Rebecca Clarke

Rebecca Helferich Clarke (Friskin) (August 27, 1886–October 13, 1979) was an English classical composer and violist best known for her chamber music featuring the viola. She is considered one of the most important British composers in the interwar period between World War I and World War II{{ref|grove}}; she has also been described as the most distinguished British female composer of her generation. {{ref|norton}}

Early life

Clarke was born in Harrow, England, to Joseph Thacher Clarke and Agnes Paulina Marie Amalie Helferich, and studied at London's Royal College of Music. She grew up a bilingual speaker of English and German. She was known as Beccle by family and friends.

Related Topics:
Harrow - England - Royal College of Music

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The paths of her life and career were strongly affected by her sex. Beginning her studies at the Royal Academy of Music, she was pulled out by her father after being proposed to by teacher Percy Hilder Miles (who left her his Stradivarius violin in his will). She then attended the Royal College of Music, becoming one of Sir Charles Stanford's first female composition students (Clarke herself mistakenly claimed to be the first).{{ref|mail}} At Stanford's urging she shifted her focus there from the violin to the viola, just as the latter was coming to be seen as a legitimate solo instrument. She studied with Lionel Tertis, who was considered by some the greatest violist of the day{{ref|oxford}}. Later, when selected to play in the Queen's Hall Orchestra, Clarke became one of the first female professional orchestral musicians{{ref|id}}.

Related Topics:
Royal Academy of Music - Percy Hilder Miles - Stradivarius - Violin - Royal College of Music - Sir Charles Stanford - Lionel Tertis - Queen's Hall Orchestra

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Having been kicked out of the house without funds by her abusive father for criticizing his extramarital affairs{{ref|cd}}, Clarke supported herself through her viola playing after leaving the Royal College, and moved to the United States in 1916 to perform. Her compositional career peaked in a brief period, beginning with the viola sonata she entered in a 1919 competition sponsored by patron of the arts Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Clarke's neighbor, tying for first prize in a field of 72 entrants with a piece by Ernest Bloch. (Coolidge later declared Bloch the winner. Two judges of the contest remarked to Coolidge that though they had favored Clarke, it was good that she did not win, to avoid the appearance of Coolidge favoring her neighbor and friend and destroying the reputation of the then-new contest.) It was speculated by reporters that "Rebecca Clarke" was only a pseudonym for Bloch himself, or at least that it could not have been Clarke who wrote these pieces{{ref|grove}}, as the idea that a woman could write such a work was nearly unheard of. The sonata was well received and had its first performance at the Berkshire music festival in 1919. In 1921 she again made an impressive showing, though still just failing to take the prize, with her piano trio. A 1923 rhapsody for cello and piano followed, sponsored by Coolidge, making Clarke the only female recipient of her patronage{{ref|grove}}. These three works represent the height of her compositional career. From then on her output was sporadic; she composed hardly at all throughout the 1930s, for example, nor did she write during her employment as a nanny, though she continued to perform.

Related Topics:
United States - Viola sonata - Patron - Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge - Ernest Bloch - Berkshire music festival - Piano trio - Rhapsody - Cello - Piano - Nanny

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The years from 1939 to 1942 were to prove her last significant creative period. By this point Clarke was living in the United States with her brothers, and was unhappy to see them turning out, in her eyes, as badly as their father. This period of unhappiness proved nevertheless to be a fertile one, but it did not last long.

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