thumb|upright=1|Clarke with a viola in 1919

Rebecca Helferich Clarke (27 August 1886 – 13 October 1979) was a British classical composer and violist. Internationally renowned as a viola virtuoso, she also became one of the first female professional orchestral players in London.

Rebecca Clarke had a German mother and an American father, and spent substantial periods of her life in the United States, where she permanently settled after World War II. She was born in Harrow and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London. Stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II, she married composer and pianist James Friskin in 1944. Clarke died at her home in New York at the age of 93.

Although Clarke's output was not large, her work was recognised for its compositional skill and artistic power. Some of her works have yet to be published; those that were published in her lifetime were largely forgotten after she stopped composing. Scholarship and interest in her compositions revived in 1976. The Rebecca Clarke Society was established in 2000 to promote the study and performance of her music.

Early life

thumb|left|London's [[Royal College of Music where Clarke studied from 1907 to 1910]]

Clarke was born in Harrow, England, to Joseph Thacher Clarke, an American, and his German wife, Agnes Paulina Marie Amalie Helferich. Her father was interested in music, and Clarke started on violin after sitting in on lessons that were being given to her brother, Hans Thacher Clarke, who was 15 months her junior. Her father was abusive, often hitting her with a steel ruler over infractions such as biting her nails. She was withdrawn by her father in 1905, after her harmony teacher Percy Hilder Miles proposed to her. Miles later left his Stradivarius violin to Clarke in his will.

Shortly after leaving the Royal Academy, Clarke made the first of many visits to the United States. She then attended the Royal College of Music, becoming Sir Charles Villiers Stanford's first female composition student. At Stanford's urging she shifted her focus from the violin to the viola, just as the latter was coming to be seen as a legitimate solo instrument. Reeves, the daughter of William Pember Reeves and Maud Pember Reeves, married Clarke's brother Eric in 1919.

Orchestral musician and chamber ensembles in London

Following her criticism of his extra-marital affairs, Clarke's father turned her out of the house and cut off her funds. She had to leave the Royal College in 1910 and supported herself through her viola playing. Clarke, along with Jessie Grimson on violin, became one of the first female professional orchestral musicians in London when she was selected by Sir Henry Wood to play in the Queen's Hall Orchestra in 1913. She also participated in chamber groups during this period, including Nora Clench's female quartet.

Clarke was sought after as a violist, and was invited to the at-home chamber music recitals of Paul and Muriel Draper in Lisson Grove from 1911 to 1914; Paul Draper was an American tenor studying in London with Raimund von zur-Mühlen. Clarke played with Artur Schnabel, Pablo Casals, Jascha Heifetz, Jacques Thibaud, Guilhermina Suggia, Arthur Rubinstein, Pierre Monteux, and George Szell, among others.

Touring 1916–1923

In 1916 Clarke visited the United States, where some of her songs had been performed by Gervase Elwes. On this trip, she met Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, a music patron.

In 1918, Clarke premiered her short, lyrical piece for viola and piano titled Morpheus, composed under the pseudonym "Anthony Trent", at a joint recital with May Mukle in New York City. Reviewers praised Morpheus, if largely ignoring Clarke's other works. Mukle was a good friend, and with Kathleen Long and Marjorie Hayward they later made up the English Ensemble piano quartet.

Compositions 1919 to mid-1920s

Clarke's compositional career peaked in a brief period, beginning with the viola sonata she entered in a 1919 competition sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. In a field of 72 entrants, Clarke's sonata tied for first place with a composition by Ernest Bloch; Coolidge gave Bloch her casting vote. Reporters speculated that "Rebecca Clarke" was a pseudonym for Bloch himself. In 1924 she became a founding member of the Aeolian Players. She was one of the Aeolian Hall ensemble conducted in October 1928 by Maurice Ravel, in a concert of his own works, with Gordon Bryan, Gwendolen Mason and others.

Clarke performed on several recordings in the 1920s and 1930s, and participated in BBC music broadcasts. Her compositional output greatly decreased during this period. Between 1927 and 1933 she was romantically involved with the British baritone John Goss, who was eight years her junior and married at the time.

In 1936 Clarke sold the Stradivarius she had been bequeathed to a dealer in New York. At the outbreak of World War II, Clarke was in the US visiting her two brothers, and was unable to obtain a visa to return to Britain. She lived for a while with her brothers' families and then in 1942 took a position as a governess for a family in Connecticut. She composed 10 works between 1939 and 1942, including her Passacaglia on an Old English Tune. She is now established as one of the most important 'women composers' of her generation. However, as she told a journalist, "I would sooner be regarded as a 16th-rate composer than be judged as if there were one kind of musical art for men and another for women." However, her later output was sporadic. the lack of encouragement—sometimes outright discouragement—she received for her work also made her reluctant to compose.

After her husband's death in 1967, Clarke began writing a memoir, titled I Had a Father Too (or the Mustard Spoon); it was completed in 1973 but never published. In it she describes her early life, marked by frequent beatings from her father and strained family relations which affected her perceptions of her proper place in life. The Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale, also composed in 1941, is another neoclassically influenced piece, written for clarinet and viola (originally for her brother and sister-in-law). Examples of recent publications include her sonata in G major and sonata for violin and piano in D major, both published in 2023.

Modern reception of Clarke's work has been generally positive. A 1981 review of her Viola Sonata called it a "thoughtful, well constructed piece" from a relatively obscure composer; a 1985 review noted its "emotional intensity and use of dark tone colours". Andrew Achenbach, in his review of a Helen Callus recording of several Clarke works, referred to Morpheus as "striking" and "languorous". Laurence Vittes noted that Clarke's "Lullaby" was "exceedingly sweet and tender". A 1987 review concluded that "it seems astonishing that such splendidly written and deeply moving music should have lain in obscurity all these years".

The Viola Sonata was the subject of BBC Radio 3's Building a Library survey on 17 October 2015. The top recommendation, chosen by Helen Wallace, was by Tabea Zimmermann (viola) and Kirill Gerstein (piano). In 2017 BBC Radio 3 devoted five hours to her music as Composer of the Week. A compilation recording of Clarke's songs was released for the first time by Kitty Whately, Nicholas Phan and Anna Tilbrook in 2025.

Legacy

At the beginning of the 21st century, it was common knowledge that many of Clarke's compositions remained unpublished, while others were out of print. The Prelude, allegro and pastorale: for Bb clarinet and viola had been published for the first time, by Oxford University Press. A 2002 review in the Journal of the American Viola Society noted that the editor Christopher Johnson "now holds the rights to the works in the Clarke estate." The Rebecca Clarke Society had been established in September 2000 to promote performance, scholarship, and awareness of the works of Rebecca Clarke.

The head of the Rebecca Clarke Society, Liane Curtis, is the editor of A Rebecca Clarke Reader, originally published by Indiana University Press in 2004. The book was withdrawn from circulation by the publisher following Johnson's complaints about the unlicensed reproduction of substantial excerpts from Clarke's unpublished writings. The Reader has since been reissued by the Rebecca Clarke Society itself.

Selected works

Chamber music

  • 2 Pieces: Lullaby and Grotesque for viola (or violin) and cello ()
  • Morpheus for viola and piano (1917–1918)
  • Sonata for viola and piano (1919)
  • Piano Trio (1921)
  • Rhapsody for cello and piano (1923)
  • Passacaglia on an Old English Tune for viola (or cello) and piano (?1940–1941)
  • Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale for viola and clarinet (1941)

Vocal

  • Shiv and the Grasshopper for voice and piano (1904); words from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
  • Shy One for voice and piano (1912); words by William Butler Yeats
  • He That Dwelleth in the Secret Place (Psalm 91) for soloists and mixed chorus (1921)
  • The Seal Man for voice and piano (1922); words by John Masefield
  • The Aspidistra for voice and piano (1929); words by Claude Flight
  • The Tiger for voice and piano (1929–1933); words by William Blake
  • God Made a Tree for voice and piano (1954); words by Katherine Kendall

Choral

  • Music, When Soft Voices Die for mixed chorus (1907); words by Percy Bysshe Shelley

References

  • Rebecca Clarke Composer homepage
  • The Rebecca Clarke Society Homepage
  • Songs by Rebecca Clarke on The Art Song Project
  • Virginia Eskin hosts 'A Note to You' episode on Rebecca Clarke's life & music