernest Bloch, at which point some reporters speculated that "Rebecca Clarke" was a pseudonym for Bloch himself!
Clarke's composition career ended abruptly during the Second World War. At the outbreak of war, she was visiting her brothers in the United States, and found herself stranded there for the duration of the war. She composed a number of pieces between 1939 and 1942, but in 1942, struggling financially, she accepted a non-musical job as a governess for a wealthy Connecticut family and ceased composing and performing. She married Juilliard professor James Friskin in 1944, when they were both in their 50s. Although Friskin tried to encourage her to resume composing, she never did. She suffered from lifelong depression, found it difficult to accept praise, and was thoroughly discouraged by the mid-1940s. Throughout her career as a composer, she had been her own greatest detractor. By the 1960s, all of Clarke's music was out of print and all but forgotten.
Unusually for a forgotten composer, Clarke's music was rediscovered within her lifetime. In 1976, a writer named Marian McKenna, who was completing a biography of pianist Myra Hess, tracked down Clarke, who was one of Hess's few surviving childhood friends. McKenna asked radio journalist Robert Sherman to interview her about Hess. During this interview, Clarke showed Sherman recital programs on which she and Hess had performed together, including some featuring Clarke's own music. Interest in her music was revived almost overnight, and within ten years Clarke's Viola Sonata was a staple of the instrument's solo repertoire. Other pieces took longer to come to light; about half of Clarke's output remained unpublished at her death in 1979, with a few pieces being discovered in her personal papers only in the 21st century.
Clarke's Piano Trio took second prize in the 1921 edition of the same competition in which her Viola Sonata had tied for the first prize two years earlier. A passionate, atmospheric work steeped in post-Romantic harmonic language, it begins with a powerful hammered gesture in the piano that serves as a unifying theme for the entire piece, appearing in various moods through an impetuous first movement, a meditative second movement, and an ecstatic finale.
Movements:
I. Moderato ma appassionato
II. Andante molto semplice (9:35)
III. Allegro vigoroso (15:26)